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Written by Adele Stan for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
As the House of Representatives gears up for Tuesday’s debate on HR 1797, a bill that would outlaw virtually all abortions 20 weeks post fertilization, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) argued in favor of banning abortions even earlier in pregnancy because, he said, male fetuses that age were already, shall we say, spanking the monkey.
“Watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful,” said Burgess, a former OB/GYN. “They stroke their face. If they're a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. If they feel pleasure, why is it so hard to believe that they could feel pain?”
That observation led Burgess to say he had argued for the abortion ban to start at a much earlier stage of gestation, 15 or 16 weeks. (This is less than halfway through a pregnancy.) He appeared to liken Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, to the 1893 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that formally legalized racial segregation, and was not fully reversed until Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The rationale for the Republican bill, which advanced through the House Judiciary last week on a near-total party-line vote, is one scientifically disputed study, touted by Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) in his opening remarks at today’s Rules Committee hearing, that asserts fetuses can feel pain as early as 20 weeks after sperm meets egg.
“Well, I think all the members are cognizant of the fact that this is not a Congress that cares much about science,” said Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), the Rules Committee’s ranking member, in her questioning of Goodlatte, who refuted that claim by saying that since 1973, the year when the Supreme Court legalized abortion, much more had been learned about fetal development.
Major medical bodies in the United States and the United Kingdom have refuted the claim of fetal pain before the third trimester.
Written by Tara Murtha for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
As we saw with 2011’s targeted regulation of abortion providers (TRAP) bill, the Republican-dominated Pennsylvania legislature routinely ignores protests from medical associations and professionals in passing bad-faith bills that politicize and endanger women’s health.
Now, Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, already suffering low approval ratings in large part because of a significant gender gap, is poised to sign HB 818. The bill intrudes on the free market by prohibiting private insurance companies that plan to sell health-care plans through Pennsylvania’s forthcoming state health insurance exchange from covering abortion, even in cases of medical emergency, health of the mother, and severe fetal anomaly.
Even more troubling, lawmakers supporting HB 818 are attempting to deceive the public by offering a non-solution: allowing Pennsylvania women to purchase abortion-specific riders from private companies not participating in the exchange.
The problem is that such abortion riders do not appear to exist.
HB 818
Even though the state exchange, established by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), won’t be set up until next year, Pennsylvania lawmakers have been working on versions of the bill since Corbett’s first week in office back in 2011.
The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Donna Oberlander (R-Clarion/Armstrong), insists HB 818 simply underscores existing policy that already prohibits tax dollars from funding abortion. There’s no reason for the "small government" party to propose redundant legislation—except, of course, as cover for something else.
HB 818 doesn’t address tax dollars, which are indeed not allowed to be used to fund abortions (except in cases of rape, incest, and endangerment to the life of the mother) under the Hyde Amendment, Pennsylvania state law, and terms set within the ACA. What it will do is require businesses participating in the health-care exchange to offer sub-standard insurance plans to women—which, in turn, means the hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania women expected to purchase coverage through the exchange won’t be able to spend their own money to purchase industry-standard medical care through the exchange.
Written by Adele M. Stan for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
As the Senate Armed Services Committee meets Wednesday to take up its version of the Defense Authorization bill, senators will likely devote at least as much verbiage to discussion of sexual assault in the military ranks as they do to the finer points of the Pentagon budget that is the bill’s main focus. But missing from the committee’s final version of the bill will be the one measure that advocates for survivors of sexual assault and rape say is critical to ending the crisis that grips the military: removing the reporting and prosecution of sexual assault cases from the chain of command.
Despite its bipartisan support and 27 co-sponsors, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), the committee chairman, struck from the bill a measure offered by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) that would have moved the adjudication of all serious crimes (such as murder, rape, and sexual assault) into the hands of independent prosecutors in order to create a safer environment and more impartial judicial process for those who have been the targets of assailants in the military ranks.
Levin made the decision Tuesday, replacing the provisions of Gillibrand’s Military Justice Improvement Act with a measure that simply requires that any command decision not to prosecute a sexual assault case be reviewed by a high-ranking officer. But as demonstrated in at least one recent case—the overturning of the sexual assault conviction of Air Force Lt. Col. James Wilkerson by Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin—the top brass often exhibit the same deference to defendants as commanders lower in rank.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has condemned Levin’s decision. “They basically embrace the status quo here. It’s outrageous,” she told the New York Times.
As Gillibrand and others noted in a June 4 day-long hearing on sexual assault in the military, victims often don’t come forward because of well-founded fears of reprisal by their commanders. Testimony by victims’ advocates laid out a picture of a landscape on which retaliation against those who report sexual assaults—including being drummed out of the service on the basis of mental-health diagnoses made by military medical personnel—seemed almost as common as the assaults themselves.
Citing a recent Pentagon report that estimated some 26,000 incidents of unwanted sexual contact experienced by members of the military at the hands of others in the ranks, Gillibrand addressed a panel of top military officials: “Of the victims who did report ... 62 percent said they received retaliation.”
Of those estimated 26,000 incidents, only 3,300 were reported, and fewer than 200 went to trial.
Written by Jessica Mason Pieklo for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
The Defense of Marriage Act
In 2007 Edie Windsor married Thea Spyer after already being together for 40 years. When Spyer died, in 2009, their home state of New York recognized marriage equality, but because of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the federal law that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman, the federal government did not. As a result, Windsor was faced with paying more than $363,000 in federal estate taxes because Spyer had left her estate to Windsor. Had the federal government recognized their marriage and given it the same status as opposite-sex married couples in the state, Windsor would not have to pay any estate taxes.
But it didn't, and Windsor sued, arguing DOMA violates Equal Protection protections and seeking a refund in her estate tax bill. In October 2012 the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled DOMA was unconstitutional. In that decision, the court for the first time held that when government passes laws that discriminate against gay and lesbian individuals those laws will be presumed unconstitutional and that the must have a compelling reason to justify that discrimination.
The Supreme Court now has to answer those two questions: Is Section 3 of DOMA (the part of the law that defines marriage) constitutional, and do gay and lesbian individuals qualify as a protected class for purposes constitutional protections? There are three ways the Court could answer those questions.
1. DOMA Is Unconstitutional
Equality advocates are hoping for a ruling from the Supreme Court that would broadly declare DOMA unconstitutional. Should the Supreme Court strike DOMA in its entirety, then same-sex couples who receive marriage licenses in the 12 states and District of Columbia that recognize same-sex marriages will enjoy the benefits of more than 1,000 federal laws, benefits, programs, and protections that currently favor opposite-sex marriages. A ruling declaring DOMA unconstitutional would likely have no impact on marriage equality bans though.
If the Court does rule DOMA unconstitutional, it could do so via several different analytical tracts. First, the Supreme Court could issue a sweeping ruling under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Historically the courts have applied the equal protection clause to protect against the government unfairly infringing on the rights of specific groups and to ensure that certain fundamental rights such as marriage receive heightened legal protection. Advocates have argued that DOMA violates the 14th Amendment both because it targets a specific group of people for unequal treatment and because it affects the fundamental right to marriage.
Written by Alice Welbourn for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
The following article based on a presentation by Alice Welbourn at the Women Deliver Conference, which took place earlier this month in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
I was recently invited to take part in a panel discussion at the Women Deliver Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the theme of which was "More than mothers: upholding the sexual and reproductive health and rights of women in the Global Plan."
The plan in question is the "Global Plan Towards the Elimination of New HIV Infections in Children and Keeping their Mothers Alive," about which I have co-written before. Since maternal mortality among women living with HIV is still so very high, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, it is critical that we have a Global Plan which works for women as well as for their children.
According to UNAIDS, over 40 percent of maternal deaths in some hyper-endemic countries are attributable to AIDS-related illnesses. Despite these extraordinary figures, sessions on HIV and AIDS still play a rather minor role in this conferences, and this was reflected by a rather sparsely populated hall for this session, despite the presence of such great advocates for women's rights as politician and lawyer, Dame Carol Kidu of Papua New Guinea, UNAIDS Ambassador Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway, Sia Nyama Koroma, the First Lady of Sierra Leone (who is also an organic chemist and psychiatric nurse), and Helena Nangombe a dynamic young AIDS activist from Namibia, one of the Women Deliver 100 Young Leaders.
During the panel, Jan Beagle put this question to me: "Alice, we have seen significant progress through the Global Plan but we know we need to do more. Can you tell us what you consider has worked and what needs to be improved, to ensure that the HIV and sexual and reproductive health and rights of women and girls are adequately addressed?
This is what I replied:
What has worked is a scientific revolution. It is fantastic that the science is there now for anti-retroviral medication (ARVs) to support women with HIV to fulfill our sexual and reproductive rights, including the right to motherhood, if we wish. When I was diagnosed with HIV in 1992, when I was expecting a baby, it was feared that I might die, because ARVs didn't exist in those days and it was also feared that the baby would die. So I was advised to have an abortion. Many women of my generation with HIV had no children at all. So it is wonderful now to see younger women with HIV able to fulfill their dreams of motherhood, since with ARVs it is now possible to have 99 percent HIV-free births, even with a normal vaginal delivery. So this is a brilliant breakthrough and huge cause for celebration for us all.
In terms of what could be improved, I would like to focus on three areas today, namely language, care and support and safety.
Written by Jessica Mason Pieklo for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
Over the past three years, more than 60 lawsuits have been filed in federal court challenging the Affordable Care Act contraceptive coverage benefit. These legal challenges are based on a central theme of today's conservative movement, which argues contraception is immoral, and that the Supreme Court decision preventing states from criminalizing birth control was wrongly decided. That's where things stand on the 48th anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut.
Why now? Why is the right gunning so hard to take down Griswold and gut individuals' rights to privacy that include keeping the government out of their most intimate decisions? And what has changed legally, to bring this issue to a boil now? As it turns out, the answer has very little to do with contraception and more to do with same-sex marriage. At its core, the legal foundation of personal privacy rights rests in the institution of marriage and family. As older definitions of "traditional families" give way to more expansive realities, including same-sex partnerships, single-parenting, co-parenting, and myriad family arrangements today, conservatives must face a stark legal reality: Without drastically changing the way the courts define issues that once were simply matters of privacy, they will have lost the culture wars. It's now or never.
The Supreme Court first laid the foundation for an individual right to privacy early in the 20th century in Lochner v. New York, a case that has become synonymous with activist judges looking for any means to support and expand corporate, monied interests. In Lochner the majority relied on the reference to "liberty" in the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause to support striking down a New York state law that restricted the number of hours bakers could work each week. The 14th Amendment states that no person "shall be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law." According to the court majority, the law was an unconstitutional violation of an individual's privacy rights because the Due Process Clause implicitly guarantees citizens the "fundamental" right to enter into employment arrangements free from state intrusion in this "liberty" interest.
From Lochner, privacy rights more clearly became associated with the home and traditional, patriarchal constructions of family. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the court ruled that an Oregon law banning all private education violated the Due Process Clause because it directed how parents may educate their children, infringing upon parents' fundamental right to rear their children as they see fit. The majority opinion in Pierce lists a series of other privacy rights guaranteed by the Due Process Clause, including "the right of the individual ... to marry, establish a home and bring up children ... and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men."
But it wasn't until 40 years later, in Griswold, that the Supreme Court turned its attention to whether the Constitution implicitly contains fundamental privacy guarantees that are not dependent on the Due Process Clause. Writing for the majority, Justice William O. Douglas departed from the Lochner line of privacy reasoning and held that a right to privacy exists not because of a specific constitutional provision but rather because it flows from several provisions relating to privacy, to create "penumbras", or shadows, in which "zones of privacy" exist. Within these zones, the court explained, are other rights, including the right of married couples to determine whether or not to have children.
Two years later the court would again reach the issue of privacy rights in Loving v. Virginia, the famous case that challenged a Virginia law banning interracial marriage. In a unanimous decision, the court ruled the Virginia law violated the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, which guarantees all citizens equal protection under the law and thus prohibits the government from discriminating on the basis of race. The court could have stopped there with its analysis, but it didn't. Instead, it pushed further, moving beyond the obvious issues of racial discrimination to hold that the right to marry is itself protected by the Constitution. By the end of the 1960s, and with the civil rights and anti-war movements smoldering in the background, the Supreme Court's jurisprudence showed both a slow acceptance of racial equality and a preference for the traditional construction of marriage and family.
Griswold v. Connecticut may have recognized a right of married couples to use contraception, but it wasn't until March of 1972 in Eisenstadt v. Baird that the Court recognized a corresponding privacy right to use contraception for individuals. "If the right of privacy means anything," Justice William Brennan wrote, "it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child." The following year, the court famously extended these individual privacy rights even further when, in Roe v. Wade, it established a constitutional right to choose abortion grounded in an individual right to privacy and this legally recognized zone of intimacy that inherently surrounds issues of reproduction but that was no longer immediately anchored in the constructs of traditional marriage.
Court challenges emanating from a growing gay rights movement led to an increasing disconnection between the advancement of individual privacy rights and equality and earlier legal ties to traditional marriage and family.
Written by Jessica Mason Pieklo for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must immediately comply with an earlier order by U.S. District Court Judge Edward Korman to make some forms of levonorgestrel-based emergency contraception available without a prescription and without point-of-sale or age restrictions.
The ruling came in response to the administration's request for a stay while it appeals Korman's order. The Second Circuit's order, only two pages, is a partial win for women's health advocates; while it lifts restrictions on two-pill variants of emergency contraception, it grants the Obama administration's request to stay, or pause, Judge Korman's order as it applies to one-pill products, such as Plan B One-Step, pending the outcome of the government's appeal. That appeal will be placed on an expedited schedule as requested by the administration.
In a statement, Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said: "Today's decision from the 2nd Circuit marks a historic day for women's health. Finally, after more than a decade of politically motivated delays, women will no longer have to endure intrusive, onerous, and medically unnecessary restrictions to get emergency contraception."
The Obama administration appealed Korman's decision earlier this month, just one day after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Plan B One-Step to be sold over-the-counter to consumers ages 15 and up. But even that approval was limited, restricting sales to stores that have an on-site pharmacy and only to those with identification. The Plan B approval was in direct conflict with Judge Korman's April order requiring all emergency contraception be made available over-the-counter and without point-of-sale restrictions.
"Medical experts, the FDA's own scientists, and a federal court have all agreed: there are no medical grounds to keep emergency contraception behind the counter for any woman" Northrup said. "Expanding access to this safe and effective way of preventing pregnancy after failed birth control or unprotected sex is the among the very best decisions our federal government can make for women's health."
A schedule for the full-appeal is not yet available.
Written by Annamarya Scaccia for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
On June 23 of last year, Lakisha Briggs' ex-boyfriend, Wilbert Bennett, went to find the 33-year-old mother of two at her house in Norristown, Pennsylvania, which she rented with a Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Section 8 voucher. Bennett, who was just released from prison, wanted to get back together, and he refused to take no for an answer.
"You are going to be with me or you are going to be with no one," he allegedly threatened.
Even though Briggs was terrified Bennett would hurt her or her 3-year-old daughter if she forced him to leave, there was something she feared even worse: calling the police for help. If she did, she could be kicked out of her home, and that wasn't a risk she could afford. Feeling defenseless, Briggs succumbed to his intrusion and demands, allowing him and the friends he invited over to stay.
As outlined in the federal lawsuit filed April 24 on behalf of Briggs by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Pennsylvania (ACLU-PA), and Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton LLP, Briggs had already been given three strikes under Norristown's discretionary Rental License Ordinance. The ordinance gives the Montgomery County municipality the right to countermand a landlord's rental license and provoke a tenant's eviction if police respond to three "disorderly behavior" calls in four months, including domestic disturbances in which a mandatory arrest in not required.
The strikes Briggs received were the result of police calls made in April and May of last year -- two of which were due to acts of domestic violence committed against her. In May, the borough began proceedings to revoke her landlord Darren Sudman's rental license, but granted the property -- and by extension Briggs -- a 30-day probationary period after a late May hearing. Any violation during that period would have resulted in rescindment and eviction, claims the lawsuit.
Despite her reluctant surrender, on the evening of June 23 Bennett assaulted Briggs, according to the suit. Her lip was bitten and torn. A glass ashtray was shattered against the right side of her head, leaving a two-inch lesion. She was knocked down. Grabbing one of the large glass fragments, Bennett stabbed her in the neck. Briggs become unconscious as blood surged from the four-inch-deep wound.
Though the attack was brutal, Briggs didn't call the police, because she feared provoking eviction. But a neighbor did, and soon Briggs was airlifted to the University of Pennsylvania Hospital for emergency medical care.
Written by Editor in Chief Jodi Jacobson for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
See all our coverage of Beatriz here.
Yesterday in El Salvador, Beatriz (a pseudonym) had an abortion. The Catholic Church and the international anti-choice movement are desperate to deny this reality, so the anti-choice spin machine is in high gear, engaging in linguistic gymnastics to suggest otherwise.
And much of the media is taking the bait.
Beatriz had a hysterotomy, a form of abortion carried out through c-section, and a procedure of such high risk compared to other forms of abortion, and of such last resort, according to medical experts, it is practically never performed in the United States. What is known beyond a doubt is that having forced Beatriz into a situation of having a late abortion, the government of El Salvador, Catholic Bishops, and anti-choice groups in the country (and those supporting them from the outside) unquestionably privileged a non-viable fetus over the life and long-term health of the primary patient, a woman who wanted to -- in fact begged to -- live.
In parroting what anti-choicers and the government of El Salvador are saying, many media outlets are glossing over and ignoring what actually happened in El Salvador. As a result, otherwise highly regarded media sources such as the New York Times, Salon, the Associated Press, The Guardian, and Reuters are helping to perpetuate lies that defy both medical evidence and public health data and that support dangerous policies under women all over the world continue to lose their lives.
Written by Dr. Suzanne Poppema for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.
I am a family doctor and I was a proud colleague of Dr. George Tiller’s. It is difficult to believe four years have passed since his murder.
George's skills allowed him to help women further along in their pregnancies than I could. There were many times I sent patients to him, and I was so grateful to have him there to take care of women in his gentle and respectful way. George always lived as he believed, like many of us abortion providers try to do. He believed that no woman should ever be forced to continue a pregnancy, and he did all he could to help women in need of abortions. He dedicated his life, until the end, to this belief and this work.
He was such a committed individual. I was speaking with him about a patient the same afternoon, in 1993, when he was shot the first time. Despite his injuries to both arms, George was of course back at the office the next day. This experience led me to the magical thinking that even being shot at his church couldn’t stop Dr. Tiller.
To those of us left behind, we have to honor Dr. Tiller by working to make sure that abortion access is expanded, not curtailed. We can respect his legacy by working to ensure public funding for abortion through Medicaid and reversing the discriminatory Hyde Amendment. We can defend clinics that are fighting to stay open, in the face of bills seeking to set arbitrary regulations that have nothing to do with patient safety or quality health care. We can expose the true purpose of these laws: to shut down excellent medical facilities and force women to travel great distances to find other providers.
We can also stand firm in protecting women’s access to abortion after 20 weeks. There will always be women who don't realize they are as pregnant as they are. I, a Harvard-trained physician, missed my own unintended pregnancy—denial is a beautiful thing—until I was in my 22nd week. There will always be women who discover that they are carrying a very sick fetus, women whose life circumstances change so drastically they can no longer undertake being a mother, women who just need our help.
