Repro Health Hub

We’ve written before about the legislation making its way through the Baltimore City Council that would require crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) to post disclaimers saying they don’t provide birth control or abortion referrals. On Monday, the bill finally passed. Once the mayor signs the measure, it will be the first law of its kind in the U.S.

NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland, which applauded the bill’s passage, helped expose how CPCs mislead and manipulate vulnerable women in their 2008 report, Maryland Crisis Pregnancy Center Investigations: The Truth Revealed. Salon’s Broadsheet reports:

Last year, the NARAL Pro-Choice Fund sent staff members into 11 Maryland centers in particular to pose as potential patients and reported that “every CPC visited provided misleading or, in some cases completely false, information” about abortion and birth control.” For good measure, the clinics also threw in “emotionally manipulative counseling” (for example, one worker told an investigator, “You need to come meet your baby before deciding what to do”). Worse yet, many clinics “purposefully schedule sonogram appointments two-three weeks after the initial appointment to ensure that there will be a heartbeat and that the pregnancy is larger than a grain of rice.”

Similar legislation is now being considered in Montgomery County, Maryland. Let’s hope the rest of the nation takes a hint from Maryland and starts demanding some truth in advertising from CPCs across the country.

By Maya Dusenbery

Across the country over the last week, activists and advocates for reproductive justice have come out against the anti-choice Stupak amendment in the House health care reform bill. The following editorial boards have spoken out as well.

• The Philadelphia Inquirer: EDITORIAL: Bitter Pill to Swallow
• Detroit Free Press: EDITORIAL: Stupak’s Anti-Abortion Amendment Tramples Women and the Law
• Pittsburgh Post Gazette: EDITORIAL: Not-so-choice: The House Health Reform Unduly Restricts Abortion
• Akron Beacon Journal (OH): EDITORIAL: A Step Back
• Palm Beach Post (FL): EDITORIAL: House Health Bill
• The Star-Ledger (NJ): EDITORIAL: The Abortion Roadblock to Health Care Reform
• The Baltimore Sun: EDITORIAL: The Anti-Choice
• Oregon Daily Emerald: EDITORIAL: Defending Reproductive Rights
• The Oregonian: EDITORIAL: An unacceptable cutback in access to abortion
• The Roanoke Times: EDITORIAL: Flawed health reform: A House anti-abortion measure is despicable, but Congress must keep its eye on universal coverage.
• The Star Tribune (MN): EDITORIAL: Measure Meddles in Women’s Care

Late last night the Senate released its health care reform bill. John Nichols, writing for The Nation, has an excellent summary of how the Senate bill is an improvement over the House bill, which included the dangerous and discriminatory Stupak-Pitts amendment. Still, the Senate bill is far from the overhaul of the Hyde Amendment we’d all hoped for in anticipation of health care reform:

In many respects, Reid’s “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” is a better bill than the House measure.

And it one respect, it is dramatically better.

The Senate plan does not contain the draconian “Stupak” language, which was written into the House bill with the intent of establishing radical new limits on access to reproductive health services.

As part of negotiations to secure passage of the House healthcare reform bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, agreed to a vote on an amendment by Congressman Bart Stupak, D-Michigan, that did not merely forbid a government-run “public option” from covering abortion services. It also barred private insurance plans that might participate in the exchange set up by the new program from doing so.

Republicans in the House aligned with 64 Democrats to attach the radical anti-abortion language to the bill, which was then passed by a narrow 220-215 margin.

Reid rejects the Stupak language.

That does not mean that his measure is a pro-choice bonanza.

It preserves existing limits on public-funding of abortions. But, as part of the exchange set up by the bill, families and individuals who participate in the new program could purchase insurance plans that provide abortion coverage.

“We’re basically going to keep current law, which is what we ought to do,” says Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, a pro-choice Democrat who participated in the session where Reid unveiled the Senate

By Tara Sweeney

Great news for comprehensive sex education supporters! The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention commissioned a report on comprehensive risk reduction education programs and now recommends them for adolescents 10-19 years old because they were found to reduce engagement in any sexual activity, frequency of sexual activity, number of partners, frequency of unprotected sexual activity and incidence of STIs, while also increasing use of protection against pregnancy and STIs. In addition, the report also analyzed abstinence until marriage education programs and found that there is insufficient evidence to prove those programs are effective because of the little impact it made on the behaviors listed above.

This is a huge and exciting step for a government entity to acknowledge the difference that comprehensive sex education makes! It is particularly important as Congress is on the verge of providing federal funding for comprehensive sex education programs for the first time.

The full report from the Task Force can be found here.

By Ally Fujii

The National Institute for Reproductive Health advocates for women to have access to all reproductive health choices when faced with an unplanned pregnancy. While access to abortion is often the spotlighted issue concerning reproductive justice, there is a whole spectrum of choices to which women must have access. Adoption is one of those choices.

Each year in the US, 1 percent of unplanned pregnancies results in adoption, meaning approximately 13,000 infants are placed for adoption domestically. When international and foster care adoptions are included, the total number of adopted children in the US is about 1.5 million—just over two percent. And 25 percent of the women choosing an adoption are teens.

For these children, birthmothers, and adoptive parents, the issues surrounding adoption are vast. From inequities regarding race and ethnicity, to class and sexual orientation, there is much work to be done to ensure that the system is just and respects the dignity of all parties involved.

Gay and lesbian couples who want to adopt, for example, have been singled out in several states in recent years. Reported The New York Times in July, “Last year, Arkansas passed a ballot initiative prohibiting adoption by unmarried couples, which effectively makes it impossible for gay parents to adopt jointly. Utah and Michigan have similar laws; Mississippi and Florida ban adoption by same-sex couples outright.”

Race is another complicated factor with regard to adoption. Black and white families looking to adopt often face discrimination, the latter in their desire for transracial abortion and the former in screening processes. The New York Times reports that in 2004 “more than 45,000 black children were waiting to be adopted from foster care.” Historically, there has been resistance to transracial adoptions, but with the passage of the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994—which prohibits discrimination in making placements of children to parents based on race, color or national origin of either party for federally financed agencies—more and more transracial adoptions are occurring domestically and abroad.

Cost of adoption is another hurdle that excludes certain people from the adoption process; there still isn’t justice when only middle- and upper-class families can afford to adopt. The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute reports that domestic adoptions from private agencies can cost as much as $30,000. While foster care adoptions are more affordable, efforts must be made to ensure that all potential adoptive parents have equal opportunity and access to the system as a whole.

Some questions we might ask as we look at adoption as a reproductive justice issue include the following: What populations are placing their children and who is adopting? How can we make sure that all women who want to choose adoption have support through this process and aren’t facing coercion or pressure? What steps can be taken to ensure that people from all races and ethnicities are being recruited as adoptive parents, especially given that children placed for adoption are disproportionately children of color?

For the past several months, the National Institute for Reproductive Health and NARAL Pro-Choice New York have hosted the ongoing speaker series “Choices,” which closely examines the full spectrum of reproductive health choices. Emergency contraception, parenting, abortion, and LGBTQ reproductive rights have all been topics of discussion.  In tonight’s installment, “Choices: Adoption,” advocates from pro-choice adoption agency Spence-Chapin will be speaking, along with a birthmother and an expert on transracial adoption. Tonight’s event will address the complex issues surrounding adoption in an attempt to arrive at an understanding of what would constitute justice, equality, and true choice in the adoption process.

Stay tuned for video and a summary of the event in the coming days!

By Anna Bean

NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland—one of our Urban Initiative grant recipients—has been tirelessly advocating to pass a bill that that would require Baltimore’s crisis pregnancy centers to post disclaimers saying they don’t provide birth control or abortion referrals or face fines.

In a statement, NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland applauded this landmark legislation:

Our research shows that CPCs often use false and misleading information to dissuade women from considering their full range of reproductive health options, including birth control and abortion. This legislation simply requires CPCs to post a sign informing potential clients that they do not refer or provide for birth control or abortion - a statement that CPCs do not deny.

On Monday, the bill passed the second reading in the Baltimore City Council by a vote of 12 to 3. It now moves on to a third and final vote. If passed, it would be the first law in the nation of its kind.

By Maya Dusenbery

In a Letter to the Editor, Soo Ji Min, Executive Director of the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health – which hosted last month’s Urban Initiative for Reproductive Health Midwest Regional Summit – takes issue with a Chicago Tribune editorial in support of the Illinois Parental Notice of Abortion Act. Noting that the editorial employs the same worn out arguments to oversimplify a complex issue, she writes:

At first glance, parental involvement laws–either notification or consent–for abortion do seem like common sense measures in the best interest of young women. But, with a little more consideration and analysis, we know that’s not how the world works. Parental involvement laws can put young women at risk after a pregnancy is disclosed. A 16-year-old woman had no previous history of physical abuse. Yet when her brother and father discovered her pregnancy, they beat her severely.

Read the full letter here.

By Maya Dusenbery