contraception

Stronger Together: Choice - 2012 Democratic National Convention Video

The Republican Party continues to pass harsh laws restricting access to women's healthcare across the country, but the mainstream press has stopped paying attention.

That's why we've produced a short documentary that cogently explains the state and national efforts by Republicans--including Mitt Romney--to limit access to birth control and other basic women's health services.

From 2011-2012, legislators in all 50 states introduced more than 1,500 measures targeting women's health, and 130 anti-women's health measure have already become law. The fact of the matter is the attacks on women's health are not fiction. http://www.womenarewatching.org

Politically motivated maneuver could leave more than 130,000 Texans without health care — comes on the heels of reduction in women’s health care to 180,000 women

AUSTIN, Texas - February 23 - Today Texas Governor Rick Perry moved to effectively sabotage the entire Medicaid Women’s Health Program, which provides preventive health care, including birth control and lifesaving cancer screenings, to more than 130,000 low-income women each year.

“Governor Perry and his conservative allies have once again chosen politics over the lives of Texas women,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “He will never know the reality of the women that rely on these programs. He will never know what it's like for a woman who feels a lump in her breast, but has to worry about the cost of a doctor’s visit.”

New legislation leaves over 130,000 without access to wellness exams, cancer screening, contraception

The Associated Press reports that Texas Legislature passed a law last year making it illegal for the state to provide Medicaid funds to a doctor or clinic affiliated with an organization that provides elective abortions, even if the institution receiving the money does not provide them...

Unless some last-minute agreement is brokered, the program, which receives $9 in federal funds for every $1 in state funds, will be either phased out or cut off by the end of March. At least 130,000 poor Texas women will lose access to cancer screenings, well-woman exams and contraception.

Rebecca Acuña, a spokeswoman for the Texas Democratic Party, said:

"Texas Republicans never miss an opportunity to throw the most vulnerable Texans under the bus so that they can pick a fight with the federal government."

1) Republicans not only want to reduce women's access to abortion care, they're actually trying to redefine rape. After a major backlash, they promised to stop. But they haven't yet. Shocker.

2) A state legislator in Georgia wants to change the legal term for victims of rape, stalking, and domestic violence to "accuser." But victims of other less gendered crimes, like burglary, would remain "victims."

3) In South Dakota, Republicans proposed a bill that could make it legal to murder a doctor who provides abortion care. (Yep, for real.)

4) Republicans want to cut nearly a billion dollars of food and other aid to low-income pregnant women, mothers, babies, and kids. 

5) In Congress, Republicans have a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life.