Tag: women’s health

June Medical Services v. Gee

Center for American Progress logoThe Potential Impact on Abortion, Civil, and Human Rights

Introduction and summary

As a result of unrelenting attacks on abortion access, the promise of Roe v. Wade has never been fulfilled in the United States. Now, June Medical Services LLC v. Gee threatens to undermine this promise once again. In taking up June Medical, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on its first major abortion case since the appointments of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh—the latter of whom has penned opinions hostile to abortion rights—solidified the conservative leaning of the court. Even in the current era of deep division and partisanship, both nominations were notable for their contentiousness. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) subverted long-standing procedures to push their nominations through—both by blocking the process for former President Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland and by changing the rules to make it easier to appoint ideologically extreme judges.1 President Donald Trump, prior to his election, promised his supporters that he would appoint anti-choice justices to the Supreme Court, raising serious concerns about whether his nominees would advance an ideological agenda that would undermine the integrity of the judiciary, rather than uphold the rule of law.2

Now, the Supreme Court will consider a legal challenge involving a law intended to eviscerate the availability of abortion care. Its decision could significantly undermine abortion access—particularly for those who already have limited access—as well as patients’ ability to enforce in court the right to have an abortion. The case could also have broad implications beyond abortion access, affecting the enforcement of civil and human rights. Continue reading.

Supreme Court to take up Trump appeal in ObamaCare birth control case

The Hill logoThe Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear the Trump administration’s appeal in a legal fight over religious exemptions for ObamaCare’s requirement that employer-based health insurance plans cover birth control.

The administration is seeking to expand exemptions for religious objectors to the Affordable Care Act’s so-called contraceptive mandate.

It will mark the third time the Supreme Court weighs in on the mandate, a controversial provision of ObamaCare that has been fiercely opposed by conservatives and religious groups for years.  Continue reading.

5 Ways the Health Care Repeal Lawsuit Could Harm Women’s Health and Economic Security

Center for American Progress logoAuthor’s note: CAP uses “Black” and “African American” interchangeably throughout many of our products. We chose to capitalize “Black” in order to reflect that we are discussing a group of people and to be consistent with the capitalization of “African American.”

The Texas v. United States health care repeal lawsuit poses a significant risk to the health and economic security of millions of women and their families. On December 18, 2019, a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling added to the uncertainty around the future of the Affordable Care Act, threatening the benefits and protections that the law affords women, such as access to women’s preventive services and protections against gender discrimination. Continue reading “5 Ways the Health Care Repeal Lawsuit Could Harm Women’s Health and Economic Security”

Some lawmakers push ‘abortion reversal’ treatments. A study shows how dangerous they are.

Washington Post logoSeveral states now require women who seek medication abortions to be provided with dubious information that the procedure could be stopped, allowing a pregnancy to continue.

But when researchers attempted to carry out a legitimate study of whether these “abortion reversal” treatments were effective and safe, they had to stop almost immediately — because some of the women who participated in the study experienced dangerous hemorrhaging that sent them to the hospital.

The halted study illustrated the dangers of antiabortion laws that are pushing women toward disinformation and unproven treatments, said Mitchell D. Creinin, an OB/GYN at the University of California at Davis Health who conducted the research this year with his colleagues, Melissa J. Chen, Melody Y. Hou, Laura Dalton and Rachel Steward. Continue reading

Politicians’ Efforts to Undermine Providers Are Imperiling Women’s Health

Center for American Progress logoJeni R., at 21 weeks of pregnancy, visited her OB/GYN for a prenatal checkup and was devastated to learn that her pregnancy was not viable.1 Her options were to either terminate the pregnancy or wait for the inevitable miscarriage. She and her partner chose the former. However, because Jeni lived in Texas—a state with some of the most restrictive and intrusive abortion bans in the country—she was forced to overcome a number of medically unnecessary and intentionally cruel hurdles to get the care she needed. This included being forced to listen to a provider recite a medically inaccurate script about the harms of abortion; waiting for two days after getting counseling before returning for the procedure; and receiving approval from two different doctors before getting the procedure.

Sadly, Jeni’s story is not unique: Women across the United States face increasingly difficult, even insurmountable, barriers to receiving comprehensive reproductive health care, including abortion care.2 In addition to erecting cost and other logistical barriers to accessing care, these restrictions purposefully interfere with the patient-provider relationship, dictating when, where, and how providers can interact with their patients.

The patient-provider relationship is a cornerstone of clinical care. In order for providers to administer personalized and quality care, they must establish effective communication with their patients, create an environment of trust, collaboratively engage their patients in decision-making, and safeguard their patients’ confidentiality and privacy.3In fact, when patients trust that providers are acting in their best interest, they are more likely to adhere to treatment recommendations and continue care with the same provider. Patients must also trust that providers are protecting their health information, as this allows them to more openly share sensitive information that providers can use to determine the best diagnosis and provide appropriate counseling.4 Any actions that undermine a provider’s ability to create a safe, private, and trusting environment will ultimately lead to poorer patient health outcomes.

View the complete July 17 article by Osub Ahmed on the Center for American Progress website here.

Civil rights groups sue Trump administration over religious conscience rule

A new rule allows providers to deny care to people whose medical needs raise an objection of religion or conscious.

President Donald Trump’s administration faces a lawsuit over a new rule allowing health care providers to deny care to women, the LGBTQ community and other marginalized groups whose medical needs raise an objection of religion or conscious.

Lambda Legal, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Association of LGBTQ+ Psychiatrists are among the coalition of civil rights groups who are suing Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services over its new rule. In their complaint filed Tuesday, the coalition argued the new Health and Human Services rule violates the basic freedoms of individuals who could face discrimination from religious conservatives.

“Although purporting to implement long-standing healthcare statutes with specific provisions affording protections for the religious or moral beliefs of certain individuals and entities (‘religious objections’), the rule instead creates a wholly new regime that elevates religious objections over all other interests and values,” the complaint says. “The rule invites a much larger universe of healthcare workers to decline to serve patients based on religious objections, defines with unprecedented breadth the types of activities to which they may object and fails to reconcile objections with the needs and rights of patients — even though doing so is critical in any regulatory scheme administering these laws. And the rule does not include emergency exceptions.”

View the complete May 29 article by Matthew Rozsa from Salon on the AlterNet website here.

DNC on Trump Administration’s Unconstitutional Contraception Rule

DNC Women’s Media Director Elizabeth Renda released the following statement on the Trump administration’s new rule vastly expanding the number of employers that may refuse to cover workers’ birth control by citing religious or moral objections. The rule, which went into effect this morning, has already been temporarily blocked in 13 states and the District of Columbia by a U.S. district judge. A court in Pennsylvania is also already considering a request for injunction.

“The Trump administration’s new contraception rule is yet another attack on every woman’s right to make decisions about her own body with her doctor. This rule is unconstitutional, immoral, and shameful. This is just the latest move the Trump administration has made to turn its back on women, and it’s just another reason why Democrats are winning women’s votes by historic margins in the Trump era. Every woman deserves the fundamental right to make her own decisions about her reproductive health. Democrats will never stop fighting back against the Trump administration’s and Republicans’ ceaseless efforts to come between women and their doctors.”

FACT CHECK: Wardlow Would Make Limiting a Woman’s Right to Choose a ‘Priority’ as Attorney General

Wardlow has repeatedly made clear he would politicize the Attorney General’s Office to limit a woman’s right to choose

Wardlow peddles discredited conspiracies about the University of Minnesota and Planned Parenthood

Minnesota – During tonight’s Attorney General debate between Congressman Keith Ellison and Doug Wardlow on KSTP, Wardlow was pressed on his intention to use the Attorney General’s Office to advance his anti-choice views against Minnesota women. Wardlow has made it clear that he strongly opposes a woman’s right to choose, and that he would make it a “priority” to use the power of the state’s top legal office to enforce his views on Minnesota.

“I am absolutely 100 percent pro-life, and that will be a priority in the Attorney General’s Office,” said Wardlow at the Minnesota State Fairin 2017.

Last month, a Wardlow campaign document was released, stating that “Doug Wardlow will institute these duties when he is your MN Attorney General,” including: “Prosecute illegal trafficking of fetal body parts.”

This refers to Wardlow’s belief in a discredited, far-right conspiracy theory which has inflamed violence. As Rewire News reports, this rhetoric “comes from the anti-choice front group called the Center for Medical Progress and its discredited anti-abortion propaganda videos, which falsely alleged Planned Parenthood profited from legal donations of fetal tissue.”

Recent polling from Minnesota Public Radio News and the Star Tribune shows that only 12 percent of Minnesotans share Doug Wardlow’s hardline view that Roe v. Wade should be overturned. As Attorney General, Congressman Ellison will defend a woman’s right to choose, and will defend access to essential health care for all Minnesotans. Ellison is proud to have a 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood Action Fund and NARAL Pro Choice.

ACA Sabotage Puts Women’s Health at Risk

A woman in Los Angeles protests Trump administration policies that threaten the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, and Medicaid, January 25, 2017. Credit: Getty/AFP/David McNew

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has helped millions of women access health insurance coverage and important services such as maternity care, cancer screenings, and prescription drugs. However, attempts to sabotage the ACA have put women’s health and well-being on the line. In addition to full-scale attempts to repeal the ACA, congressional Republicans and the Trump administration have worked to weaken the ACA in many other ways, creating uncertainty in the health care marketplace and, as a result, uncertainty for individuals and families across the country who rely on comprehensive, affordable health insurance to stay healthy and protect themselves from high premiums or unexpected health care costs. Such sabotage actions include last year’s repeal of the individual mandate and administrative actions that have expanded the availability of “junk plans,” among other things.

Sabotage has real costs. The Center for American Progress estimates that ACA sabotage through just two actions—repeal of the individual mandate and increased availability of short-term plans—will result in an additional $970 in premiums for a typical 40-year-old purchasing health insurance through the marketplace, beyond what the person would have paid absent that sabotage. For a family of four, sabotage results in an additional $3,110 in premiums. While many individuals and families who receive federal financial help to purchase insurance through the marketplace will not have to pay the full amount of these unnecessary costs, middle-class individuals and families who do not receive financial help will be responsible for the added costs. In addition to these two sabotage actions, the administration has taken a number of other steps to damage the ACA, many of which directly affect access to health care and affordability of services for women.

This column focuses on the threat that ACA sabotage actions—such as expanded availability of junk plans and administration rules that could limit access to important services and roll back protections—pose to women’s health, highlighting the particular risk for women with pre-existing conditions.

View the September 13 article Theresa Chalhoub on the Center for American Progress here.

Kavanaugh Questions If Roe Is ‘Settled Law Of The Land’

What are Republicans hiding? Here’s a clue…

“As a White House lawyer in the Bush administration, Judge Brett Kavanaugh challenged the accuracy of deeming the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision to be ‘settled law of the land,’ according to a secret email obtained by The New York Times.”

New York Times: Leaked Documents From Kavanaugh’s Time in White House Discuss Abortion and Affirmative Action

By Charlie Savage

As a White House lawyer in the Bush administration, Judge Brett Kavanaugh challenged the accuracy of deeming the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision to be “settled law of the land,” according to a secret email obtained by The New York Times.

The email, written in March 2003, is one of thousands of documents that a lawyer for President George W. Bush turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Supreme Court nominee but deemed “committee confidential,” meaning it could not be made public or discussed by Democrats in questioning him in hearings this week. It was among several an unknown person provided to The New York Times late Wednesday.

Judge Kavanaugh was considering a draft opinion piece that supporters of one of Mr. Bush’s conservative appeals court nominees hoped they could persuade anti-abortion women to submit under their names. It stated that “it is widely accepted by legal scholars across the board that Roe v. Wade and its progeny are the settled law of the land.” Continue reading “Kavanaugh Questions If Roe Is ‘Settled Law Of The Land’”