Global Gag Rule Reversed!

Our full statement will be up on Huffington Post soon, but I wanted to just celebrate the reversal of the Global Gag Rule! Joan Malin has to say:

Now, millions of women around the world will be able to access critical basic services including safe abortion and birth control. Thanks to President Obama, thousands of health care providers will once again be able to inform women of their full range of health care options, while others, such as many of our partners, will finally be eligible for international family planning funding. No longer will any health care provider be forced to choose between losing critical family planning funding and restricting the health care services and counseling they provide to women.

We look forward to President Obama’s reversal of other onerous regulations instituted by the Bush administration, such as the midnight HHS rule that prevents patients from receiving a full range of information and services.

Full piece will be up soon! Stay tuned...

Happy Holidays New York! Love, HHS

In case you were wondering how the horrific HHS Regs affect us here in good old liberal NYC? The outlook isn't pretty.

From Joan Malin (president of PPNYC) in the Huffington Post today:

The Department of Health and Human Services issued a rule today that allows health care workers to deny patients vital care, information and services without the patient even knowing.

The rule will take effect in 30 days, and will be difficult to reverse.

Unfortunately, this regulation is not just another crazy Bush regulation that New Yorkers, thanks to our local laws, are safe from. In fact this regulation could quite possibly overturn many of our State’s hard-won healthcare victories, meaning that:

• Rape victims would not be provided with Emergency Contraception in a timely manner;
• Pharmacies could discriminate or delay access to birth control; and
• Health insurance plans that cover prescription drugs would not also have to cover birth control.

Thanks to this midnight regulation, New Yorkers can no longer go to the Emergency Room and trust that a provider's sole motivation is to give the best care available. Instead health care workers from the doctor down to those behind the check-in desk are free to withhold information about any procedure they find distasteful, without even letting you know that they are doing so.

The terms of this regulation are so vague that its possibilities are staggering. Janitors could refuse to clean rooms that have had sterilizations performed in them. And yes, birth control really could be considered abortion.

Julie Rovner on HHS ruling on NPR this past Wed

BRAND: All right. So come January 20th when there's a new president in town, can't he just simply over turn these regulations?

ROVNER: Well, actually, the new president can't overturn these regulations, but because the administration has waited so long, it's possible that the new Congress can. There's something called the Congressional Review Act and because these regulations are coming so late in the administration they are falling within the window of that Congressional Review Act. There are expedited procedures. Congress would only have to get a majority vote in the House and Senate. And in the Senate it couldn't be filibustered and because these regulations are so controversial. It would be likely that this would be the type of regulation that could be taken up and overturned under the Congressional Review Act then the new President would merely have to sign it.

BRAND: But it sounds like a fairly lengthy process.

ROVNER: It's not that lengthy. It's certainly a little more lengthy than some of the other things that President-elect Obama is expected to do on the Reproductive Rights front but it's certainly easier than having to go through the entire regulatory process again, to put through an entire rule and to go in and take more public comment.

(full NPR piece)

HHS Regulations Are Issued

"The patient has an interest in obtaining legal health care services….This must be balanced against the statutory right of the provider in the context of a federally funded entity to not be discriminated against based on a refusal to participate in a service to which they have objections, such as abortion.”

RH Reality Check has two articles up so far analyzing the rule. More to come on exactly what it means for you. One thing worth mentioning, however. Since the rule was issued within 30 days of Obama taking office, it will become official, and will therefore be harder to reverse.

How soon will the HHS regulations come down?

The horrific HHS regulations, which as the LA Times pointed out on Dec 2 would basically erase the credibility of the medical profession, might become law this week. Stay tuned.

Protect Women's Health -- Send Your Comments to HHS

Last month, the Bush Administration proposed a dangerous new Department of Health and Human Services rule, which would jeopardize the health of women across the nation. In a NY Times op-ed, Senator Hillary Clinton and Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards explain:

It would require that any health care entity that receives federal financing — whether it’s a physician in private practice, a hospital or a state government — certify in writing that none of its employees are required to assist in any way with medical services they find objectionable.

Laws that have been on the books for some 30 years already allow doctors to refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further, ensuring that all employees and volunteers for health care entities can refuse to aid in providing any treatment they object to, which could include not only abortion and sterilization but also contraception.

Health and Human Services estimates that the rule, which would affect nearly 600,000 hospitals, clinics and other health care providers, would cost $44.5 million a year to administer. Astonishingly, the department does not even address the real cost to patients who might be refused access to these critical services. Women patients, who look to their health care providers as an unbiased source of medical information, might not even know they were being deprived of advice about their options or denied access to care.

The definition of abortion in the proposed rule is left open to interpretation. An earlier draft included a medically inaccurate definition that included commonly prescribed forms of contraception like birth control pills, IUD’s and emergency contraception. That language has been removed, but because the current version includes no definition at all, individual health care providers could decide on their own that birth control is the same as abortion.

If you read the news, you probably know that many Americans are facing difficult economic times. Millions are uninsured, and even more are under-insured. More and more, people are relying on low-cost health care from providers that receive government funding. And yet, the Bush administration is working to make it more difficult for low-income women to receive necessary medical care? Remember that women might not even know they're not receiving full information -- people tend to trust their doctors, and under this rule doctors would not have to inform patients of options they don't agree with.

You can help by writing Health and Human Services today. The rule has a 30 day comment period from the public before a decision is made about whether or not to instate it. But time is running out -- the deadline is September 25. You have only a couple of days to make your voice heard. Send your letter today, and urgently pass along the message to all of your friends and family!

I <3 Katha Pollitt

Author, poet, activist and feminist Katha Pollitt has been speaking truth to power from the pages of The Nation for almost 30 years. The Washington Post called Katha Pollitt's 'Subject to Debate' column"the best place to go for original thinking on the left." The NYC native has won major awards for her writing - including one from Planned Parenthood. Her most recent book, "Learning to Drive: And Other Life Lessons" is currently available in hardback from booksellers like Amazon.

But that's not just why I love Katha Pollitt.

I love Katha Pollitt most because no one I know writes with such passion and clarity about womens reproductive health and freedom as she does. And nobody exposes political attempts to deny a woman her reproductive freedom better than Katha Pollitt.

Katha's recent post on her The Nation blog spot, "And Another Thing," is a perfect case-in-point.

"Stealth Attack on Reproductive Rights" smartly links Bush's attempt to further restrict access to abortion with simultaneous attempts by his party's extremist right wing to deny a woman access to birth control.

As Katha Pollitt writes,

"...There are several disturbing elements to this story. One is that even as it fades into history, the Bush Administration is catering to the anti-choice movement's larger agenda of making contraception harder to obtain. And, "...another dangerous feature of the proposed rules is that they redefine contraception as abortion."

We are at a critical point in our political history. Great damage could be done to reproductive rights as this administration prepares to exit, stage far right.

Read Katha's article, pass it along to your friends, and contact your Senator and your Congressperson and demand that every attempt be made to stop these rules changes.

And on Nov. 2 - Vote! - as if your freedom depended on it - because it does!

Women Beware Parting Gift From Bush

I've briefly discussed Bush's plan to deny women access to abortion and birth control before he leaves office. Since then the news has become the subject of editorial pages across the country, and I want to share one of those with you.

It's Joan Malin's Op/Ed in the current issue of METRO - hot off the presses as it hits newsstands in NYC, Boston and Philadelphia on Friday, August 6th. Joan is president & CEO of Planned Parenthood of New York City and understands what's at stake as well as anyone.

It’s 3 a.m. and your sister is in need of emergency contraception. She goes to her closest hospital emergency room and asks for it. Instead of being given this backup method of birth control, she is instead given a dose of heavy judgment and turned away by a health care provider who believes birth control is “wrong.”

Read more ... and let us know what you think.

Next up - why I love Katha Pollitt.

The Bush Payback to the Right Wing

In the final days of his failed administration, George II is preparing to screw women as never before. His proposed regulation redefining abortion rules is aimed squarely at denying woman access to critical health care.

We need to inform everyone we know about this travesty and get them to contact the White House and let this administration know how they feel.

Please act now! Before Bush takes away more of our rights!