Every single day in this country, new draconian anti-abortion legislation

[cali]

is proposed. Most of it gets passed and stands as law. Every single day. No, I'm not exaggerating. Most of those laws are horribly demeaning to women as well as strangling our rights.

Women cannot have full rights without reproductive rights- and that includes the right to an abortion. There is no longer a right to abortion in the U.S. for many, many women. It has become a tortuous process to obtain one.

From today's news:

Once again, the Arizona Legislature has taken up the mantle of limiting women's access to safe and legal abortion. Senate Bill 1318 is the latest example of this.

The Arizona Section of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, as well as the national organization, strongly oppose this bill for many reasons and encourage our legislators to vote against it. SB 1318 has been passed in the Senate and is working its way through the House of Representatives.


This bill prohibits any health-care insurance exchange operating in Arizona from covering a pregnancy termination. Previously, women could purchase an optional rider for insurance coverage of this, as long as they paid an additional premium. Under this bill, that is no longer an option.

We believe public and private insurance plans should cover all necessary medical services, including pregnancy termination. SB 1318 allows the Arizona government to decide what private insurance plans can offer to patients. The exclusion of abortion coverage from marketplace plans denies women the option to choose insurance that covers all manner of health care.

<snip>

http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2015/03/15/arizona-abortion-bill/70299288/

[cali]

1. The GOP has a cynical plan to slowly turn you pro-life

In his big-in-the-2000s analysis of the GOP What's the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank painted a picture of a two-faced Republican establishment that was all too willing to talk a big game in front of pro-life conservatives, but balked when it came to actually passing anti-abortion legislation. However true that analysis might have been when it was written in 2004, it's definitely false 10 years later. Not only does the GOP want the American public to join them in opposing reproductive rights, they have a cynical plan for getting there.

In the past few years, the abortion issue has been marked by increasing legislative clampdowns, with a cascade of laws exploding across the United States to restrict access to abortion services. Instead of trying for blanket bans on abortion — those futile charges that never worked — the GOP has been gradually acclimating America to an abortion-free landscape.

Take the most direct means of limiting access to surgical abortion: term limits. It's not about banning all abortions, the GOP says, it's about fetal pain in the last trimester! It's not about banning all abortions, it's about saving 'viable' fetuses! Nevermind that only 5 percent of women receive abortions after 20 weeks, typically in emergency situations, or that infants born before 24 weeks have an extremely low chance of survival.

When term limits don't work, the GOP uses tactics like modifying zoning laws to make it more difficult for abortion providers to stay in business. For example, in some states they've attempted to reclassify abortion clinics as ambulatory surgery providers. Such moves are intended to push clinics out of business, making it impossible to afford necessary upgrades to their facilities.

Barriers to access are another tool that's being used to slowly eradicate abortion. More states are requiring mandatory counseling and waiting periods, forcing ultrasounds on pregnant women, proposing that abortions only be performed after permissions from an informal "court" with an advocate for the fetus, and requiring parental notification for underage women. Indirect methods, like attacks on buffer zone laws used to protect doctors, staff, and patients at abortion clinics, are also growing. Meanwhile, the GOP is eating away at access to birth control, with some conservatives advancing the dangerous and inaccurate myth that birth control causes abortions.

<snip>

http://theweek.com/articles/544113/gop-cynical-plan-slowly-turn-prolife

[Panich52]

2. Women's health care doesn't register at all with self-righteous theocrats

Their single-minded focus on their own moral outrage blinds them from seeing the fallout of their attacks on individual freedom, medical privacy & health concerns, family & indiv economics, and overall healthcare for women.

Only religious fanatacism could drive such inconsideration of far-reaching effects and apparent fervent misogyny, often based on blatant ignorance of biology. (Swallow a camera to view a fetus?!)

The TRAPs which target women's health clinics completely ignore the fact that they are vital to overall women's health issues. They are willing to risk women's lives, usually lower-income women, to satisfy their extremist ideology. It matters not to them that many of the clinics they close or prevent from opening may only counsel, not actually provide abortions.

Further evidence of their unconcern for health issues are the unregulated CPCs (Crisis Pregnancy Centers). These wolves-in-sheeps'-clothing don't just mislead desperate women about reproductive choices, they out-right lie and endanger health by masquarading as legitimate health & reference professionals.

The battles have focused on choice but the war is quality healthcare. The moral question has been used by the antis yet their morals are rather skewed. They'd see thousands of women's health suffer to save a handful of 'pre-borns.' What kind of morality is that?

Abortions will always exist. They have since before recorded history and no matter what the fanatics do, they will continue. We must focus the campaign on health, which includes safe abortion as a necessary aspect, not the major goal. Otherwise, the moralists' fearmongering and guilt-driven arguments may prevail.

•

[cali]

3. It doesn't register very much with many liberals either.

[KamaAina]

4. This is beginning to sound like a prequel to

[Autumn]

5. I listened to a group of young women, 16 to 18 talking about abortion restrictions.

They seem to be fine with it. That's the scary part.

[cali]

6. that appears to be part of the problem. Young people are increasingly anti-choice.

[Autumn]

7. It really bothered me at first, we got home and my husband and I were talking

and he said that young people are the future and if that's a right young women are fine with giving up that's their choice and their fight in the future to get it back. As older people we are done with all that and it's their future, not ours.