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PPAF works within the political process to increase access to sexual and reproductive health services and comprehensive sexuality education for adolescents, women, men, and families. One of the keys to protecting the health of women and their families is access to safe, legal abortion services. As health care reform is implemented on the state and national levels, we must advocate for full coverage of preventive care – including contraception – as well as abortion access.
Access to abortion is constitutionally guaranteed and supported by the majority of Americans, yet it is continually threatened at the state and federal levels. In fact, more than 900 pieces of state legislation have been offered to limit sexual and reproductive health since the 2010 elections. States across the country and anti-choice legislators in Congress are seeking to restrict or eliminate abortion access through a number of strategies, including:
- Prohibiting abortion care at 20 weeks
- Defunding of Planned Parenthood health centers and elimination of family planning funds
- Bans on insurance coverage of abortion care
- Mandated “counseling sessions” and unnecessary waiting periods
- Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (also known as TRAP laws)
- Personhood amendments.
Through a variety of advocacy strategies, PPAF strives to improve access to essential health care while fighting against anti-choice efforts to restrict women’s reproductive rights in Massachusetts and throughout the country.
State Legislation We Support:
In order to protect women’s health, PPAF supports legislation that increases women’s access to reproductive health care in Massachusetts. Click on any of the bill names for more detailed information.
State Legislation We Oppose:
In spite of the pro-choice majority that we have at the State House, we must be vigilant in our advocacy against the anti-choice legislation that would endanger women’s health, deny women their rights to determine whether and when to have children, and restrict their ability to seek appropriate and necessary medical care. In concert with our legislative advocacy, we need to work with pro-choice activists and supporters to help elect new pro-choice legislators to the State House. Click on any of the bill names for more detailed information about the legislation we oppose.
National Issues:
- Abortion Access in Health Care Reform
National health care reform was a huge victory for women’s health and happened in part thanks to one of Planned Parenthood’s largest campaigns in our history. Although it includes unacceptable restrictions on abortion, it will expand insurance coverage to millions of women and improve access to other sexual and reproductive health services that will inevitably help prevent unintended pregnancies and new cases of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). While the passage of the Affordable Care Act was a great victory, new opportunities for restricting women’s health care could arise during its implementation via rule making. Meaning, our work has only begun! Through the national and state regulatory and legislative processes, PPAF will continue its work to ensure that all women on public or private insurance plans will be able to access the care they need.
Read more about our position on Health Care Reform.
- Defunding Planned Parenthood
Spearheaded by U.S. Representative Pence (R-IN) and championed by the Republican House leadership, the defunding of Planned Parenthood health centers became a central sticking point during federal budget talks last spring, and almost led to the shutdown of the national government. Fortunately, reason prevailed at the eleventh hour and funding for Planned Parenthood’s family planning and prevention programs remained intact. However, a similar battle is anticipated during next year’s budget season.
To read more about PPAF’s advocacy work that helped defeated the Pence bill and other measures it has campaigned against, go to On Capitol Hill.
Other State Level Attacks:
- Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP Laws)
Despite the fact that abortion is one of the safest medical procedures provided in the United States, abortion opponents continue to claim that abortion is unsafe, largely unregulated, and consequently warrants additional regulation. While state regulations that single out abortion providers purport to increase and improve patient safety, they are medically unnecessary, politically motivated, and ultimately intended to restrict or eliminate access to safe and legal abortion. Examples of TRAP laws include:
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- Mandating that abortion providers adhere to medically unnecessary staffing, building, and/or structural requirements
- Limiting the locations of where abortions can be provided
- Reclassifying abortion clinics as ambulatory surgical centers, outpatient care centers, or hospitals, thereby subjecting them to additional, medically unnecessary regulations and standards.
Many of these regulations place undue financial, logistical and licensing burdens on abortion clinics, purposely making it hard to stay open and exacerbating the current abortion provider shortage. To date, the majority of states have some type of TRAP law on their books and each year more TRAP proposals are filed. Consequently, PPAF and our advocates must continue to fight measures that restrict access to essential services and threaten women’s health.
- Defeating Personhood Initiatives
In a handful of states across the country, so-called “personhood amendments” in the form of legislation and ballot initiatives are threatening women’s health with the aim of ultimately overturning Roe v Wade. Fringe anti-choice groups have taken up this cause to redefine life as beginning at fertilization, which would have devastating repercussions for women, doctors and families. It is bad enough that personhood initiatives seek to ban abortion in every case, but they could also criminalize in-vitro fertilization, many forms of contraception (including the IUD and birth control pill), miscarriage, and life-saving treatment for pregnant women (for example, in the case of ectopic pregnancy). The extreme and dangerous nature of this particular strategy is illustrated by the fact that the personhood movement has actually alienated itself from many anti-choice organizations which favor more “moderate” anti-choice measures. Personhood ballot initiatives have been defeated twice in Colorado and this year in Mississippi, but this radical movement is still growing and threatens every woman’s health. They are trying to put similar initiatives on 2012 ballots in Florida, Montana, Ohio and Oregon, Nevada and California, as well as pursuing legislation in Alabama, Wisconsin and Michigan.
- Barriers to Abortion Access
In lieu of overturning Roe v Wade, opponents of reproductive rights have worked to slowly erode women’s access to care through state and federal legislation that creates additional hurdles for women and doctors. Since 1995, 644 anti-choice state measures have been passed, many of them establishing unnecessary barriers that include mandated waiting periods, mandated ultrasounds, and biased counseling laws. Mandated waiting periods generally require a woman to attend two appointments – one for counseling and the other for the procedure – 24 hours apart, which creates financial, travel-related, and other obstacles for women seeking care. Mandated ultrasounds and biased counseling laws are intended to dissuade women from seeking abortion care, interfere with women’s personal decisions, and are often based on ideology, not science. PPAF opposes all legislation that creates unnecessary barriers to access, such as An Act Relative to a Woman’s Right to Know (HB482) mentioned above. |
