The Progressive

NewsWire

A project of Common Dreams

For Immediate Release
Contact:

Ted Miller, 202.973.3032

NARAL Pro-Choice America Commends Sen. Dodd, HELP Committee Members for Turning Back Anti-Choice Attacks

Sen. Dodd’s leadership, along with other pro-choice senators, stopped divisive anti-choice attacks from undermining the first health-reform bill to clear a committee

WASHINGTON

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, joined Sen.
Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and other senators at a Capitol Hill press
conference to mark the advancement of major health-care legislation in
a key Senate committee.

Sen. Dodd, along with other pro-choice members of the Health,
Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, defeated repeated attempts by
anti-choice senators to politicize the bill with divisive anti-choice
amendments. Moreover, the committee adopted important new provisions
that will improve women's access to family-planning care.

"Under Sen. Dodd's leadership, pro-choice senators helped a
health-reform bill clear a major hurdle while stopping anti-choice
political attacks from tainting this legislation," Keenan said. "We are
working day and night to secure a similar outcome in bills that will
come out of other committees in the House and Senate. We are
principally concerned that anti-choice politicians will push measures
that would interfere in the doctor-patient relationship and take away
health-care services many Americans already have. Our belief is that
experts - not politicians - should determine what benefits should be
covered. That's the best way to keep this debate focused on cutting the
costs of health care and making it affordable for more Americans."

NARAL Pro-Choice America has mobilized its network of nearly 600,000
online activists to call on the Senate to reject anti-choice attacks in
health-care reform.

For more information about the organization, please visit www.ProChoiceAmerica.org

For over 50 years, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels—including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and post-partum care, and paid family leave—for everybody. Reproductive Freedom for All is powered by its more than 4 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion.

202.973.3000