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gag rule
Planned Parenthood Demands Federal Court Intervene to Stop Trump Attack on Abortion Rights and Title X Program
The group announced it would exit the federal program Monday unless the court blocks the administration's "unethical and dangerous" gag rule
Aug 15, 2019
Planned Parenthood warned Wednesday that, without intervention from a federal court, it will be forced out of the Title X Family Planning Program next week because of the Trump administration's ban on health clinics receiving federal tax dollars if they provide or refer patients for abortions.
"We refuse to let the Trump administration bully us into withholding abortion information from our patients."
--Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood
The Health and Human Services Department declared last month it would immediately begin enforcing what critics call the Title X or domestic gag rule. Less than a week later, the agency announced that clinics would have until mid-August to submit written assurance that they don't provide the procedure or referrals, and are making "good-faith efforts to comply" with the rule.
Alan E. Schoenfeld, a Planned Parenthood attorney, wrote in a letter (pdf) to U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Wednesday:
Planned Parenthood has long been firmly committed to its Title X patients and to the Title X program, which it has served for nearly 50 years. With deep regret, however, its direct grantees now have no option but to withdraw from the Title X program. Absent emergency judicial relief, they must do so by the close of business on Monday, August 19--less than a week away.
"This is a blatant assault on our health and rights, and we will not stand for it," Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood Federation of America's acting president and CEO, said in a statement Wednesday. "We refuse to let the Trump administration bully us into withholding abortion information from our patients. The gag rule is unethical and dangerous, and we will not subject our patients to it."
"The Trump administration is targeting providers like Planned Parenthood in an attempt to end access to birth control and other reproductive healthcare," she added. "They are forcing qualified, expert healthcare providers out of our nation's decades-old program for affordable birth control--providing grants instead to an anti-abortion group that doesn't even offer birth control."
Without urgent action by the court, warned McGill Johnson, "this gag rule will destroy the Title X program--putting birth control, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and STI testing and treatment at risk for millions of people struggling to make ends meet."
The Washington Post reported on the anticipated consequences of Planned Parenthood's exit from the federal program, which mostly serves people with low incomes who face systemic barriers to healthcare:
The result of the agency's withdrawal--unless the court should rule against the administration before Aug. 19--will vary greatly by state, said Erica Sackin, a spokeswoman for the organization. Some states have pledged to make up the funds. But in others where that isn't the case, especially rural areas where providers can be many miles from one other, the effect is likely to be "chaos," she said.
In Ohio, a mobile health center that provides testing for sexually transmitted disease, birth control and education, will likely have to shut down, Sackin said. In Vermont, where Planned Parenthood is the only Title X provider in the entire state, women would be referred elsewhere. Some Planned Parenthood affiliates may waive fees or offer discounts on a sliding scale, she said.
"Planned Parenthood health centers are doing everything we can to make sure patients can still get care but it would be a mistake to think there won't be changes," Sackin said.
In a series of tweets, Planned Parenthood highlighted that its health clinics across the country serve 40 percent of all Title X patients, many of whom are people of color and under the age of 30. The group also urged critics of the administration's widely unpopular gag rule to contact their members of Congress.
The Democrat-controlled U.S. House passed a spending package in June that would block the administration's gag rule, but a similar measure has not yet passed the Republican-held Senate. There has also been pushback from some states.
"The Democratic governors of several states including Hawaii, Washington, and Illinois have said their state agencies will not participate while the rule is in effect," reported NPR. "Maine Family Planning--the only Title X grantee in that state--recently announced it is also pulling out of the program."
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'Devastating, Illegal, and Unethical': Trump Denounced for Imposing Sweeping Attack on Abortion Rights Nationwide
Warning of "severe" consequences for reproductive healthcare, critics condemn the Title X gag rule as "blatantly coercive and a violation of medical ethics and patients' rights."
Jul 16, 2019
After President Donald Trump's administration announced Monday that it would immediately begin enforcing a ban on abortion referrals at clinics that receive federal tax dollars, outraged reproductive rights advocates warned about the impact on healthcare nationwide and vowed to keep fighting against what they call the domestic gag rule.
"The Title X gag rule is part of a much broader agenda by the Trump administration and its allies to undermine people's reproductive health and rights, and to impose a socially conservative worldview within the U.S. healthcare system."
--Guttmacher Institute
Trump's Health and Human Services Department notified clinics of the move ahead of a conference in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. The announcement followed a 7-4 vote Thursday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upholding an earlier ruling which lifted injunctions that prevented enforcement of the policy.
The administration's rule makes healthcare clinics ineligible for Title X Family Planning Program funding if they provide abortion referrals and requires them to keep finances separate from facilities that provide abortions. Though clinic staff can still discuss the procedure with patients, they are not required to do so.
The rule also stipulates that healthcare centers receiving Title X funds cannot be located in the same space as abortion providers, though that provision isn't set to take effect until next year. The decades-old Hyde Amendment, passed annually by Congress, already blocks federal funding for abortion services except in cases of rape, incest, or threat to a pregnant person's life.
Services funded by the Title X program, which gives clinics about $260 million in grants annually, mostly serve patients with low incomes and those who face systemic barriers to care, including people of color and uninsured individuals. According to Planned Parenthood, a primary target of the new rule, "more than four million people rely on affordable birth control and reproductive healthcare services that are funded by Title X."
The organization operates clinics across the country, which would be effectively defunded by the gag rule--a longtime goal of the anti-choice movement and Republican politicians. Planned Parenthood Action responded to the administration's enforcement announcement on Twitter late Monday, denouncing the rule as "devastating, illegal, and unethical."
Promising to continue the ongoing legal challenge to the ban, Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Dr. Leana Wen said in a statement that "our doors are still open" and "we will not stop fighting for all those across the country in need of essential care."
In a series of tweets Tuesday, the Guttmacher Institute, condemned the rule as "blatantly coercive and a violation of medical ethics and patients' rights," and cautioned that "the consequences could be severe."
"The Title X gag rule is part of a much broader agenda by the Trump administration and its allies to undermine people's reproductive health and rights, and to impose a socially conservative worldview within the U.S. healthcare system," tweeted the research and policy group, which works to advance reproductive health and rights globally.
Clare Coleman, president of the umbrella group National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, also tied the move to the Trump administration's and Republican lawmakers' other recent attacks on healthcare and reproductive rights. As she told The Associated Press, "The administration's actions show its intent is to further an ideological agenda."
"Make no mistake, this is not about helping women--it's about preventing women from exercising their constitutional right to choose," Rep. Barabara Lee (D-Calif.) tweeted Tuesday. "Politicians have no place dictating patient care."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was also among those who expressed alarm over the administration's policy. In a Monday night tweet, the 2020 presidential candidate wrote that she stands with Planned Parenthood Action in the fight to overturn the gag rule and highlighted how she would safeguard reproductive rights on a national scale if elected to the White House in 2020.
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Describing 'Future We Want to Live In' Scores of Groups Unveil New Blueprint for Reproductive Rights
"The last two years," says new agenda, "have seen increasingly hostile attacks on reproductive autonomy and rights"
Jul 15, 2019
Nearly 80 organizations on Monday unveiled a sweeping policy agenda intended to improve sexual and reproductive healthcare and rights.
"We can do more than fight back--it's time to move forward," women's rights group UltraViolet said in a tweet about the plan.
Entitled Blueprint for Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice (pdf), the over 100-page document represents a far-reaching vision. It notes that "sexual and reproductive health and rights are inextricably linked to economic justice, voting rights, immigrants' rights, LGBTQ liberation, disability justice, and the right to community safety and racial equity."
Those intertwined issues are reflected in the diversity of endorsing organizations, which include the Center for Reproductive Rights, the National LGBTQ Task Force, People for the American Way, and Sierra Club.
Recent moves, say the organizations, have made clear that the nation is on a "dangerous trajectory."
"The last two years," reads the document, "have seen increasingly hostile attacks on reproductive autonomy and rights, creating a palpable urgency for action that demands a proactive and transformative agenda"
It notes, for example, the fact that in "seventeen states, abortion is simply a theoretical right for many individuals, as laws and policies have made it virtually impossible for people to access safe and legal abortion."
With areas of concern encompassing the state, federal and global levels, the new agenda focuses on five principles. They are, as noted in the document:
- Ensure sexual and reproductive health care is accessible to all people.
- Ensure discriminatory barriers in health care are eliminated.
- Ensure research and innovation advance sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice now and in the future.
- Ensure health, rights, justice, and wellness for all communities.
- Ensure judges and executive officials advance sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice.
Flushed out within those principles are a number of specific policy recommendations to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights. Among them are for states to expand their Medicaid programs; full federal funding of USAID HIV programs; ending the anti-choice Hyde, Helms, and Weldon Amendments; and terminating the so-called domestic and global gag rules.
Advancing reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, the blueprint explains, also includes policymakers supporting the decriminalization of self-managed abortion, both in the U.S. and globally, as well as supporting families' economic opportunities with policies including paid family and medical leave.
Adding to the recommendations are a call for authorities to treat detained immigrants with respect, and to take quick action on the climate crisis because people have the right to a healthy environment.
"This blueprint represents the future we want to live in where each individual has sexual and reproductive autonomy over their own body," the organizations say. "It provides a playbook on how to get there. And it is drafted with the expectation that it will be implemented as soon as we have a supportive Congress and Administration."
"That future is coming," they write, "and we are ready."
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I Had an Abortion and Now I'm Not Ashamed
The personal is still political. And it's planetary, too.
Jul 15, 2019
I have never said this publicly before, but in December 1974 I had an abortion.
I was 22 years old, living in a cold, dark house in Portland, Oregon, spending my days huddled in front of a wood stove trying to finish my undergraduate senior thesis. I did not want to have a baby. I didn't know what would come next in my life, but I knew it would not include raising a child. Until the moment the doctor told me I was pregnant -- we didn't have at-home tests in those days -- I'd always believed that, although it was perfectly ethical for other women to have abortions, I would never do so. In that electric instant, however, I knew that what I had believed about myself was wrong.
My boyfriend wanted to cheer me up. "Put on your coat," he said. "We're going somewhere." He was a kind guy and we'd bonded over a shared interest in all things mechanical. I'd fallen in love with him a couple of years before when he'd taught me how to replace the ball joints on an ancient Rambler station wagon. I was probably even more in love with his raucous Irish Catholic family, especially his mother, the family matriarch, who'd graduated from Portland State long after giving birth to the last of her own six children.
My boyfriend was sweet, but his emotional imagination was a bit limited. That particular day, his idea of cheering me up turned out to be a visit to a local plumbing store, where we took in the wonders of flexible cables and bin after bin of nicely made solid brass fittings. You won't be surprised to learn that the excursion left me inadequately cheered.
What he may have lacked in emotional skills, however, he more than made up for in moral sensitivity. Some years later, long after we'd split up and I'd begun my first serious relationship with a woman, I asked him why we'd never talked about the abortion. "I knew it had to be up to you," he explained, "and I know you usually try to give other people what they want. Once you'd decided, I didn't want to risk saying anything to change your mind." Unlike many men, including our current president, my boyfriend believed that decisions about my body were mine alone to make.
Not Bad Luck, But a Bit Sloppy
In some ways, I was lucky. For one thing, early pregnancy made me queasy, so I recognized what was going on soon enough to have a simple termination. That was a piece of luck because I hadn't menstruated for over a year, so I didn't figure it out the way most women do -- by missing my period.
My gynecologist misdiagnosed my failure to menstruate. He was so fascinated by the fact that one of my parents was of Ashkenazi Jewish descent that he never thought to ask me whether I'd been starving myself to achieve something vaguely approaching Twiggy-like thinness. Being underweight is a much more common cause of missing periods than genetic disease. He blamed my amenorrhea on an obscure condition that afflicts Jewish women with eastern European ancestry and then added, "But I don't understand it. You don't have any of the other symptoms." In any case, he told me that, if I ever wanted to conceive I would probably have to take medication. Or, as it turned out, gain a few pounds.
I was also lucky that it was 1974. Only the year before the Supreme Court had affirmed my right to end a pregnancy in its landmark Roe v. Waderuling. Overnight, the decision to have an abortion had become a private matter between my doctor and me. Even before Roe, Oregon was one of the few states that permitted abortion with only one restriction -- a 30-day residency requirement. As a college dormitory resident assistant, I'd already accompanied a fellow student to the clean, professional clinic in Portland for a pre-Roe abortion.
People in California weren't so lucky. My present partner who went to the University of California, Berkeley, recalls that her friends had to travel to Tijuana, Mexico, for abortions, where they knew no one, didn't speak the language, and could only hope that they wouldn't end up sick, injured, or infertile.
My doctor had privileges at that same Portland clinic and the arrangements were simple. I was less lucky, however, in that my private health insurance, like most then and now, did not cover an abortion. It cost $400 -- equivalent to somewhere between $2,078 and $2,175 in today's dollars. That was a lot of money for a couple of scholarship students to put together. Fortunately, we'd set aside some of what we'd made the previous summer painting houses for my boyfriend's father.
Why Am I Telling You This?
At this moment in the age of Trump, it's long past time for people like me to go public about our abortions. Efforts to deny women abortion access (not to mention contraception) have only accelerated as the president seeks to appease his right-wing Christian supporters.
I teach ethics to undergraduates. We often spend class time on issues of sexuality, pleasure, and consent, and by the end of the first class my students always know that I'm a lesbian. I have never, however, taught a class on abortion. In the past, I explained this to friends by saying that I didn't want some of my students, implicitly or explicitly, to call other students murderers.
But the truth is darker than that. I didn't want them calling me a murderer. Yet the reason I come out about my sexual orientation applies no less to the classroom discussions I should have (but haven't) had about abortion. I come out because I want all my students to encounter a professor who's not ashamed to be a lesbian. Over the years, quite a few LGBTQ+ students have told me how much they appreciated my intentional visibility, how helpful they found it as they were navigating their own budding sexual lives. I think, however, that it's no less useful for students who identify with the heterosexual majority to observe that a woman like me can be a professor.
If I can come out as a lesbian, why not as a person who's had an abortion, especially in this embattled time of ours? It's not that I think abortion is murder. I don't think that a zygote, an embryo, or even a fetus is a person. It's easy to get confused about this when opponents of women's autonomy call the throbbing of a millimeters-long collection of cells a "fetal heartbeat" and use its presence to prevent women six-weeks pregnant or less from securing an abortion. Because many women don't even know they're pregnant at six weeks -- I didn't -- "fetal heartbeat laws" effectively ban almost all abortions. By the end of June 2019, at least eight states (Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Ohio) had passed just such a law. So far, none of them has gone into effect. As Anna North and Catherine Kim of Vox report, "The North Dakota, Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, and Mississippi bans have been blocked by courts" and, on July 3rd, a federal court issued a temporary injunction on the Ohio law, while the case against it proceeds.
People advocating such fetal heartbeat laws carry with them an image of the developing fetus that reminds me of the seventeenth-century belief that each human sperm cell contains a "homunculus," a miniature human being, curled up inside it. That's not actually how a fetus develops. "It's a process -- the heart doesn't just pop up one day," as gynecologist Sara Imershein told Guardian reporter Adrian Horton recently. "It's not a little child that just appears and just grows larger."
Anti-choice types have introduced another piece of obfuscation with the expression "late-term abortion." The average full-term pregnancy lasts 40 weeks, as Dr. Jen Gunter, also a gynecologist, explained to Horton. Doctors only call pregnancies that last longer than 40 weeks "late-term." However, as Horton points out, "Anti-abortion activists twisted the phrase into a political construct understood to be any abortion after the 21st week, late in the second trimester." In reality, says Gunter of the actual medical definition of the term, "Nobody is doing late-term abortions -- it doesn't happen, but it's become a part of our lexicon now."
Smashing the Patriarchy?
There's another reason why it's easier these days to be a lesbian in public than a woman who has chosen to have an abortion. While the years since the 1973 Roe decision have seen a profound expansion of legal rights and social acceptance for LGBTQ+ people, the same decades have been marked by periodic sharp declines in access to abortion and a steady, fierce, sometimes even murderous increase in attacks on it and its providers by the evangelical right in particular. This is not, perhaps, as surprising as it might seem. Abortion rights actually present a much deeper challenge to the status quo than gay people marrying or becoming soldiers.
For years I've wondered why my gay leaders think the two things I most want in the world are to get married and join the Army. After decades of struggle and litigation, however, gay activists have, in fact, secured both these goals (though President Trump has done his best to keep trans people from serving openly in the military). Neither achievement, however, has proven much of a threat to the cultural or economic status quo.
What could be more American, after all, than joining the imperial forces? While Donald Trump's Fourth of July "Salute to America" hardly launched the conflation of patriotism and militarism, it certainly reminded us that, for many people, "America" and "military" are two words for the same thing. And what could be more American than marrying and creating another consumption unit -- a nuclear family household, complete with children (however conceived)? Nothing about these two life paths turns out to lie far from the mainstream.
Abortion, by contrast, seems to violate the natural order of things. Women are supposed to have children. That's what women do. That's who women are. It's one thing to be childless by misfortune, but deciding to end a pregnancy is another matter entirely. It cuts off a possible future. That's what the word "decide" means in Latin -- "to cut away."
What I have cut away from my life, both literally and figuratively, is the work of childbearing and childrearing, the two activities that continue to define womanhood in my own and probably most other cultures. And while I believe that this choice was right for me -- and was also my right -- all these years later, I'm still, as my boyfriend observed, sensitive to the judgment of others. As a woman who never bore children, I'm aware that I'm an outlier even among those who have had abortions, most of whom have or will have children.
Even now, I probably wouldn't have the courage to tell my story if it weren't for a young African-American woman named Renee Bracey Sherman. She happens to be the niece of good friends of mine, but more important, she is, as she calls herself, "the Beyonce of Abortion Storytelling." For nearly a decade now, she has been telling her own abortion story, training other women to tell theirs, and urging all of us to listen. Pinned to the top of her Twitter feed is this warm greeting: "Daily reminder: if you've had an abortion, you don't need forgiveness from anyone unless you want it. You did nothing wrong. You are loved."
You can't imagine the abuse, the death threats she's received, often from people claiming to know where she lives. "Someone sent me an email," she told the Association for Women's Rights in Development, saying "that they hoped that I would get sold into the sex trade and get raped over and over and over again and forced to give birth over and over and over again until I finally died from childbirth."
Renee sees her commitment to women's abortion rights as profoundly life affirming -- especially for black women who are the most likely among us to choose abortion and the most affected by its increasing unavailability. She is offended by the attempts of white anti-abortion legislators to coopt the Black Lives Matter movement, as for example when Missouri state representative Mike Moon introduced the "All Lives Matter Act" in 2015. (It would have outlawed abortion by defining human life as beginning at conception.) As John Eligon of the New York Times recently reported, even among black evangelicals, there is substantial suspicion of white anti-abortion activists who describe their work as rising from a concern for black lives:
"'Those who are most vocal about abortion and abortion laws are my white brothers and sisters, and yet many of them don't care about the plight of the poor, the plight of the immigrant, the plight of African-Americans,' said the Rev. Dr. Luke Bobo, a minister from Kansas City, Mo., who is vehemently opposed to abortion. 'My argument here is, let's think about the entire life span of the person.'"
Why Now?
Why write now about an abortion I had almost half a century ago? At my age, of course, I'll never need another one, so why even mention such a personal matter, let alone publicize it?
In the age of Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh, the answer seems all too clear to me. As we second-wave feminists insisted long ago, the personal is political. Struggles over who cleans the house and who has -- or doesn't have -- babies have deep implications for the distribution of power in a society. This remains true today, as state governments, national politicians, and the Trump administration ramp up their campaigns to harness or control women's fertility, whether to produce babies of a desired race (as Iowa Congressman Steve King has advocated) or to prevent others from being born (as the long history of forced sterilization of women of color and poor women illustrates).
We've been going backwards on abortion access for decades. Since 1976, the Hyde Amendment has denied abortion services to women who get their health care through the federal Medicaid program, or indeed to anyone whose health insurance is federally funded. (A few states, like California, opt to pick up the tab with state funds.) But even for women who can afford abortions, options have steadily dwindled, as states pass laws restricting the operations of abortion clinics. Women sometimes have to travel hundreds of miles for a termination. Only a single clinic in Missouri, for example, provides abortions today.
Worse yet, the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court may well have cemented an anti-Roe majority there. But the Trump administration hasn't waited for a future Supreme Court decision to move against abortion. It has already reinstated both domestic and international "gag rules" that prohibit federal funding for any nonprofit or non-governmental agency that even mentions the existence of abortion as an option for pregnant women. In the case of that international gag rule, organizations receiving U.S. government funds are not only prevented from providing abortion services or referrals directly, but may not donate money from any source to other organizations that do. Most of these organizations provide many other health services for women from birth control to cancer and HIV treatment. Clearly, preserving the "right to life" doesn't apply to the lives of actual women in this country or the developing world.
So the current perilous state of reproductive liberty is part of why I'm talking about my abortion now. But there's another reason. When I spent time in Central America in the 1980s, I found that the first question women I met often asked me was "Cuantos hijos tiene?" -- "How many children do you have?" They assumed that a woman in her early thirties would have children and this was their (very reasonable) way of reaching out across a cultural divide, of looking for commonality with this gringa who'd landed in their community. I was always a little embarrassed that the answer was "none." I would respond, however, that, although I had no children of my own, I had a compromiso -- a commitment -- to making the world a better place for children everywhere.
I was certainly telling them the truth then -- and I hope my life since hasn't made a liar of me -- but at the time, in some secret part of myself, I also believed that my decision not to have children was a selfish one. There was too much I wanted to do in my own life to voluntarily take on the responsibility for the lives of dependent others. Now, though, as the horrors of climate change reveal themselves daily, I sometimes think that choosing not to bring another resource-devouring, fossil-fuel-burning, carbon-dioxide-emitting American into the world might actually have been the most unselfish thing I've ever done.
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Pompeo's New "Human Rights" Commission is Up To No Good
This commission isn't fooling anyone
Jul 14, 2019
This week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo formally announced the creation of a "Commission on Unalienable Rights." Its stated purpose, according to a notice published in the Federal Register in May, is to provide "fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation's founding principles of natural law and natural rights."
The Trump administration's actions and words -- from threatening International Criminal Court judges and prosecutors, pulling out of the U.N. Human Rights Council and severing relations with its independent experts, to cozying up with authoritarian leaders and advancing xenophobic policies that defy international law--have made it abundantly clear that the administration has zero interest in being a global champion of human rights. This commission isn't fooling anyone.
We know that references to "natural law and natural rights" are code words used by the religious right and social conservatives to advance anti-LGBTQ and anti-women's rights agendas. We also know that members of the new commission have troubling anti-LGBTQ and abortion rights records. And based on the Trump administration's record, there is good reason to believe the commission is intended to redefine universal human rights to fit the administration's twisted and troubling worldview, with the clear and first target being the State Department's long-standing work to advance the rights of LGBTQ people, women, and other vulnerable populations across the world.
In defending the commission in a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Secretary Pompeo charged that human rights advocates have created "new categories of rights" that "blur the distinction between unalienable rights and ad hoc rights granted by governments." And that the commission will "ground our discussion of human rights in America's founding principles."
That's a load of nonsense. Secretary Pompeo speaks of longstanding international human rights norms as if he's demonstrated a single iota of respect for them, and as if those norms are incongruent with defending human dignity and democratic values.
The Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR)--which Secretary Pompeo names as a foundational document that will be examined by the commission--is grounded in democratic values of equal rights, justice, and the right to self-determination. It establishes the modern international human rights framework that provides the legal and moral authority to hold governments and other perpetrators accountable for human rights violations--a framework that the Trump administration seems bent on dismantling.
What Secretary Pompeo fails to understand, or perhaps acknowledge, is that this modern international human rights framework is made up of the very same traditions and values that also guided America's democratic origins. In fact, all too often in our modern history, it is the U.S.--irrespective of the political party in power--that has failed to live up to the UDHR, including the UDHR's promise of economic justice. Different groups throughout American history, including indigenous peoples, enslaved African people, and women, among others, have all been the victims of America's double-standard.
When the United States has wavered on its commitment at home and abroad, it is the UDHR in many cases that has provided the framework to hold our country's leaders accountable. That's because the full spectrum of rights enshrined in the UDHR are preordained by well-recognized democratic values, traditions, and principles, including the founding principles of our democracy.
The world has now witnessed the human costs of the Trump administration's atrocious disregard for these basic human rights and democratic values: the inhumanity of family separation and detention, the discriminatory Muslim ban, the upended lives from the repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the revival of the racist 'War on Drugs,' numerous attempts to roll back advances in LGBTQ equality, trampling on the rights of women, and illegal restrictions on the rights of asylum seekers. Having had it with the world naming and shaming under the international human rights framework, the administration appears to be trying to find moral footing for President Trump's discriminatory policies with the announcement of this commission.
Make no mistake: Pompeo's commission is a dangerous initiative intended to redefine universal human rights and roll back decades of progress in achieving full rights for marginalized and historically oppressed communities. It is likely to use religion as grounding to deny human dignity and equality for all. It will undermine the existing State Department's well respected and legally-mandated Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Affairs. And it will be a waste of taxpayer dollars, which would be better spent on implementing U.S. human rights treaty obligations and putting an end to Trump's era of human misery and assault on our humanity.
We won't let him get away with it.
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What Life Is Like When Abortion Is Banned
"As Republicans around the country pass sweeping abortion bans, I think about what life could be like for women and girls if these laws take effect. I don’t have to use my imagination."
Jun 11, 2019
As Republicans in states around the country pass sweeping abortion bans, I think about what life could be like for women and girls if these laws take effect. I don't have to use my imagination.
Women and girls across Latin America are already living in places where abortion is heavily restricted or completely banned. In the past year, I've done research for Human Rights Watch in two countries that ban abortion completely, without any exceptions, even if the woman's life is in danger.
In the Dominican Republic, I spoke with Rosa Hernandez, whose daughter Rosaura Almonte Hernandez, known as "Esperancita," was diagnosed with leukemia. Doctors initially denied her chemotherapy because she was pregnant, and then refused to end the pregnancy because to do so would have been against the law. She died in 2012 at age 16. "They let my daughter die," her mother told me.
I met a health educator in the Dominican Republic who fought back tears as she told me how, a few weeks prior, she counseled a pregnant 11-year-old girl who had been raped by her stepfather. "She's just a little girl. She doesn't know what's going on in her life or in her body," she said. But because abortion is illegal even for pregnancies from rape or incest, the educator had no options other than to refer the girl for prenatal care.
In Honduras, I met a young woman facing jail time after having a miscarriage. Unaware that she was even pregnant, she went to a hospital in intense pain. Doctors suspected she had attempted an abortion and called the police. She was taken from the hospital in handcuffs and remains under court supervision pending a trial date.
This is what banning abortion looks like in 2019. And this is where the United States could be headed if the courts permit cruel state laws like those passed in Georgia and Alabama to weaken or dismantle the rights protected in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
When abortion is heavily restricted or banned, women from poor, rural and marginalized communities suffer most.
I carry these heartbreaking stories with me, but I also think of the dozens of women I've interviewed who told me how they defied strict abortion laws to end pregnancies they knew they couldn't continue. Research from around the world has shown that banning abortion doesn't stop it from happening -- it just drives it underground.
Clandestine abortion is safer than it used to be because of medication, but even in 2019, women still die from unsafe abortion.
In Brazil, a country where abortion is illegal except in strictly limited circumstances, Ingriane Barbosa Carvalho, a mother of three in her early 30s, died last year from a botched abortion by a back-alley provider. An obstetrician-gynecologist in the Dominican Republic told me about a 19-year-old woman who came to the hospital in septic shock after an unsafe abortion two years before. She died despite the doctor's efforts to save her.
When abortion is heavily restricted or banned, women from poor, rural and marginalized communities suffer most, as they may not be able to afford to travel to places where abortion is legal, or pay what it costs.
Around the world, an estimated 8 to 11 percent of maternal deaths are caused by unsafe abortion. In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data showing that hundreds of women die in the United States each year from preventable complications related to pregnancy. Preventable maternal deaths will only increase if access to abortion is further restricted.
If policymakers in states like Alabama and Georgia are concerned with protecting life and reducing abortion, the new laws they are enacting will not have that effect. Unplanned pregnancies will still happen, as they always do, and women will still need abortions. But these will happen behind closed doors, and more women and girls will be injured or die.
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Amid Wave of Anti-Choice Laws Across US, Warren Introduces Plan to Protect Abortion Rights
"We must build a future that protects the right of all women to have children, the right of all women to not have children, and the right to bring children up in a safe and healthy environment."
May 17, 2019
Two days after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law a ban on almost all abortions in the state, and with the Republican-controlled Missouri legislature poised to pass its own regressive law, Sen. Elizabeth Warren called on the U.S. Congress to step in and pass federal laws to prevent further erosion of their reproductive rights.
Detailing her latest plan since she announced her presidential run in January, the Massachusetts Democrat called on lawmakers to block a potential overturning of Roe v. Wade by removing states' rights to legislate which medical procedures are and aren't permitted in each state.
"People are scared and angry. And they are right to be. But this isn't a moment to back down -- it's time to fight back." --Sen. Elizabeth WarrenDenouncing extremists for throwing women's rights and the country into a "dark moment," Warren wrote in a Medium post and on Twitter that advocates, especially those in Congress, must fight against the GOP's anti-choice agenda.
"People are scared and angry," Warren wrote. "And they are right to be. But this isn't a moment to back down -- it's time to fight back."
Under Warren's plan, Congress would pass laws that prohibit states from passing their own measures blocking people from accessing certain medical procedures and medical providers from performing specific procedures, including abortions.
"Under the Supremacy Clause of our Constitution, federal law preempts state law," Warren wrote. "And because these federal protections would be valid on a variety of constitutional grounds -- including equal protection and the commerce clause -- they would ensure that choice would remain the law of the land even if the Supreme Court overturns Roe."
Warren wrote that Congress should also pass laws preemptively blocking Targeted Regulations on Abortion Providers, also known as TRAP laws, which impose restrictions on abortion clinics to make it impossible to deliver care, and should repeal the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funds from being used for abortion services. The rule keeps abortion care out of reach for many low-income and marginalized women who rely on Medicaid and the Indian Health Service for their healthcare.
The passage of the so-called "Alabama Human Life Protection Act" on Wednesday prompted outrage from women's rights groups, Democratic lawmakers, and even provoked ultraconservatives including televangelist Pat Robertson and Fox News commentator Tomi Lahren to condemn the law as too extreme.
Under the law, abortion would be illegal--and punishable by up to 99 years in prison--at every stage of pregnancy. The Republican-controlled legislature rejected exceptions in the case of incest or rape; the only exception included in the law is when a woman's life is at risk.
Missouri lawmakers are expected to vote Friday on H.B. 126, a bill that would ban abortion after eight weeks Georgia and Ohio have also passed abortion bans in recent weeks which prohibit women from obtaining abortion care after six weeks of pregnancy--before many women even know they are pregnant.
In her Medium post, Warren explained how Republicans hope to pass extreme laws which will be challenged in court and then proceed to the Supreme Court --giving them the opportunity to overturn Roe v. Wade.
These extremist Republican lawmakers know what the law is -- but they don't care. They want to turn back the clock, outlaw abortion, and deny women access to reproductive healthcare. And they are hoping the Supreme Court will back their radical play.
I'll be blunt: It just might work. President Trump has packed the courts with extreme, anti-choice judges. Senate Republicans stole a Supreme Court seat and rammed through the confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh last year in order to cement an anti-choice majority on the Supreme Court.
Warren noted that the anti-choice laws recently passed in several states are dangerous as well as undemocratic, representing the will of a small minority. More than 70 percent of Americans--including 52 percent of Republicans--do not believe Roe v. Wade should be overturned.
"Congress should do its job and protect their constituents from these efforts," said Warren.
The plan won praise from women's rights advocates on social media.
The senator also recognized the efforts of "the women of color who have championed the reproductive justice movement" by demonstrating how access to abortion care is only one right American women must continue to fight for.
"We must go beyond abortion, to ensure access to contraception, STI prevention and care, comprehensive sex education, care for pregnant moms, safe home and work environments, adequate wages, and so much more," wrote Warren. "We must build a future that protects the right of all women to have children, the right of all women to not have children, and the right to bring children up in a safe and healthy environment."
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Trump's Crusade Against Women Goes Global
The president and vice president have become a worldwide menace to women's rights
Apr 25, 2019
Before he became president, Donald Trump described himself as pro-choice. Now, he can't do enough to deny women control of their own bodies. Marching in lockstep with Vice President Mike Pence and some of the most anti-choice members of his right-wing coalition, Trump has gone global in his crusade, watering down a United Nations Security Council resolution aimed at stopping rape and sexual violence in war. His acting U.N. ambassador threatened to veto any resolution containing language referring to "reproductive health." The goal of the demand, most observers agree, is to ensure that women who are raped in war should not receive any help terminating pregnancies. This episode is just the most recent in the accelerating and increasingly successful campaign to criminalize abortion, waged by a vocal, well-funded minority in this country.
For close to half a century, the right to a safe, legal abortion has been guaranteed by the Supreme Court's landmark Roe v. Wade decision. For many years, the divided court consistently reaffirmed Roe v. Wade. With the surprise retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, though, and his replacement with controversial, conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the balance on the court has shifted markedly to the right, and the future of Roe is entirely uncertain.
Confident that the current Supreme Court would now overturn Roe v. Wade if given a chance, anti-choice activists and their allies in Republican-controlled state legislatures are pushing a new wave of anti-abortion bills. This will set the stage, they hope, for a Supreme Court decision eliminating a woman's right to privacy and to make her own health care decisions, enshrined in Roe v. Wade.
"The extreme nature of this year's bills is unprecedented," the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute noted in a recent report. "Legislation under consideration in 28 states would ban abortion in a variety of ways." Among the slew of strategies employed are trigger bans, which would make abortion completely illegal in a state should Roe be overturned; gestational age bans, which make abortion illegal after a fetus has gestated six, 12 or 18 weeks, or some other length of time (these are often referred to as "fetal heartbeat" bills); reason bans, which bar abortions for reasons of a fetus's sex, race or disability; and method bans, which bar certain types of abortion procedures.
Add to that the TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws that impose extraordinary, cumbersome regulations, which the majority of small clinics cannot afford to follow. These laws don't enhance patient safety, but force facilities that provide abortions to meet an array of onerous conditions like having corridors of a certain width and exam rooms of a specific size. The financial costs of meeting these arbitrary regulations often force clinics to shut down.
While over two-thirds of Americans are pro-choice, anti-choice activists have the edge in state governments, with Republicans controlling roughly two-thirds of statehouses and 27 of the country's 50 governorships. But progressive legislators in some states are pushing bills to protect access to safe, legal abortion, enhance availability of contraception and expand sex education. Likewise, federal courts continue to strike down the most egregious and unconstitutional efforts to control women's reproductive health decisions.
Recently, Trump's Department of Health and Human Services issued what pro-choice advocates call the "Title X gag rule," barring physicians from giving patients the full range of options when considering reproductive health. In Oregon on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane issued a preliminary injunction against the gag rule, calling it a "ham-fisted approach to public health policy."
Dr. Leana Wen, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said of McShane's ruling: "While this is a victory for patients and doctors, this relief is preliminary, and we will continue to fight the Trump-Pence administration in court and in Congress to ensure our patients' health and rights are protected."
Back at the United Nations, the Trump-Pence administration has expanded the anti-choice agenda globally by removing any reference to "sexual and reproductive health" from the U.N. Security Council's resolution on conflict-related sexual violence. Outraged at the U.S. position, France's U.N. ambassador said, "It is intolerable and incomprehensible that the Security Council is incapable of acknowledging that women and girls who suffered from sexual violence in conflict, and who obviously didn't choose to become pregnant, should have the right to terminate their pregnancy." The U.S. administration also removed the word "gender" from the resolution, and weakened references to the International Criminal Court, making it harder for women and girls to seek justice.
Donald Trump himself has been accused of sexual harassment and sexual assault by no less than 16 women. Is this really the world leader who should be shaping global policy on sexual violence?
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In "Victory for Patients and Doctors," Federal Judge Says He Will Block Trump's "Arrogant" Gag Rule Gutting Title X Funding
"At the heart of these rules is an arrogant assumption that the government is better suited to direct women's healthcare than their providers."
Apr 24, 2019
A federal judge on Tuesday night ruled that he would block President Donald Trump's proposed rule gutting the Title X healthcare funding program, which would limit and control the healthcare that's available to American women.
Judge Michael McShane of the U.S. District Court of Oregon called Trump's proposed rule, which was set to go into effect May 3, "a ham-fisted approach to public health policy."
McShane's decision to issue a preliminary injunction against the rule came in response to two lawsuits filed by Planned Parenthood, the American Medical Association (AMA), and a coalition of 20 states.
Women's rights advocates were outraged in February when the administration announced the rule, which would strip tens of millions of dollars from the Title X program. Title X provides federal funding to Planned Parenthood and other clinics which provide abortion care, to subsidize reproductive healthcare for low-income Americans.
The "gag rule" would also ban Planned Parenthood and any healthcare provider which accepts federal dollars from counseling women on abortion care and making referrals for abortions.
"At the heart of these rules is an arrogant assumption that the government is better suited to direct women's healthcare than their providers," the judge said in his ruling.
On Wednesday, Planned Parenthood declared McShane's temporary injunction "a victory for patients and doctors," but warned that the fight against the Title X attack--and Trump's broader assault on reproductive rights--is not over.
"This relief is preliminary and we will continue to fight the Trump-Pence administration in court and in Congress to ensure our patients' health," said Leana Wen, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
"We are pleased the judge shared the AMA's concern about the physician-patient relationship that the rule would have jeopardized," Barbara McAneny, president of the AMA, said in a statement.
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Our First Amendment Rights Are Under Assault With the Global Gag Rule
The Trump administration is dismantling women's health and rights
Apr 07, 2019
On Wednesday White House adviser Ivanka Trump announced she is planning a trip to Africa to promote a global women's initiative she is leading. Her goal is to "economically empower" 50 million women in developing countries by 2025 at the cost of $100 million.
As Ivanka embarks on her plan to help support women in Africa, the Trump administration is simultaneously dismantling women's health and rights in the very same countries Ivanka will be visiting.
Just last week Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took steps to dramatically expand the implementation of the Global Gag Rule--a policy that prohibits foreign nongovernmental organizations who receive U.S. federal aid from performing or providing information on abortion.
The rule, enacted by every Republican president since Regan, has been catastrophic, imperiling women's health, driving up unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions, and contributing to global poverty. The ill effects extend far beyond limiting abortion rights, impacting every facet of reproductive health and constraining NGOs' ability to lobby for reform.
The new move goes beyond any previous interpretation by other administrations, restricting "gagged" organizations from funding groups that provide abortion services and information, even though those organizations don't get any U.S. aid.
It's not only an outrageous overreach of an onerous policy that forces organizations to either stay true to their mission and turn down funding from the U.S. government, or comply with a policy that compromises their mandate--it underscores the antithetical programs coming out of Trump's White House in the guise of women's empowerment and advancing prosperity for marginalized communities.
It also shows a breathtaking lack of self-awareness by Ivanka and our government. How can her program empower women economically as clinics in their communities shut down and if they can't easily access basic items and services like contraceptives and maternal health care? Is gagging abortion advocates meant to empower them?
Research shows that without access to basic reproductive health care, women can't thrive economically. Expanding contraceptive use improves women's agency, education, and labor force participation. Yet across Africa, there is an unmet need for family planning, and low contraceptive use keeps women from achieving their desired family size, limiting women's economic advancement.
While shameful, this is not all that surprising. The White House is dismantling hard-won rights to reproductive health and freedom at home and abroad at a pace unlike any other previous administration. When Trump first reinstated the Global Gag Rule as one of his first executive orders in office in 2017, he applied it to an unprecedented amount of global health assistance funds, resulting in devastating impacts on groups that work on everything from water and sanitation to HIV and AIDS.
Two years later, the Trump administration reinstated the "Domestic Gag Rule," an anti-choice policy that bans providers in the U.S. from receiving government funds from referring patients for abortion services. The rule is set to take effect on May 4.
At the Open Society Foundations, we have a long history of fighting for basic human rights, including those to health and equality. We've worked to protect and expand reproductive rights across the globe, most recently standing with organizations that overturned Ireland's abortion ban. In the U.S., we have supported Planned Parenthood's efforts to stave off the closure of clinics and worked to rebuff legislation aimed at chipping away at Roe v. Wade.
When we talk about women's empowerment, we mean it.
We have battled against the Global Gag Rule and similar attempts to place unconstitutional restrictions on NGOs' ability to advocate on health issues for years. When Congress sought to place restrictions on federal funding for groups fighting HIV and AIDS that didn't explicitly oppose prostitution, the foundations challenged the act in court. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court found in our favor, ruling that the act violated organizations' First Amendment rights by mandating that they "pledge allegiance to the government's policy."
We know the damage the Global Gag Rule has wrought on basic human rights and economic development for communities worldwide, and we are committed to minimizing its harms, and seeing that the policy is permanently repealed. As a funder that champions open democratic values and human rights, we will not be gagged, nor will we stand by as the vibrant movements we support are attacked.
If Ivanka wants her program to succeed, she should start by pressuring her own government to repeal the policies that hurt women's health and advancement the most.
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