MEDIA KITS
An Overview of Abortion in the United States
NEWS RELEASES
Key Issue of Integration To Be Highlighted at Aids Conference
(07/17/2008)
Despite Better Education and Later Marriage, Young People in Central America Face Considerable Sexual Health Risks
(06/02/2008)
EVIDENCE CHECK
Review of Key Findings of "Emerging Answers 2007" (November 2007)
Review of an authoritative report on the effectiveness of sex education programs concluding that there is not sufficient evidence to justify the widespread dissemination of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.
Advisory on Zogby Poll Commissioned by NAEA (July 2007)
Review of a biased survey conducted by Zogby International on behalf of the National Abstinence Education Association (NAEA) in May 2007 that purports to show broad public support for abstinence-only education.
Advisory on ACF Review of Comprehensive Sex Ed Curricula (July 2007)
Review of a poorly conducted analysis on the content and effectiveness of nine comprehensive sex education curricula released by the federal Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in June 2007.
NEWS IN CONTEXT
New Federal Rule Would Limit Access to Contraception, Other Services
World Population Day—Six Reasons to Support Family Planning
State Reproductive Health Policy in 2008
New Federal Rule Would Limit Access to Contraception, Other Services
A potential new regulation from the Bush administration would greatly expand the scope of federal refusal rights for health care providers. The draft regulation, which was leaked to the media and advocacy groups on July 14, would allow health care personnel and institutions to refuse to provide or even tangentially assist in the provision of services that offend their religious beliefs or moral convictions.
Congress has enacted three such refusal clauses, starting with the Church amendment shortly after Roe v. Wade and most recently the Weldon amendment in 2004, which apply to some or all recipients of funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The Bush administration now asserts that the American public, including state policymakers and health care professionals, is uninformed of these laws and has displayed hostility toward the principle of religious tolerance that they purportedly embody.
As evidence, the draft cites state laws mandating insurance coverage of contraceptives, requiring sexual assault victims’ access to emergency contraception, guaranteeing access to contraceptives at pharmacies and allowing officials to intervene in hospital mergers to ensure communities’ continued access to services. The cases cited as problematic cover most of the major legislative victories by family planning and reproductive health advocates over the past decade.
As further evidence of the purported problem, the draft cites a finding from a 2007 article in the New England Journal of Medicine stating that 86% of physicians believe they are obligated to provide patients with information on all of their medical options, regardless of a physician’s personal objection. Presenting this fact as a “problem” implies that this belief held by the majority of doctors stems from their ignorance of the supposed legal right to refuse, rather than from a conviction that they are in fact obligated, both legally and under the standards of their profession, to provide all information necessary to obtain a patient’s informed consent.
The administration asserts that the regulation will raise awareness of current refusal laws and clarify their meaning, but in “clarifying” the laws, the administration is actually redefining and expanding their reach in several crucial ways:
- First, the regulation says that “abortion” (participation in which providers have long had an explicit right to refuse) could be defined—by any individual or institution—to effectively include all hormonal methods of birth control (because these methods may act post-fertilization, although this is not their primary mode of action). For years, leading antiabortion groups and conservative lawmakers have been asserting that commonly used methods of contraception are in fact “abortifacients.” Adopting this position would be a stark departure from precedent in federal rules and regulations and from the consensus of the medical community.
- Second, it defines other key terms so that laws originally designed to apply to health care professionals such as doctors and nurses, who are directly involved with a given procedure, would now apply to any member of a health care institution’s paid or volunteer workforce participating in “any activity with a logical connection” to such services. The new definition would encompass information, counseling, referral, clerical and janitorial work and a host of other activities.
- Third, it asserts that a provision enacted in 1974 as part of a law governing federally funded medical research applies to all DHHS-funded health research and service programs. This interpretation opens the door for individuals to object to being involved, even tangentially, in a range of health care activities beyond reproductive health or to serving specific types of patients, such as single women, gays and lesbians, or teenagers.
Among other consequences, the regulation, were it to be adopted, could have a serious impact on clients’ guarantee of access to a full range of services, information and referrals at clinics supported by the Title X national family planning program and on the ability of health care provider entities to employ staff members supportive of their institutional mission. Certification and enforcement mechanisms included in the regulation also appear problematic, potentially adding major bureaucratic hurdles for domestic and even international government and health care institutions and inviting harassment by private citizens and advocacy groups alleging “fraud” by providers against the government.
In the meantime, many reproductive health champions in Congress are calling on the administration to drop the idea of even proposing such regulations, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA), over 100 members of the House (both prochoice and antiabortion) and a group of 20 senators, including Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL).
Click here for more information on:
The Implications of Defining When a Woman Is Pregnant
The Current State of the Debate Over Refusal to Provide Services
State Policies on Insurance Coverage for Contraceptives
State Policies on Access to Contraceptives at Pharmacies
State Policies on Emergency Contraception
World Population Day—Six Reasons to Support Family Planning
July 11 marks World Population Day, an annual event that this year emphasizes the rights of individuals and couples to plan their own families. Currently, 500 million women in the developing world are using some form of family planning, thereby preventing 187 million unintended pregnancies, 60 million unplanned births, 105 million induced abortions, 2.7 million infant deaths, 215,000 maternal deaths and 685,000 children from losing their mothers due to pregnancy-related deaths each year.
However, another 200 million women throughout the developing world who would like to delay or limit their births lack access to contraceptives. Providing these women with the services they need would prevent an additional 52 million unintended pregnancies and 23 million unplanned births each year. Preventing pregnancies that are unintended and births that are unplanned means:
- Improving maternal health and child survival. Helping women avoid becoming pregnant too early, too late or too often benefits them and their children. Meeting the unmet need for contraceptives would further reduce global rates of maternal mortality by 35%, and a three-year interval between births in developing countries would further lower rates of infant mortality by 24% and rates of child mortality by 35%.
- Reducing the number of abortions overall, especially unsafe abortion. Closing the gap in the unmet need for contraceptives would further reduce the number of abortions worldwide by 64% each year. More than half of all abortions occurring in developing countries are unsafe, and fewer unsafe abortions would lead to fewer maternal deaths and injuries.
- Preventing sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV/AIDS. Improved access to condoms, both male and female, reduces the rate at which STIs, including HIV, are spread. Moreover, to the extent that HIV-positive women are better able to prevent unplanned pregnancies and births, they are also helping to reduce the rate of new HIV infections.
- Empowering women. Women who can control the number and timing of their children can take better advantage of educational and economic opportunities, improving their own future and that of their families.
- Promoting social and economic development and security. High population growth hampers poor countries’ economic development as their expanding populations compete for limited resources such as food, housing, schools and jobs. Rapid and unsustainable population growth renders societies more unstable and can lead to greater civil unrest.
- Protecting the environment. Since so many women worldwide want fewer children than their mothers did, increasing their access to voluntary family planning services will further slow population growth rates. Rapidly growing population exacerbates environmental degradation and strains the world’s resources.
Even though the benefits of investing in family planning are many and well documented, the United States is lagging far behind the financial commitments it made, along with other developed and developing countries, at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development. According to that pledge, the United States should be funding family planning and reproductive health services at a level greater than $1 billion annually, twice as much as it is investing currently.
Click on the links below for more information on:
The unmet need for contraception in developing countries
The high rate of return on sexual and reproductive health investment
Working to eliminate the world’s unmet need for contraception
The role of contraception in preventing HIV
State Reproductive Health Policy in 2008
With the legislative year in full swing, some interesting trends are emerging, largely in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Carhart. In its most direct effect, the Court’s decision to uphold the Federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 set a major precedent that state legislators seem to be following. Twenty-three bills banning “partial-birth” abortion have been introduced in 11 states so far this year (see Bans on “Partial- Birth” Abortion).
Most of these measures are characterized by their definition of the procedure, lack of a health exception and strict penalties. The Court upheld the federal ban, in part, because it found the definition of the procedure to be sufficiently precise so as to exclude most common second-trimester procedures. To follow this precedent, the pending state measures generally lift the federal ban’s definition almost verbatim.
In addition to upholding the federal ban on “partial-birth” abortion, the Court’s decision in Gonzales v. Carhart included language essentially inviting states to utilize their abortion counseling requirements to include the provision of information aimed at dissuading women from obtaining an abortion (see State Abortion Counseling Policies and the Fundamental Principles of Informed Consent). So far this year, most of the attention given to issues related to abortion counseling has been focused on measures that would mandate the provision of information or services related to ultrasound prior to an abortion.
Most dramatically, measures in eight states (Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia) would go so far as to require the provider to perform an ultrasound prior to any abortion. Some of these would require that the woman be given the opportunity to review the image, while others would not give her that choice. Bills that have passed one house of the legislature in Kentucky and Oklahoma require the provider to review the image with the woman, while permitting the woman to “avert” her eyes from the image if she chooses. Fifteen states had laws on ultrasound provision as of March 31, 2008 (see Requirements for Ultrasound).
Click here for more information on:
Major state legislative actions so far this year
The status of state laws and policies on key reproductive health and rights issues
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