U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Investigations subcommittee, is moving forward with plans to launch an investigation of Planned Parenthood, a national chain of women’s health clinics.
Anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List this week launched a video campaign against President Obama based on the administration’s move to shore up family planning services in New Hampshire. Social conservatives on the state’s executive council earlier stripped $1.8 million in federal funding from Planned Parenthood affiliates there. New Hampshire officials informed the Obama administration that, in failing to provide key women’s health services, the state was violating federal law.
In a new chapter of the often topsy-turvy story of the Tea Party era, Colorado Democratic US Rep Diana DeGette this week finds herself championing local government rights against Republican efforts to expand federal power. DeGette on Wednesday urged House and Senate appropriations committees staffers to reject legislative stipulations that aim to prohibit the District of Columbia government from using local tax dollars to pay for abortions as part of its employee insurance policies.
A 33-year-old Idaho woman is seeking class-action status on a federal lawsuit challenging a new state law that bans abortion after 20 weeks of gestation, made possible by the claim babies are developed enough at that stage to feel pain. There is disagreement among abortion-rights supporters and opponents about whether this claim is based on scientific evidence.
Rick Santorum discusses why no Catholic has ever received the Republican nomination for president and rails against marriage equality.
Delegates setting the resolutions for the Knights of Columbus (K of C) again voted to defend traditional marriage and the “sacredness of human life” at the group’s 129th Supreme Convention held in Denver this week. With both controversial issues seen as the most important topics to many of the delegates, some secular and Catholic groups are concerned their agenda is a step in the wrong direction for civil rights.
Today, the Institute of Medicine will announce its recommendations about preventative health-care services for women to help the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services determine which services are considered “preventive” for women’s health under the health care reform law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Services given the “preventive” distinction will be provided at no cost under all health insurance plans associated with the law. A recommendation on one preventative care issue in particular has stirred up debate — that being contraception.
In recent months we’ve become well aware of how U.S. House Republicans are trying to decimate services of vital importance to women. Don’t take your eyes off your local statehouse, though: There, legislators have pushed the war on women equally far, cracking down on reproductive rights and cutting funding for education
The secret to ending abortion in America is to shift abortion rights to the states, said Americans United for Life‘s President Charmaine Yoest on a recent appearance on the PBS TV- and Web-news magazine “Need to Know.”
This week, the Third Wave Foundation (TWF), an activist organization that works with young women and transgender youth, released a report (PDF) that illustrates a revealing picture of the type of woman that seeks out funding for an abortion she cannot afford. Each year TWF pledges funding amounts through its Emergency Abortion Fund to low-income women — particularly minors, minorities and illegal immigrants — seeking abortions. The report is based on data derived from the 505 people TWF gave funding to in 2010.
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