Tag: monica McCafferty

When Weld County commissioners decided to stop providing emergency contraception to county patients, concerns rooted in anti-abortion politics trumped scientific facts and testimony provided by the county’s medical chief, according to documents obtained by The Colorado Independent.

A controversial and unreported move by the Board of Weld County Commissioners to stop dispensing emergency contraception has forced low-income county health department patients to seek the drugs at the scant number of non-profit clinics in the area.

DENVER-- The Colorado secretary of state announced today that the petition drive to land an anti-abortion "personhood" initiative on the November ballot failed to qualify, missing the mark by roughly 4,000 signatures. Personhood Colorado plans to protest the signature tallies released by the secretary of state and is confident the measure will appear for a vote this year.

Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains announced this week that it is launching a new breast cancer prevention and screening project at its Arvada clinic.

The Colorado Personhood Coalition on Thursday hosted rallies at Planned Parenthood clinics in Denver and Colorado Springs to launch the coalition's drive to gather signatures for its anti-abortion ballot initiative.

In the wake of news, breaking only an hour ago, that the renowned Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer foundation would reverse its controversial decision to pull funds from Planned Parenthood, local Planned Parenthood representatives praised Colorado Komen affiliates for leading in what was clearly an internal Komen revolt against the decision, where local affiliates demanded national leaders put the mission to fight breast cancer and save women's lives over anti-abortion politics.

Federal presidential-election-year campaigns are heating up in Colorado now that the boundaries of the state's congressional districts have been updated. Yet, so far, Mike Coffman and Scott Tipton, the Republican representatives of new more-competitive districts Six and Three, have yet to articulate for the record their stands on "personhood," the hard-line anti-abortion proposition that has become a litmus-test issue in Colorado after having landed on the ballot as an initiative in the last two general elections and after clearing hurdles to speed toward the ballot again this year.

One in five women in the United States has visited a Planned Parenthood clinic to receive health care. And three of seventeen women who are also Colorado state senators showed up to sing karaoke at a bar off the capitol Tuesday night to raise money for the organization's local political arm, Planned Parenthood Votes Colorado. Denver-area senators Lucia Guzman, Evie Hudak and Linda Newell celebrated accessible women's reproductive health services from their spots at the bar and from center stage at Hamburger Mary's, where more than a hundred revelers delivered dramatic renditions of classic hits, tossed back cheap drinks and stuffed pockets with prophylactics.

As the federal government prepares for a disastrous shutdown pinned largely to a House Republican amendment that would defund Planned Parenthood, Colorado Republican Senators attempted to mimic the legislative strategy that has led to the Capitol Hill standoff. Weeks of tense negotiations in Denver produced a budget plan tentatively embraced on both sides of the aisle. Then on Friday in stepped social conservatives in the Senate who during floor debate inserted a hot-button "defund Planned Parenthood" amendment into the budget negotiation.

Last year Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann led the Republican charge against health care reform legislation, arguing that it would be the worst kind of big government intrusion. She warned it would insert government between Americans and their doctors and that the Obama Administration would let loose an army of IRS agents to knock on doors and force citizens to pay up for insurance. Yet, as Mother Jones reported last week, Bachmann and other anti-abortion Congressional Republicans this year have proposed a series of bills that would put government between women and their doctors and set loose the IRS to investigate how women who had abortions became pregnant and how they paid for their abortions.