New Year, New Attacks on Reproductive Rights - Population Connection
New Year, New Attacks on Reproductive Rights
Monday, January 28, 2013
By: Amy Phillips Bursch
You’d expect that lawmakers might think twice before attacking contraception and abortion access after last year’s drubbing at the polls. Nope! They’re already hard at work in Washington and state legislatures.
You’d think that lawmakers would have learned something from November - when American voters seemed to send a clear message that attacks on reproductive rights just aren’t acceptable.
Apparently not!
Here’s a short list of bills that have been or are being considered by members of Congress and state Legislatures:
CONGRESS: Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, addressed the March for Life on Friday, saying that “In accordance with the will of the people, we will again work to pass the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, formally codifying the Hyde Amendment” in order to “help make abortion a relic of the past.” In reality, abortion will never be a “relic of the past,” because women have always sought out abortions, regardless of their safety or legality.
CONGRESS: Lawmakers once again are sponsoring the Sanctity of Human Life Act, which would give full human rights to fertilized eggs and most likely ban the most effective types of contraception, including IUDs, the birth control pill and emergency contraception.
OKLAHOMA: Legislators in Oklahoma have introduced a “personhood” bill nearly identical to one that failed to get a vote in the Oklahoma House of Representatives last year. Like the Sanctity of Human Life Act introduced in Congress, the personhood bill would codify in law that a human life begins at conception - granting full human rights to fertilized eggs.
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