95% Of Women Are Positive About Their Abortions 3 Years Later | Obama Treats Hobby Lobby Contraception Objections As A Religious Nonprofit | Colorado Republicans Shoot Down Successful IUD Program
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Women’s Health News, Abortion & Contraception
1. An important new study that tracked 667 women over a three year period reports that 95 percent of participants reported that ending the pregnancy was the right decision for them. The women’s answers, who had both first trimester and late-term abortions, contradict a growing argument by the pro-life lobby that women suffer psychological damage, one they call post-abortion traumatic stress syndrome’.
The longer longitudinal study confirmed the same results as were obtained in a 2013 study conducted with women one week after having an abortion. In that study the most common emotion expressed was relief.
2. University of California think tank ANSIRH, Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, conducted the study as part of a larger ‘Turnaway Study’, which is following about 1,000 women who sought abortions in 21 different states.
As this graph demonstrates, it’s women who were denied abortions who showed significantly higher rates of depression and anxiety in the ANSIRH study.
Think Progress reported earlier this month that over the past 5 years, states have enacted nearly 300 abortion restrictions, ones having disproportionate impact on poor women.
3. Three Senate Republicans — Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Mark Kirk (Illinois) who is challenged in his 2016 re-election race by Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill) — joined all Democrats on the Appropriations Committee in advancing a repeal of the “so-called global gag rule that restricts US funding to humanitarian organizations that provide abortions,” reports Politico.
The restriction has been in effect but not codified in law since the Reagan administration in the 1980s and impacts access to contraception in poor countries. Note that the Obama administration has not abided by the global gag rule, an early decision by then Secy of State Hillary Clinton.
“An estimated 225 million women in developing countries are unable to access family planning services,” said amendment sponsor Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.). “Providing greater access to family planning and reproductive health services improves the health of mothers and children, empowers women to make their own choices about how to grow their families, and is a smart investment that helps reduce poverty.”
The proposed amendment continues to prohibit use of US federal funds for abortion but would free up funds for contraception.
The original version of the Senate’s fiscal year 2016 State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs included a provision that would have permanently codified the global gag rule into law, while cutting international family planning by $149 million, representing about 25 percent of its funding. The budget also prohibited any US contribution to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), a leading provider of basic maternal and reproductive — not abortion — services worldwide.
4. On Friday, July 10, the Obama Administration released final rules for employers citing religious objections to supporting birth control for women under the Affordable Care Act.
RH Reality Checkconfirms that the new regulation allows “closely held -for-profit corporations to be accommodated under the federal contraceptive rules previously extended to religiously affiliated nonprofits.”
Under the rules employees of exempted organizations and non-profits will receive contraception benefits without a copay.
5. Despite being one of the most effective efforts in reducing teen pregnancy in America, Republicans in Colorado declined to keep it going.
Launched in 2009 with an anonymous private grant, the state-run Colorado Family Planning initiative provided more than 30,000 women free or reduced-price IUDs. During the period from 2009 to 2013, teen mother births dropped by 40% and abortions by 35%. When state health officials asked for $5 million to keep the project going, Republicans shot down the program.
USA Today writes that the program saved taxpayers $80 in Medicaid costs that previously would have paid to care for new mothers and their babies.
’ … critics of the state funding for the program say national teen birth and abortion rates have been falling nearly as sharply as Colorado’s. Abortion opponents often criticize IUDs as “abortifacients” because in rare cases an egg can become fertilized but cannot implant.
