Pro Planned Parenthood Counter Protests Dwarf Anti-Forces | New York State Moves To Codify Roe v. Wade In State Constitution
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Abortion rights are front and center on Saturday as pro-life activists launch protests across America. Waiting for them were supporters of Planned Parenthood -- and it seems the pro-Planned Parenthood forces dominated.
In St. Paul, Minnesota, a "dozen feet of empty street separated a police-estimated 6,000 pro-Planned Parenthood protesters from an opposing, defund PP group of 250-500 people.
Mary Morse Marti and her husband, Jim, of St. Paul, spoke affirmatively for Planned Parenthood at the rally.
“I see our country making a very sharp right turn, and I worry that our rights ... are under threat,” Morse Marti, 56, said. Jim Marti says he believes Planned Parenthood has been at the forefront of providing safe abortion services.
Pictures of the protests showed an abundance of pink pussy hats, the symbol of resistance that dominated the Women's Marches across America on January 21.
Related: Step 2 For Pussyhat Power: How About Yarnbombing America From Sea To Shining Sea? AOC Women's News
Detroit drew a much smaller crowd than St. Paul, with three hundred turning out, most of them supporting Planned Parenthood, writes CBS News. St. Louis drew a crowd of 150 protesters, with anti-Planned Parenthood signs slightly outnumbering pro ones.
The protests are running concurrently with a major new drive at New York Fashion Week in which at least 45 designers have gone pink, peppering patrons and runway images with Planned Parenthood pins.
Vice President Mike Pence strongly opposes abortion, citing his Catholic beliefs. Vice President Pence supports personhood legislation which equates the civil rights of a fertilized egg with those of the pregnant woman. This is a chilling development in the legal and civil rights of American women.Newly confirmed health secretary, Tom Price, has long supported cutting off taxpayer money to Planned Parenthood.
Critical statistics about abortion undermine the theory that the procedure is most likely one that happens to a selfish single woman who wants easy sex but none of the responsibilities that come with parenthood. Pro-life spokespeople also ignore the reality that abortions have never been lower in America, and the reality is DIRECTLY attributable to expanded access to birth control.
True News Numbers About Abortion, Birth Control & Those Non-Planned Parenthood Women's Health Centers That Do Not Replace PP
Pro-life forces often argue that other women's health clinics can step in for Planned Parenthood, but that simply is not true. When Texas legislators closed over half the Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas, the results were devastating. There is no way to prove that women didn't miraculously decide to start having babies in Texas. But everyone agrees on the facts. Note that Texas politicians made the same argument that there were plenty of women's health facilities to serve Texas women. Apparently not.
Pro-life forces often argue that other women's health clinics can step in for Planned Parenthood, but that simply is not true. The Washington Post recently analyzed Paul Ryan's claim that for every Planned Parenthood clinic, 20 health centers provide women's health care.
Both Planned Parenthood and federally qualified health centers provide family planning services. But there is no comparison between the contraception services at federally qualified health centers, in total and individually and Planned Parenthood, according to the Congressional Research Service. Planned Parenthood provides three times the contraception services and often in areas where poor women are not served by federally qualified health centers. In 2014, the health centers in total provided 1.3 million contraceptive services and Planned Parenthood clinics provided 3.6 million. Rural health clinics are not required to provide services to low-income patients. Nor are they required to offer a sliding-fee scale. Many do not offer family planning services in the very red states in which Planned Parenthood is the only source of reproductive health services.
When Texas legislators closed over half the Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas, the results were devastating. There is no way to prove that women didn't miraculously decide to start having babies in Texas. But everyone agrees on the facts. Note that Texas politicians made the same argument that there were plenty of women's health facilities to serve Texas women. Apparently not.
According to the Washington Post:
Researchers looked at fertility trends among women who qualified for birth control through the state’s public family planning programs in the two years before and after Texas lawmakers booted Planned Parenthood from its payroll. Each woman lived in a county that lost a Planned Parenthood clinic and had, at some point, received an injectable contraceptive from an affiliate before it closed.
The group’s birth rate shot up.
Between 2011 and 2014, the number of these births, covered by Medicaid, climbed 27 percent, according to a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine. (Medicaid coverage for healthy pregnancies — prenatal care, labor and delivery — typically costs at least $8,000 per baby.)
The birth increase coincided with a 36-percent drop in claims for long-acting contraceptives, including implants and intrauterine devices — meaning significantly fewer women started using what gynecologists consider the most effective form of birth control. Claims for injectable contraceptives fell 31 percent. No significant change emerged in women obtaining birth control pills and contraceptive rings.
Blue States Like New York Are Codifying Women's Reproductive Health Rights
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards
As American women face curtailment of our reproductive rights in the Republican War on Women, fears mount that in revisions to the American health care system, contraception will no longer be covered, as it is under Obamacare, aka the Affordable Care Act.
New York's Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo timed his announcement about New York State's new insurance laws with the January 21 Women's Marches. Beyond preserving parts of the Affordable Care Act including free access to abortion and contraception, New York State will now also require insurers to cover a three-month supply of contraception the first time a woman obtains it, and then a supply for up to 12 months, at no cost. Currently, only a one-month supply at a time is typically available, at considerable inconvenience to the woman. And abortions deemed medically necessary by a doctor will no longer be subject to co-payments or annual deductibles.
Presumably other blue states like California will also have similar laws to protect women against Republicans.
Gov. Cuomo took another step for women's civil rights, writing a woman's legal right to an abortion into the New York State Constitution. New York legalized abortion in 1970, three years ahead of the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling. The Governor explained that although there had been discussions over the years to codify Roe, no one seriously imagined that the law would ever be overturned by the Supreme Court.
Vogue covered the Albany event in which Planned Parenthood bused in a crowd of 1,600 affiliates and volunteers from across New York. Three times the normal crowd for the annual PP rally boarded buses, many of them having marched in New York and Washington DC on January 21.
A long line of speakers addressed the room ahead of the governor: New York State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins (“We know history, and we’re not going back!”); Thomas DiNapoli, state comptroller (“It’s dollars and sense—common sense—to invest in family planning in New York”); Dr. Rachael Phelps, a Planed Parenthood doctor from central western New York (“A woman who wants two children has to prevent pregnancy for 30 years. That’s a long time to never miss a pill”); New York Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul (“Other states have governor envy”); and finally, Richards, who introduced Cuomo as “a friend—really family—and Planned Parenthood’s partner in this fight.”
Guttmacher Institute reviews the codification of abortion rights -- or lack of them -- in state constitutions. Only seven states support a woman's right to abortion if Roe v Wade is struck down: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Nevada and Washington.
THE FIGHT GOES ON . . . THE FIGHT GOES ON . . . THE FIGHT GOES ON!!
