Results tagged “TRAP law” from Blog for Choice
Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, debated Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, on "PBS NewsHour." They talked about anti-choice legislative attacks in the states and the trial of Kermit Gosnell. Here are a few of Ilyse's points - be sure to watch the whole interview:
"We are already seeing a number of court cases, including ones that Americans United for Life, I think, support, that go far beyond Roe, far beyond women's ability to decide about abortion with their doctors.[Anti-choice groups] are supporting rollbacks of contraception. They actually have model legislation on their website that would limit IVF, as we have seen in the "personhood" amendment. This is a radical agenda and this is the antithesis of common sense. Americans believe that women and their families and their doctors can make these personal decisions, not meddling politicians."
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For now, Arkansas holds the title as the state with the earliest abortion ban. But that could change very soon.
North Dakota is poised to adopt an extreme law which would ban abortion even earlier - at six weeks!
The North Dakota state legislature has mounted numerous anti-choice attacks on women's reproductive freedoms before, but this so called "heartbeat" ban is the worst.
This legislation would ban abortion before most women even know they're pregnant, with no exceptions for rape or incest. It would effectively make abortion illegal in the state of North Dakota.
Lawmakers in North Dakota passed this anti-choice bill along with divisive legislation that criminalizes doctors for the reasons women seek abortion care. Both bills are on their way to Gov. Jack Dalrymple's (R) desk.
But that's not the end of the story.
Anti-choice politicians in the state are also pushing a "personhood" ballot initiative, a 20-week abortion ban, and - in case they hadn't driven the point home already - a TRAP bill aimed at closing the last remaining abortion provider in the state.
We cannot go back to the days before Roe v. Wade, when abortion was illegal. Because when abortion is illegal, women are forced to seek unsafe abortion care that could have devastating effects.
We hope that Gov. Dalrymple will think long and hard about what these bills would mean for the reproductive health and well being of women in North Dakota before he signs this outrageous package of bills into law.
It's time for these anti-choice politicians to stop attacking choice, and start trusting women.
Leslie and Kate are members of NARAL Pro-Choice America's policy department.
For those of you following what seems like a never-ending battle against Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers (TRAP) in Virginia, last week we saw a sad footnote to the year-long saga.
After serving for five years as Virginia's health commissioner, Dr. Karen Remley resigned from her position. She pointed to the political process surrounding the state's new TRAP regulations as the reason.
A dedicated public servant first appointed by then-Gov. Tim Kaine (D), and reappointed by current Gov. Bob McDonnell (R)--Dr. Remley had clearly prioritized public health over politics in carrying out her duties, serving ably under two different administrations. However, she could no longer abide by the political meddling and the departure from sound science the TRAP scheme represented.
After we reported on the pro-choice victory this summer, anti-choice politicians forced the hand of the board of health, and it approved the TRAP regulations on September 26. Anti-choice Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli certified them immediately. The regulations are currently with Gov. McDonnell, who is certain to approve them.
In her letter to the governor, Dr. Remley said:
I personally committed to you when I accepted your appointment that I would lower abortion rates in our state by both the application of evidence based approaches and also the thoughtful implementation of abortion regulations if authorized to do so by the General Assembly and signed into law by yourself. I have honored those commitments on both accounts...Unfortunately, how specific sections of the Virginia Code pertaining to the development and enforcement of these regulations have been and continue to be interpreted has created an environment in which my ability to fulfill my duties is compromised and in good faith I can no longer serve in my role.
Despite claims that the TRAP regulations were motivated by concern for women's health and safety, this latest event proves that TRAP regulations are in no way related to public health.
Anti-choice politicians' attempts to close abortion providers in Virginia has been so overtly political that they ultimately drove out a dedicated public servant with an impeccable record for fairness and commitment to sound science.
Photo Credit: Virginia Department of Health
Last week, Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, wrote a post on the proposed Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers, or TRAP requirements that anti-choice Gov. Bob McDonnell was pushing.
Well, we have an update from the Old Dominion, and it has some good news for Virginia women, but the issue is far from resolved.
Late Friday afternoon, the Virginia Board of Health amended a key provision of the draft TRAP requirements.
The amendment means that existing women's health care centers that provide safe, legal first-trimester abortion care will be "grandfathered in," rather than being subjected to onerous and unnecessary forced building requirements. This is a vote on the side of women's health and wellbeing in Virginia.
Special thanks to NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia and its allies in the Virginia Coalition to Protect Women's Health for fighting against restrictive and unnecessary TRAP requirements.
They won an important round in this fight for women's health, but stay tuned for additional opportunities to take action.
Tarina Keene is executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia.
Sanity seems to have left the commonwealth of Virginia.
Earlier this year, the country watched with shock and awe as Virginia passed a mandatory ultrasound bill that forces a woman to undergo an ultrasound procedure before receiving an abortion - even if she does not want an ultrasound and even if her doctor thinks it is unnecessary. Now, the Old Dominion - Thomas Jefferson's commonwealth - is again poised to humiliate women and doctors by shutting off access to safe, legal abortion.
Since the McDonnell Administration and an activist attorney general came into power two and half years ago, the policy making process has been wrought with duplicitous backroom deals and contrived regulations in an effort to ban abortion... and even birth control. So far, they've gotten away with it.
This Friday, the Virginia Board of Health will again meet to consider proposed permanent regulations for women's health centers - what we call "TRAP," targeted regulations on abortion providers. But don't be fooled. These proposed regulations have nothing to do with patient care or safety despite what McDonnell and Cuccinelli may purport. They want to force doctors' offices that provide first trimester abortion - and have been doing so safely for nearly 40 years - to now convert themselves overnight into mini-hospitals, which you may agree is nearly impossible to do! The Board of Health literally is imposing new 2010 hospital construction guidelines on doctors' offices that have been open and operating for four decades! What this means is that women's health centers must spend hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars adding additional toilets, expanding the size of their doors and hallways, increasing treatment rooms to the size of your car garage, making sure there are as many parking spaces as there are beds (even though there are no overnight stays), and expensive, very specific ventilation systems. All this for one of the safest medical procedures performed in the United States today, which generally takes fewer than 10 minutes to complete.
Simply put - if regulations are passed as written with these forced building construction requirements, the majority of the state's abortion providers may be forced to close putting women's health and safety at risk.
What does this mean for women? Under the proposed permanent regulations, the 20 women's health centers that provide safe, affordable early abortion care in Virginia will be forced by the government to comply with overly burdensome, medically unnecessary regulations to just keep their doors open - costs that could be so high that health centers are forced to close their doors entirely. This has a detrimental impact on women's access to affordable healthcare, especially for young, low-income, uninsured or underinsured, rural and minority women who count on women's health centers around the state for their primary care. If even one health center closes, that could mean higher costs for women who already struggle to access and pay for healthcare.
We need to bring sanity back to the commonwealth of Virginia and end attacks on women's health and privacy. Without public action or legislative oversight, Gov. McDonnell and AG Cuccinell will have a free pass to implement the most aggressive laws in the country to impede access to women's health care and abortion. This overreach of power is unconscionable! But it's not too late.
The regulations are before the Virginia Board of Health this Friday June 15. If approved through the next stages of the regulatory process, these regulations will become law in early 2013. Please ask each of the 15 BOH members to use their medical expertise - not politics- to make the logical decision to stop this insane attempt to impose politically motivated regulations onto abortion providers. The women of Virginia are counting on them.
Call it the winter of 69.
Anti-choice Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett just signed a new anti-choice bill into law, bringing the number of anti-choice measures enacted in the states in 2011 to 69.
The measure Gov. Corbett signed is a TRAP law, or Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers. It subjects abortion providers to unnecessary and burdensome regulations that other medical professionals don't have to follow.
Despite the outcome, we were proud to work with allies in the Keystone State to counter this measure. More than 800 of our activists called on Gov. Corbett to veto the bill. Apparently, listening to the public is not in vogue this season.
The enactment of Pennsylvania's TRAP law comes just two days after anti-choice Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed into law a ban on insurance coverage of abortion care from the state's new health-insurance exchange.
We knew Pennsylvania could never let Ohio have the last word.
There was a flurry of choice-related headlines from the states this week--some of them very, very good, some of them horrid.
Let's get the horrid news out of the way:
The commonwealth of Virginia has seen more than its fair share of extreme attacks on a woman's right to choose this year.
These regulations, singling out women's health centers for burdensome and medically-unnecessary new requirements, remind us once again the importance of elections. NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia will be working in the next few months to hold anti-choice elected officials accountable by mobilizing voters to elect candidates to the state General Assembly who will not play politics with women's health.
Let's cross the Potomac and get back to Washington, D.C., where a Senate committee passed a bill that does NOT include the D.C. abortion ban. You know, it's the ban that blocks the city's elected leaders from using local funds to provide abortion care to low-income women.
(Yes, I know D.C. is not a state. That's why Congress has control over the city's local affairs in the first place.)
Our activists flooded Senate offices with tons of messages, so it's good to see this bit of progress, even though the bill has a long, long way to go.
Now...are you ready for the straight-up good news of the weekend? I thought so.
For that, let's go to the Granite State. (You know, the place where Rep. Michele Bachmann thinks the Revolutionary War started.) You might recall that a state council in New Hampshire voted to end a contract with Planned Parenthood that threatened thousands of residents' access to contraception, cancer screenings, and other basic care.
You may also remember one council member, Raymond Wieczorek, who expressed his thoughts on women who use contraception:
If they want to have a good time, why not let them pay for it?
Well, this week, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (a past recipient of NARAL Pro-Choice America's Champion of Choice award) announced that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will ensure that residents of the state continue to have affordable access to these critical services.
NARAL Pro-Choice New Hampshire summed it up in this way:
We applaud Sen. Shaheen for her leadership in standing up for women's access to basic, affordable health care in our state. The Executive Council played politics with the health care of thousands of New Hampshire men and women. The public outrage, combined with Sen. Shaheen's persistence and the Obama administration's decision to ensure women's access to contraception and cancer screenings, made this important victory possible. But we encourage New Hampshire residents to continue to let their elected officials know that blatant political attacks on women's health are unacceptable.
As we told our good friend Felicity Huffman, it's best to end on a good note.
Paid for by NARAL Pro-Choice America, www.ProChoiceAmerica.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
Earlier this year, the commonwealth of Virginia enacted a far-reaching TRAP law, or Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers.
TRAP laws are unnecessary and burdensome regulations on abortion providers--but not other medical professionals. They're an obvious attempt to drive doctors out of practice and make abortion care more expensive and difficult to obtain.
Virginia's Department of Health is expected to announce today draft rules for the implementation of the new TRAP law. These rules could jeopardize women's access to safe, legal abortion and other reproductive-health care in the state.
Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, went on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show last night to speak out against burdensome regulations:
If you live in the Old Dominion, check with NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia for ways to take action to protect access to safe, legal abortion care in Virginia.
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