Tag: birth control

Double Barreled Shotgun Aimed at Our Rights

Double Barreled Shotgun Aimed at Our Rights

Donald and his Republican NRA-driven Congress can’t get gun control done but they sure can come after our civil rights, which includes the right to control out own bodies.

Today, Donald Trump issued two new rules which allow employers to deny women copay-free birth control.

This is discriminatory and a direct attack on a fundamental component of the Affordable Care Act. Birth control is expensive and, for many, not affordable.

They have also cut funding to all programs that assist educating or raising kids – special needs or otherwise. But they want to force women to keep having them.

This comes from an administration that has shown total disregard and disrespect for  women, particularly lower wage earning women. It is also an all-out assault on people of color of all ages and genders.

In the past 6 weeks, we’ve also witnessed the huge distinction in attitude and attention paid by this administration to hurricane victims in Texas and Florida as compared to those in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. FYI: The people of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands cannot vote for president. One might conclude it’s all about the Donald and his base.

That’s who the Donald plays to.  His  personal obsession for attacking all things “Obama” really gets them revved, and also distracted. His base doesn’t care about Iran or North Korean, but they do care about making their religious convictions the law of this land.

Earlier in the week, the House passed a 20-week abortion ban. Now it is said to be heading to the Senate.

Read: 20-Week Abortion Ban – No Big Deal? Think Again!

The Iowa Supreme Court just upheld a 72-hour waiting period — Another REALLY big deal

Remember: Just like shotguns, elections have consequences, and we are clearly on the wrong end of this one.

Do They Really Think They Can Fool Women?

Candidates’ OTC Birth Control Plans are a Raw Deal

This election season, many candidates, particularly Republicans, from Virginia to Colorado, are trying to run from their war on women voting records by coming out in support of over-the-counter (OTC) birth control. Make no mistake, they are targeting middle and low income women – people who would not vote for them anyway!

Their proposal might seem like they suddenly understand the need for increasing contraceptive access, but don’t be fooled!

These candidates just want women to pay for the full cost of their birth control, with no help from insurance coverage.These candidates are helping insurance companies, not women. (Note, they are not suggesting doing away with insurance coverage for Viagra.)

These candidates aren’t supporting women’s reproductive health — they’re attacking it.

According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), out-of-pocket costs prevent many women from consistently accessing birth control, and the most effective – and most expensive – methods, such as the intrauterine device (IUD), always require a visit to a health care provider. (So what about a doctor’s visit is OTC?)

Just to make this point even clearer, not one birth control manufacturer has sought FDA approval for OTC birth control — so these so-called improvements would result in middle and low income earning women being without contraceptive access because they can’t afford it!

This OTC proposal comes from the same candidates who have pushed to restrict access to comprehensive reproductive health care. These same politicians have placed repealing the Affordable Care Act which would cover contraception as preventative care and cutting back on public clinic funding at the top of their agendas. These candidates want: NO preventative care coverage for annual exams, Pap smears, or contraception. 

OTC contraception has a place in efforts to expand reproductive choice. People need access to services like emergency contraception on demand. But putting birth control in front of the counter is only the first step to ensuring comprehensive access. Women need policy makers who support a full spectrum of reproductive health decisions. Instead of doing away with insurance coverage for contraceptives, we need to expand it to cover Plan B, a very expensive OTC emergency contraceptive.

Women, don’t be fooled. Don’t let these candidates stick women with the bill!

by Olivia Cappello

 

Will Westchester Medical Center Be Forced To Ban Abortions?

I didn’t know who to vote for… so I didn’t vote.

I have heard these words repeated over and over again since the November 5th Election. Why? Because the over 85,000 voters in our database who have relied on finding the bright yellow ProChoice Voting Guide in their mailboxes every year – the guide that explained both who to vote for and what Choice means on a County level – did not receive it! This year, there was no ProChoice Voting Guide mailed out to our Westchester voters because we simply did not have the money.

The results are clear and Westchester has paid the price. In 2013, pro-choice candidates lost in astonishing numbers. County legislative seats that should have been wins for pro-choice candidates were losses. In District 10, (part of New Rochelle and Eastchester), the pro-choice challenger who took on the incumbent who opposes abortion even in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the woman, lost by 485 votes. In District 14, (part of Yonkers and Mount Vernon), the pro-choice challenger who took on an 18-year incumbent who votes against women at every opportunity including her historic vote to deny women safe access to reproductive health care, lost by 890 votes. And there are more districts just like these two. These are races in which our ProChoice Voting Guide would have made the difference between winning and losing!

2013 stands in sharp contrast to 2012, when our support for pro-choice candidates resulted in unprecedented victories, and we elected our endorsed candidates at all levels of government. Ninety-one percent of the candidates WCLA – Choice Matters endorsed, won! Those wins could not have happened without you or our ProChoice Voting Guide. (Please make a contribution today!)

Did you know that in odd year elections like this one, approximately seven out of every nine voters are women, and of those seven, five are over the age of 50? Not your typical internet and social media users. Reaching this target population requires more traditional avenues of communication – yes, snail mail – the U.S. Postal Service. And the postage costs just keep going up.

Anti-choice extremist County Executive Astorino said repeatedly, “County elections have nothing to do with abortion.” That could not be farther from the truth, but people believed him because there was no voting guide to refute him. County government plays a very significant role in reproductive rights and the implications can be huge. Just look at Albuquerque, New Mexico. That municipality just voted on an initiative to ban abortions after 20 weeks. That could happen here.

Reproductive rights is absolutely a County issue.
The people we elect decide the County budget. Departments relating to women and families comprise a large portion of that budget. The County Executive nominates and the County Board of Legislators (CBL) confirms appointments to the Westchester Medical Hospital Board; thus the Board’s elected officials ultimately control whether the hospital will continue to provide abortions. The CBL decides whether inmates will get pregnancy tests, abortions, and prenatal care on request and without delay. The County Health Department decides which clinics will provide services and whether they will provide reproductive health services, counseling, and referrals for abortions. The County Executive appoints, and CBL votes to confirm commissioners important to the pro-choice issue including Health, Social Services, and Corrections.

Last year, those elected officials gutted all funding to the community health centers which directly impacted women. Funding for comprehensive sex education is gone, and instead, the County Executive, who is winning awards from abstinence-only organizations, vetoed a bill giving women safe access to reproductive health centers.

Sadly, WCLA – Choice Matters forecasted election night results. We put our voting guide on line but that only reached a limited number of people. In contrast, our mailed bright yellow ProChoice Voting Guide reaches the all-important target audience – women – who are rushing between work and other responsibilities, and those that do not live on the internet. The mailed voting guide provides, literally, an in-hand education that can and does go from the mailbox to the voting booth.

Make a gift to Choice Matters to support our work.

In 2014, all seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and New York State government are up for election: Congress, Governor, Comptroller, Attorney General, and the New York State Senate and Assembly. This election matters. Last year, we watched as a turncoat Senate Democrat turned his back on his constituents and aligned himself with the anti-choice Republican leader. Together, they blocked the Women’s Equality Agenda from coming to the floor for a vote. They made us realize how much New York has in common with Texas.

If we are not able to distribute our ProChoice Voting Guide to our database of over 85,000 Westchester County residents, November 5th, 2013 will serve as a precursor of elections to come.

But you can stop that from happening by contributing to WCLA – Choice Matters today.

Choice Matters has been standing strong since 1972! That’s 40+ years! Choice Matters has interviewed hundreds of thousands of female voters, identified those who are pro-choice, and added them to our database. We do this every single week, each and every year. It’s our amazing database and our mailed ProChoice Voting Guide that make us victorious. We’ve always understood this. But we just didn’t have the money to print and mail out our voting guide this year – and pro-choice candidates lost across the County. We cannot afford to let that happen again next year.

Your support today will make it possible for us to send our ProChoice Voting Guide and newsletter which informs the public about Choice, elected officials, reproductive rights actions, challengers’ positions, and our critical endorsements. This voting guide newsletter scares some candidates and elected officials, and rewards others, because it holds them accountable for their actions.

Your generous contribution of $25, $100, $250 or more will help Choice Matters’ ProChoice campaign continue to identify and educate households across the county and state.

 Choice Matters is a mighty pro-choice organization with a proven strategy. That’s because you, our donors, have given us extraordinary support. We hope you will continue to do so because we need your help now more than ever. Your contribution, whatever you can afford – large or small – will make a difference. Every dollar truly counts.

Please mail your contribution today or you may securely contribute on line at www.choicematters.org.

Supporting Choice Matters is the most valuable action an advocate for Choice can take.

Eden Foods Doesn’t Want to Pay for Employees’ BC

Special Thanks to Nita, Shaunna, Kat, Malinda, and Karin, the UltraViolet team!
Sign the Petition at the Bottom!
The Boycott is having an affect.

“Soy milk. Organic beans. Gluten-free pasta. A radical agenda to ban birth control coverage for their employees.

Eden Foods is one of the country’s major organic foods companies, and their products can be purchased at Whole Foods, local markets, and coops across the country. They claim they stand for “purity in food,” and now, they also stand for a right-wing crusade against birth control. The company is suing the Obama Administration over the rule that insurance companies must cover birth control under the new healthcare law. Why? Because as CEO Michael Potter put it, they believe that “these procedures [birth control] almost always involve immoral and unnatural practices.”1

That’s right. Because Eden Foods’s CEO is ideologically opposed to birth control, the company thinks they have the right to dictate to all their employees what health care they will have access to. That doesn’t just affect their employees. It’s a dangerous precedent that they are asking the court to set for all workers going forward. But progressive-minded people make up a huge portion of Eden’s customers–people who are likely to think that a boss shouldn’t be dictating their employees’ private health care decisions. And the CEO has already said “we’re getting a lot of feedback” and that the push back against them on social media “is a big deal.”2

Employers have no right to interfere with the reproductive health care of their female employees. If we all speak out now to add to the outrage, we can show Eden Foods and other businesses that are watching the controversy that their lawsuit is bad for publicity and bad for their bottom line.

Sign the petition to Eden Foods’s CEO, Michael Potter.

Making sure employees’ health insurance covers birth control matters:

  • 1 in 3 women has had trouble affording birth control.3
  • Women who had better access to the pill earned 8% more than those who didn’t by the time they were 50.4
  • Young women who can obtain the pill are 12% more likely to enroll in college.5
  • 99% of women who’ve had sex have used birth control.6

Michael Potter and Eden Foods are spreading lies, like claiming that certain companies are already exempted from the birth control mandate and that some religions are exempted and others aren’t.7 Neither of these is true. The truth is, only houses of worship are exempt, and religiously affiliated organizations like hospitals and schools can push the cost of birth control coverage onto the insurer.8

And Potter’s reason for suing? “Because I’m a man, number one and it’s really none of my business what women do.”9 But by entering this lawsuit, Potter is making it not just his business but every other employer in America’s business what kind of health care their female employees get.

Employers can’t flout laws just because they don’t like them. Allowing employers to dictate whether or not their employees have access to birth control is wrong and un-American.

We need to let Eden Foods and their CEO, Michael Potter, know that trying to deny their employees basic health care like birth control is bad for business. Sign the petition to Potter right away.”

Add your name.

Thanks for speaking out,

Nita, Shaunna, Kat, Malinda, and Karin, the UltraViolet team

Sources:
1. Eden Foods doubles down in birth control flap, Salon, April 15, 2013

2. Ibid.

3. Survey: Nearly Three in Four Voters in America Support Fully Covering Prescription Birth Control, Planned Parenthood, October 12, 2010

4. Women Who Took the Pill Had an 8 Percent Higher Income by Age 50, Yahoo! News, March 6, 2012

5. The Social and Economic Benefits of Women’s Ability to Determine Whether and When to Have Children, Guttmacher Institute, March 2013

6. Women Who Use Birth Control Are the 99 Percent, Mother Jones, February 10, 2012

7.Statement from the President of Eden Foods, Eden Foods, April 17, 2013

8. Contraception Mandate Clarified To Accommodate Religious Groups, Obama Administration Announces, Huffington Post, February 25, 2013

9. Eden Foods doubles down in birth control flap, Salon, April 15, 2013

2. Ibid.

Abortion Stories: Coming Out of the Proverbial Closet & Sharing

From RH Reality:

The New Public Face of Abortion: Connecting the Dots Between Abortion Stories

by Steph Herold

Over the last few months, there’s been an electric energy around the sharing of abortion stories. We’ve seen  two  stories in the New York Times, a Jewish abortion story on  Kveller, a continuation of an abortion story on  Thought Catalog, an early abortion story on  Boing Boing, and a  piece by a woman reflecting on the consequences of telling her abortion story in the Texas Observer. One woman even documented her abortion in photos. And that’s just recently.

What’s going on here? Why are so many people “coming out” now? There are no simple answers to this question. Are women responding to the onslaught of anti-choice legislation? Has the uptick in media reporting on abortion policies eased some of the stigma around speaking about abortion? Are the calls to come out about abortion from pro-choice activists, politicians, and advocacy organizations actually working?

Without asking every person whos shared her story, we wont know the answers to these questions. By looking at what theyve decided to publish, we can consider more basic issues: what are women saying when they come out? What kinds of experiences are represented? Who is coming out about their abortion experience, and who is silent?

To map the patterns and gaps in these published narratives, I created a tumblr to collect these stories:  ihadanabortion.org. Here’s what I’ve found so far.

Continue reading The New Public Face of Abortion: Connecting the Dots Between Abortion Stories now…

You can’t make this up! In Arizona pregnancy begins when a woman…

It’s all about who controls state government– Arizona just passed three more extreme anti-choice laws.

1. Pregnancy/gestation is now counted as beginning on the last day of a woman’s period, with abortion only permitted up to 18 weeks, the shortest time span in the nation;
2. Doctors can withhold health information about a fetus from the woman if that information might lead her to have an abortion; and
3. Rules mandating how schools may teach about unwanted pregnancies.

As we look around the country, watch what is going on in Washington DC, and hear the GOP candidates attack a woman’s right to contraception, we realize our state governments are our last line of defence. States controlled by an ultra-conservative anti-women legislators are systematically turning back the clock to a time where the rythm method was the only form of birth control available to women; where women who have sexual relations are called “sluts”; and single parenthood is deemed child abuse. States after states are passing laws that take away a woman’s dignity and control over her own body, and, thus, her life.  Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Colorado…the list of states taking away our rights is sadly seemingly endless.  And, YES, it could happen here in New York.
Who is making the rules that govern our state? Right now it is the Republican-controlled NYS Senate, led by anti-choice extremist Republican Majority leader Dean Skelos. To protect our rights and to pass the Reproductive Health Act that guarantees that every woman can make her own personal, private health care decisions, especially when her health is endangered. Seven out of 10 New York voters – across religious and party lines – support the Reproductive Health Act. Too bad Skelos doesn’t care. If New Yorkers are to take control of their bodies and health, we must get rid of the Republican controlled majority in our state senate.

from the Huffington Post, 4/11/2012

“Arizona lawmakers gave final passage to three anti-abortion bills Tuesday afternoon, including one that declares pregnancies in the state begin two weeks before conception.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill to prohibit abortions after the 18th week of pregnancy; a bill to protect doctors from being sued if they withhold health information about a pregnancy that could cause a woman to seek an abortion; and a bill to mandate that how school curriculums address the topic of unwanted pregnancies.

The 18th week bill includes a new definition for when pregnancy begins. All of the bills passed the Senate and now head to Gov. Jan Brewer (R) for her signature or veto. Passage of the late-term abortion bill would give Arizona the earliest definition of late-term abortion in the country; most states use 20 weeks as a definition.

A sentence in the bill defines gestational age as “calculated from the first day of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman,” which would move the beginning of a pregnancy up two weeks prior to conception.

Elizabeth Nash, states issues manager for Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research organization in Washington, said the definition corresponds with how doctors typically determine gestational age. She said since the exact date of conception cannot be pinpointed, doctors use the day of the woman’s last menstrual period to gauge the duration of a pregnancy. The method does not provide an exact date.

“It will have some impact, from what we understand there are abortions provided at that point in Arizona,” Nash said. “It will reduce access.”

Nash said nationally, 1.5 percent of abortions in the U.S. occur after the 21st week and 3.8 percent occur between the 16th and 20th weeks. She said the bill would violate U.S. Supreme Court rulings on abortion by mandating a cutoff date that is before viability and not having enough provisions for late-term abortions needed to protect a woman’s health.

State Rep. Kimberly Yee (R-Phoenix), the bill’s sponsor, was not immediately available for comment. Her assistant said that Yee, a former aide to former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), was voting on the House floor.

State Rep. Matt Heinz (D-Tucson), a physician, said he did not want the state to set the gestational age since science could not provide a precise one. “I imagine it will be a legal dispute. How can a judge determine gestational age?” Heinz said. “If medical science can only determine gestational age to within 10-14 days, how can a superior court judge do it?”

The other two bills passed by the House include the state’s “wrongful birth, wrongful life” bill that prohibits lawsuits against doctors who do not provide information about a fetus’ health if that information could lead to an abortion. In addition, parents cannot sue on the child’s behalf after birth.

The third bill requires that schools teach students that adoption and birth are the most acceptable outcomes for an unwanted pregnancy.

All three bills are now headed to Brewer’s desk for her review. The governor has not announced a position on the bills, which is her practice, but her spokesman indicated that Brewer has a long commitment to pro-life issues.”

also read:
Not All “20-Week” Bans Are Created Equal: A Closer Look at How Abortion Bans Diverge from Medical Protocol and Put Women at Risk
Arizona Lawmakers Trying To Legislate Pregnancy Two Weeks Prior To Conception
How Nebraska’s 20-Week Abortion Ban Became One Family’s nightmare and Why We Need to Ban The Bans
Mississippi’s “Heartbeat” Ban Returns

Nicholas D. Kristoff, you got it right! “Beyond Pelvic Politics”

Beyond Pelvic Politics

By Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, 2/11/2012

I MAY not be as theologically sophisticated as American bishops, but I had thought that Jesus talked more about helping the poor than about banning contraceptives.

The debates about pelvic politics over the last week sometimes had a patronizing tone, as if birth control amounted to a chivalrous handout to women of dubious morals. On the contrary, few areas have more impact on more people than birth control — and few are more central to efforts to chip away at poverty.

My well-heeled readers will be furrowing their brows at this point. Birth control is cheap, you’re thinking, and far less expensive than a baby (or an abortion). But for many Americans living on the edge, it’s a borderline luxury.

A 2009 study looked at sexually active American women of modest means, ages 18 to 34, whose economic circumstances had deteriorated. Three-quarters said that they could not afford a baby then. Yet 30 percent had put off a gynecological or family-planning visit to save money. More horrifying, of those using the pill, one-quarter said that they economized by not taking it every day. (My data is from the Guttmacher Institute, a nonpartisan research organization on issues of sexual health.)

One-third of women in another survey said they would switch birth control methods if not for the cost. Nearly half of those women were relying on condoms, and others on nothing more than withdrawal.

The cost of birth control is one reason poor women are more than three times as likely to end up pregnant unintentionally as middle-class women.

In short, birth control is not a frill that can be lightly dropped to avoid offending bishops. Coverage for contraception should be a pillar of our public health policy — and, it seems to me, of any faith-based effort to be our brother’s keeper, or our sister’s.

To understand the centrality of birth control, consider that every dollar that the United States government spends on family planning reduces Medicaid expenditures by $3.74, according to Guttmacher. Likewise, the National Business Group on Health estimated that it costs employers at least an extra 15 percent if they don’t cover contraception in their health plans.

And of course birth control isn’t just a women’s issue: men can use contraceptives too, and unwanted pregnancies affect not only mothers but also fathers.

This is the backdrop for the uproar over President Obama’s requirement that Catholic universities and hospitals include birth control in their health insurance plans. On Friday, the White House backed off a bit — forging a compromise so that unwilling religious employers would not pay for contraception, while women would still get the coverage — but many administration critics weren’t mollified.

Look, there’s a genuine conflict here. Many religious believers were sincerely offended that Catholic institutions would have to provide coverage for health interventions that the church hierarchy opposed. That counts in my book: it’s best to avoid forcing people to do things that breach their ethical standards.

Then again, it’s not clear how many people actually are offended. A national survey found that 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women use birth control at some point in their lives. Moreover, a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute reported that even among Catholics, 52 percent back the Obama policy: they believe that religiously affiliated universities and hospitals should be obliged to include birth control coverage in insurance plans.

So, does America’s national health policy really need to make a far-reaching exception for Catholic institutions when a majority of Catholics oppose that exception?

I wondered what other religiously affiliated organizations do in this situation. Christian Science traditionally opposed medical care. Does The Christian Science Monitor deny health insurance to employees?

“We offer a standard health insurance package,” John Yemma, the editor, told me.

That makes sense. After all, do we really want to make accommodations across the range of faith? What if organizations affiliated with Jehovah’s Witnesses insisted on health insurance that did not cover blood transfusions? What if ultraconservative Muslim or Jewish organizations objected to health care except at sex-segregated clinics?

The basic principle of American life is that we try to respect religious beliefs, and accommodate them where we can. But we ban polygamy, for example, even for the pious. Your freedom to believe does not always give you a freedom to act.

In this case, we should make a good-faith effort to avoid offending Catholic bishops who passionately oppose birth control. I’m glad that Obama sought a compromise. But let’s remember that there are also other interests at stake. If we have to choose between bishops’ sensibilities and women’s health, our national priority must be the female half of our population.

The Komen Foundation: an Apology, Not a Reversal

When an Apology is Just an Apology

The Apology
Although the Komen Foundation has apologized, it has not actually reversed its decision. It will honor grants to which Komen has previously committed to for 2012 but it does not say anything about future funding.

Komen Foundation founder Nancy Brinker said, “Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.” This battle is far from over.

As The Huffington Post points out, Komen’s apology is not a promise to renew Planned Parenthood grants. It simply says, “continue to fund existing grants” to the organization — which it had already planned on doing — and to make it eligible for future grants. At no point in the press release does Brinker promise that Komen will renew grants to Planned Parenthood.”

The Explanantion
The Komen Foundation claimed the reason it had cut Planned Parenthood funding was because it had established new criteria for grant giving and that it would no longer give grants to organizations under investigation by local, state or federal governments.

The problem with that explanation is that the Komen Foundation currently gives $7.5 million in grants to the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center for cancer research; and as we all know, Penn State is under investigation. That grant would appear to violate  that new rule at Komen. (Mother Jones.) Oops.

Playing Politics with Women’s Health
There is no question that the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood was politically motivated.

It allowed political pressure—apparently coming from high up in its own organization—to betray its own 501(c)3 mission “…working together to save lives”.  The Komen Foundation launched an all-out attack on poor, young and uninsured women when it announced that it was cutting all grants to Planned Parenthood. This grant money was used by Planned Parenthood for cancer screenings.

This action was apparently taken at the direction of some right-wing extremist senior staff and board member.

In April 2011, Komen hired Karen Handel to be its new senior vice president for public policy. Handel’s extremist positions were not a secret. Handel had run unsuccessfully in 2010, on the Republican line, for governor of Georgia. Describing herself as a pro-life Christian, she ran on a platform to cut all public funding to Planned Parenthood even for non-abortion-related health services.

In addition, Nancy Brinker who is the founder of Komen, is a former Bush administration official, and we all remember the rabid anti-choice agenda of the Bush years. She is a major contriubtor to Republican officials.

Some Komen staff resigned after the decision was made in December.

The War on Women
Komen’s willingness to cut funding to Planned Parenthood highlights the ease with which a direct assault on women—particularly the poor, young and uninsured—can be launched.

The majority of those served by Planned Parenthood are uninsured. Unlike many private doctors, Planned Parenthood does not turn the poor and uninsured away.

Komen’s funding cuts would have directly attacked the wellbeing of the most vulnerable women. It was the Komen Foundation’s version of the Hyde Amendment.

Coming to a Town Near You –The Truth about Crisis Pregnancy Centers

RH Reality has done an excellent job pulling the curtain back on crisis pregnancy centers.
These are the centers that Westchester’s Right to Life County Executive, Rob Astorino, has welcomed into our County. He has stood at the ribbon cutting ceremonies, cheering as these organizations that are intentionally dishonesty, deceive the women of Westchester.

Background on Abortion for Trust Women Week

 

There will always be women who need access to abortions.
Abortion is basic health care for women.

  • 1 in 3 American women will have had an abortion by age 45.
  • About 50% of pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended.
  • 4 in 10 unintended pregnancies are terminated by abortion.
  • In 2008, 1.21 million abortions were performed in US.
  • Teen pregnancy accounts for only 2 in 10 of all abortions
    performed in the US.
  • Women in their twenties account for more than half of all
    abortions performed in the US.
  • 88% of abortions occur in the 1st 12 weeks. Only
    1.5% occur later in the term.
  • 6 in 10 women having abortions already have one or more
    children.
  • These women often cite the need to care for their children as a primary reason for choosing to have  an abortion.

Catholics support birth control and have abortions.

  Read More, click here