News & Commentary

In last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee meeting, tempers flared as anti-choice organizations voiced their support a controversial bill. Senator Kuipers’ Senate Bill 1283 would add language to the state’s Public Health Code, essentially asking medical providers to use their most technologically advanced ultrasound machines for abortion procedures. Specifically, there was expressed outrage that organizations not supporting the bill did not meet the supporting organizations’ verbal presence in live testimony. At the height of this apparent disappointment, one senator took the written testimony submitted by the ACLU of Michigan, crumbled it to the size of a baseball, and threw it across the table. As I sat there observing, I wondered, “was this an indication of frustration or was this merely a stunt to provoke those that did not wish to speak?” Sometimes silence can be so loud. The issue is not that organizations not supporting the bill simply did not speak up because they had nothing to say. The issue, rather, is why. In essence, both sides of abortion debates both have the same goal—saving lives. The heart of the matter, however, is lost in the details including bills such as Senator Kuipers’. What needs to be understood is that saving lives starts before a woman comes to the crossroads of considering terminating her pregnancy. Saving lives starts with access to resources and education. Saving lives really begins with reducing unplanned pregnancies. Putting resources into preventing unplanned pregnancies could not only reduce the number of abortions, but planned pregnancies can decrease infant mortality and teenage pregnancies. Comprehensive sex education plays a role by offering the best and most responsible information for teens to make informed decisions when it comes to sexual activity. Comprehensive sex education probably does not encourage teenage sex no more than abstinence-only education has discouraged teen sex. If teens do decide to engage in sexual activity, it would be in their best interest and society’s best interest to prevent unwanted pregnancies as well as a number of other uninvited consequences like sexually transmitted infections (STI). Resources should also be targeted towards state programs such as Plan First!, a Medicaid-waiver program, that helps increase access to low-income women for family planning services. These services include contraception, STI treatment, and other related medical care. This is especially important for women who are uninsured or under-insured due to unemployment or employers not offering medical benefits. Programs targeted towards preventing unplanned pregnancy also help reduce infant mortality. By ensuring that women have healthy planned pregnancies, the rates of infant mortality are greatly reduced. This is an especially crucial public health issue here in Michigan where rates of infant mortality have begun to rise in the metro Detroit area in the past few years. Bills such as Senator Kuipers’ do not truly address the serious issues of abortion and unplanned pregnancy in Michigan. Instead, statutory amendments like this just flare up continuing political debates focused on the wrong issues. Requiring abortion providers to use the “most technologically advanced ultrasound equipment available at that location” comes off as redundant and bypasses the crucial steps really needed to address abortion and unplanned pregnancies. This week, the bill is making another appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee for testimony. For the greater goal of reducing unplanned pregnancies, I hope our legislators really hear what is being said...from both supporters AND opposition.

The pro-choice movement in Michigan has been on the defense in our state legislature for the past ten years. There has not been a single significant pro-choice bill signed into law during this period, and the pro-choice advocates have spent too much time and energy debating the intransigent issue that is abortion. A couple of years ago, we worked with Planned Parenthood and the wider pro-choice coalition in Lansing to move the debate away from abortion and toward common sense solutions to reduce the need for abortions – solutions we believe everyone could agree upon. We reached out to Michigan Right to Life, the Catholic Conference and our anti-choice legislators and asked them to put politics aside and work with us to make sure that Michigan citizens have the resources they need to make educated choices. We made inroads, and as a result Michigan’s legislative pro-choice caucus worked hard to coordinate a package of bills that include policies to address issues such as:

This week, the Michigan legislature introduced one of the most comprehensive packages of prevention legislation. This is not about pro-choice or anti-choice, but about reducing the number of unintended pregnancies, which account for half of all pregnancies. Shouldn’t that be the ultimate goal? As Senator Gilda Jacobs said, these 15 bills are about basic human health rights and needs.

Happy Anniversary Birth Control! Not the anniversary of the invention of the “pill” or the “IUD”, but of an individual’s right to actually obtain and use contraceptives. It seems incredible, but that right was only fully granted in 1972, when the US Supreme Court in Eisenstadt v. Baird decided that it was unconstitutional to deny contraceptives to unmarried persons. It was only a few years before Griswold v. Connecticut, that the Supreme Court declared that forbidding the use of contraceptives violates the right to marital privacy, a decision that was determined to only apply to married persons. So, 37 years ago the US Supreme Court declared that woman should be fully in charge of their reproductive future. So why does it seem like we’ve been backsliding? Today in Michigan, pharmacists can choose to deny to fill a prescription for birth control based on their own personal moral convictions. And, the Michigan legislature continues their attempts to pass a law enshrining that practice as a right in statute. Michigan employers who offer an insurance plan which includes prescription coverage can choose to remove contraceptives from the prescription plan, a choice not available for any other category of covered drugs. Even though the EEOC has declared this practice a violation of Title VII and the Michigan Department of Civil Rights declared it sex discrimination under the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, the practice is not against the law in Michigan. But things look hopeful as this important anniversary rolls around. The Michigan House of Representatives is introducing a comprehensive package of legislation that will require a pharmacy fill a prescription as written, leaving it up to the pharmacy to make arrangements to honor an individual pharmacists religious convictions without affecting the customer. The legislation will require “contraceptive equity” – a requirement that contraceptives cannot be excluded from an employer’s otherwise comprehensive prescription coverage plan. Other bills in the package will require that hospital emergency rooms offer emergency contraception to rape survivors and that public school sex education courses must include medically accurate information. These common sense measures are long overdue. Encourage your elected officials in Michigan to help restore a woman’s right and ability to control her reproductive future by supporting this package of legislation.

Once again, Right to Life has launched a false campaign designed to erect more hurdles for women attempting to exercise their constitutionally protected right to decide whether to bear children. New bills in the Michigan Legislature, called the Coercive Abortion Prevention Act, are the first in the country to attempt this particular strategy. The bills would amend the public health code to require medical practitioners to perform what they call a "coercion and intimidation screening" on patients before they can obtain an abortion. Under this misuse of the informed consent law, doctors must assure that a patient understands that it is illegal to be coerced into having an abortion and determine if the patient indicates that she is a victim of coercion. If so, the bills would require a pregnant woman to delay her abortion for at least another 24 hours.

Bush's stand on abortion calls for moral clarity Following one of the closest and most contentious elections in recent memory, pundits across the country blamed "moral values" as the social fault line dividing America. The president, who believes that the election results gave him "political capital" to spend, can be fully expected to do so on an issue that his far-right constituency cares deeply about -- overturning Roe v. Wade. He has stated clearly that he will do what is necessary to limit women's reproductive rights. As he begins his second term, and following the weekend celebrations of the 32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we should ask whose moral values are we talking about? What is moral, for example, about spending millions of taxpayer dollars on programs that deny sexually active teens information they need to protect themselves from pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection? Since 1997, more than half a billion dollars have been allocated to sex education programs that focus exclusively on abstinence, censoring any information that might enable young people to make responsible and healthy decisions. There is no conclusive evidence that abstinence-only programs work, although there is evidence that they deter sexually active teens from using appropriate protection. Despite this reality, and despite testimony from parents of school-aged children rejecting this approach, the Michigan Legislature recently passed legislation that dismantles a comprehensive sex-education curriculum used in public schools. What is moral about denying a rape victim assistance to prevent a pregnancy resulting from an assault? Emergency contraception, a form of birth control that when taken within days of unprotected intercourse reduces the risk of pregnancy by as much as 89 percent, has become one of the most recent targets of attack. With it, up to 22,000 pregnancies that result each year from rape could be prevented. Yet, in releasing the first-ever national protocol for treating sexual assault victims, President George W. Bush's Justice Department excluded any mention of emergency contraception. What is moral about spending thousands of desperately needed taxpayer dollars to defend laws passed by the Michigan Legislature that would prevent physicians from protecting the health or life of a woman when she or he believes it is medically necessary? Like two previous Michigan bills successfully challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union in federal courts, the "legal birth definition act," passed last spring by the Michigan Legislature, does not contain a sufficient health exception in accordance with requirements set out by the Supreme Court. The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan has to, yet again, prepare litigation to fight this latest effort to ban abortion in Michigan. What is moral about denying health coverage to a pregnant woman in need of an abortion when her doctor believes it is necessary to protect her health? Government health services programs for the poor, such as Medicaid, limit abortion coverage to cases where a woman's pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or if her life is in jeopardy. It will not pay for an abortion if a woman's health is threatened. What is moral about forcing a low-income woman to choose between paying for an abortion she needs to preserve her health and paying for food, shelter and other basic necessities for her family? Indeed, what is moral about forcing a woman to continue a pregnancy when she is unable to care for a child? When she wants to finish high school or isn't financially or emotionally ready to become a parent? We live in a world now where health care workers at places such as Planned Parenthood that provide a wide range of health care services, including prenatal care and parenting skills classes, have to work behind bullet-proof glass; where fewer and fewer medical schools are willing to train physicians to provide abortions; and where physicians have to bear the interference of the far right in the provision of their medical services. The moral value that I cherish is a world in which every child is a wanted child. The moral value that I cherish is a world in which physicians and health care workers can offer the best medical treatment needed and possible to their patients. The moral value that I cherish is a world in which every woman is able to freely exercise her most basic right to make decisions about her body free from governmental interference and with the best medical information possible.