“The Rachel Maddow Show” on Thursday included a discussion with abortion provider LeRoy Carhart about recent threats from the antiabortionrights group Operation Rescue. According to Maddow, the group recently sent a fundraising letter to supporters “celebrating” the closing of Tillers Wichita clinic and “calling for action” against Carharts Nebraska clinic. The letter said that the group will be in Omaha and outside Carharts clinic Aug. 28 and 29 to “encourage and train prolifers” who are working to shut down Carharts clinic. Maddow reports that womens rights groups are encouraging supporters to attend counterprotests in Nebraska.

During her discussion with Carhart, Maddow asked how he and his staff were preparing for the protests. Carhart said the clinic has not canceled any appointments, adding that staff “have tried to meet with all the local authorities to ensure that, first of all, things remain peaceful, and second of all, that access for our clinic is not denied.” He also said that although local and national law enforcement authorities “are doing everything they can” to protect abortion providers and their staff, Congress “needs to get involved.” Carhart said the “biggest omission so far is that [Congress is] not identifying antiabortion terrorism as hate crimes,” citing Tillers murder as an example.

Carhart said he is training physicians and current abortion providers to perform the procedure in the second and third trimester. He said that “we tremendously miss the loss of Dr. Tiller” but that his death has been “a catalyst” and “helped to galvanize the movement for abortion providers” (Maddow, “The Rachel Maddow Show,” MSNBC, 8/27).

Reprinted with kind permission from nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Womens Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Womens Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.

© 2009 The Advisory Board Company. All rights reserved.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (DCalif.) on Wednesday held a private meeting with antiabortionrights Democratic Reps. Mike Doyle (Pa.) and Tim Ryan (Ohio) in an attempt to quell pressure to exclude abortion coverage from the House health reform bill (HR 3200), Roll Call reports. Joined by abortionrights supporter Rep. Diana DeGette (DColo.) Pelosis “point person” on the Energy and Commerce Committee Pelosi attempted to broker areas of agreement on the issue, according to Roll Call. However, antiabortionrights Democrats contend that, beyond Wednesdays meeting, Pelosi has not responded to their concerns by making changes to the House bill (Bendery, Roll Call, 7/22).

The House bill does not mention abortion, but antiabortionrights critics of the measure say it could increase availability of the procedure by requiring health insurance plans to cover services and by providing government funding for subsidized plans, according to the Washington Post. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said this week that decisions on specific benefits like abortion services should be “left to medical experts in the field,” such as a proposed advisory board that would make recommendations on minimum benefits that private insurers must offer. Ryan and a group of centrist Democrats have proposed an amendment that would neither require nor prohibit insurers from covering abortion services, as long as federal funding is not used. Their proposal also says that current state restrictions on insurance coverage of abortion services would remain in effect (Eggen/Stein, Washington Post, 7/23). Currently, private insurers are neither required nor forbidden to cover abortion services. The Hyde Amendment and other federal measures prohibit the use of federal funds to pay for abortion except in very limited cases. Some states use their own money to cover the procedure for lowincome women (Stein, Washington Post, 7/23).

Rep. Bart Stupak (DMich), cochair of the ProLife Caucus, said abortionrights supporters in the House “can continue to ignore us if they want, but at their peril.” He added that the bill should maintain current restrictions on federal funding for abortion. Stupak was among a group of Democrats who sent a letter to Pelosi in June threatening to oppose any health reform bill that does not explicitly forbid federal funding from being used for abortion services (Roll Call, 7/22).

The Post reports that the health care reform debate has “reignited” claims from antiabortionrights groups that President Obamas efforts to find common ground on abortionrelated policies are an attempt “to paper over … support for abortion rights with policies that will do little” to reduce the number of abortions.” Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, said that Obama “says he wants to reduce abortions” but that “the actual policies that this administration is promoting will result in massive public subsidies for abortion and result in a massive increase in the number of abortions.” Abortionrights opponents plan to hold a rally Thursday against the House health reform bill, and Americans United for Life has demanded a meeting with the president to discuss the issue of abortion coverage in health reform.

Abortionrights groups and Democratic leaders say opponents allegations are exaggerated and an attempt to use the health reform debate to further restrict access to legal abortion services under private insurance plans. Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL ProChoice America, said, “This is the kind of divisiveness that the public has grown very tired of.”

The debate over covering abortion services comes as Ryan and abortionrights supporter Rep. Rosa DeLauro (DConn.) prepare to introduce a bill that aims to reduce the need for abortion by encouraging pregnancy prevention and increasing government support for young women with children. The bill has generated “an unusual array of supporters” including the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, NARAL ProChoice America and evangelical leaders like Rev. Joel Hunter of Orlando because its cosponsors represent each side of the abortionrights debate, the Post reports (Eggen/Stein, Washington Post, 7/23).

Reprinted with kind permission from nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Womens Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Womens Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.

© 2009 The Advisory Board Company. All rights reserved.

The following summarizes news coverage of state abortion statistics in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

~ Minnesota The number of abortions performed in Minnesota decreased for the second consecutive year in 2008, according to an annual report from the state Department of Health, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. Except for a onetime increase in 2006, the number of abortions in Minnesota has trended downward since a peak in 1980, when 19,028 procedures were performed. The new report found that 12,948 abortions were performed in the state in 2008, a decrease of 895 from 2007. Women ages 20 to 24 accounted for about onethird of the procedures, the most among any age group. The number of procedures among teenagers continued a decline that began in the 1990s but had leveled off slightly earlier this decade, the report found. The report also found that less than onethird of women reported using contraception and about one in seven was married at the time of conception (Von Sternberg, Minneapolis Star Tribune, 7/1).

~ Wisconsin Wisconsin abortion providers performed 8,229 procedures in 2008, the lowest number since the state began collecting statistics in 1974, according to an annual report by the state Department of Health Services, the AP/Milwaukee JournalSentinel reports. The number of abortions has declined annually since 2003, when 10,557 procedures were performed. State law requires abortion providers to provide DHS with the data. According to the report, slightly more than half of abortions took place in the first eight weeks of pregnancy. Women who had never been married accounted for about threefourths of all procedures. The report found that 12% of abortions occurred among women ages 35 and older; 34% were among women ages 20 to 24; 11% were among women ages 18 and 19; and 6% were among girls ages 15 to 17. The number of abortions among minors decreased from 551 in 2007 to 500 in 2008, with parents providing consent in 452 of those cases (Richmond, AP/Milwaukee JournalSentinel, 6/30).

Reprinted with kind permission from nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Womens Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Womens Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.

© 2009 The Advisory Board Company. All rights reserved.

In the wake of the shooting death of Kansas abortion provider George Tiller, columnist Ellen Goodman writes in the Boston Globe that she “cant help wondering whether rhetoric can justify a crime in the mind of a fanatic.” She continues, “Cant words provide the sort of perverse moral platform that jihadists stand on and the alternate universe in which a lone nut can find a home?” Goodman writes that she does not blame Tillers death on “everyone who checks a prolife box on the pollsters chart,” but it is “well past time for the antiabortion movement to denounce those who are in the profession of inflaming passions.”

Tiller “was a doctor of last resort for many women, especially those women for whom the sonogram did not bring joy but tragic tidings,” Goodman writes, adding, “He refused to be cowed. At the very least, he should be buried with truth.” In his recent commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, President Obama asked, “As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate? How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?” Goodman writes, “One way is for those who truly denounce the murder to take on the chorus, the backup singers, who still provide the doowop for the next deranged soloist.” She concludes, “You see, this suspect was not such a lone gunman. And no, I am afraid, this was not an isolated incident” (Goodman, Boston Globe, 6/5).

Reprinted with kind permission from nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Womens Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Womens Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.

© 2009 The Advisory Board Company. All rights reserved.

In response to recent news reports from Reuters, the Associated Press and other media outlets tying the recession to an increase in demand for abortion, the antiabortionrights community is arguing that women are “choosing their own material comfort over the life of their unborn children” an interpretation that is “wrong on several accounts” Double X contributor Anna Murphy Paul writes in an opinion piece.

“No one wants her most intimate decisions to be driven by money,” but, at the same time, “opting not to have a child you cant afford to raise can be a realistic and responsible if painful choice, one often based on taking good care of the kids you already have” Murphy Paul says. She continues, “Nor is the intrusion of economic concerns on childbearing a phenomenon of this recession, or even the loosening of sexual mores over the past halfcentury; historically, financial hardship has been an everpresent motivation for ending a pregnancy.”

Murphy Paul cites the results of a 2005 Guttmacher Institute survey that found that nearly threefourths of respondents said that the reason they decided to have an abortion was that they “could not afford a baby right now,” which was the secondmost common reason. The report found that the top reason for having an abortion was that children would interfere with womens education, work or ability to care for dependents, all “concerns that are also largely economic in nature,” Murphy Paul writes. She notes that at the time the study was published, “the Dow was still riding high, and the housing bubble seemed it would never pop.” Murphy Paul adds that a 1987 Guttmacher survey on the same subject produced results “almost identical” to the 2005 survey.

However, “to hear the prolife activists tell it, women arent really struggling with difficult choices they just dont want to give up the luxuries to which theyve become accustomed,” Murphy Paul writes. Abortionrights opponents promote offers of counseling and nocost infant supplies provided through “pregnancy resource centers” to support women who choose not to have an abortion, but such centers often provide misleading information or offer little assistance beyond the first few months after birth, she says.

“Prolife activists are surely right about one thing Its tremendously sad when a woman decides that she cant bring into the world a child whom under better circumstances she would have welcomed,” Murphy Paul continues. However, the “harsh rhetoric about selfishness and irresponsibility help far less than an acknowledgement of and lasting aid with the true costs of raising a child,” she writes. According to Murphy Paul, in “the absence of such help, the most responsible act is to face economic reality headon. For some women, that may mean abortion” (Murphy Paul, Double X, 5/15).

Reprinted with kind permission from nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Womens Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Womens Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.

© 2009 The Advisory Board Company. All rights reserved.