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#EndTheLies, Declare Reproductive Rights Advocates as Senate GOP Pushes 20-Week Abortion Ban
"The provocative, inaccurate lies about abortion being spread by this administration and its allies completely strip pregnant people of their dignity and medical needs, putting their health in jeopardy."
Apr 09, 2019
Reproductive rights advocates came together on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning to combat misinformation used by Republican lawmakers to push anti-choice legislation--including a bill currently before Congress that would impose a nationwide 20-week abortion ban.
"Instead of listening to the expertise of medical organizations, healthcare providers, and the real-life situations of patients and families, anti-abortion politicians used this hearing to spread misinformation and stigma about abortion care."
--Dr. Kristyn Brandi, PRH
Pro-choice advocates' demands to #StopTheBans and #EndTheLies came in response to a 10am Senate Judiciary Committee hearing called by Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to promote the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (S.160), which the senator has sponsored since 2013.
"This hearing is a political stunt that has real consequences," said Dr. Kristyn Brandi of Physicians for Reproductive Health (PRH).
"Instead of listening to the expertise of medical organizations, healthcare providers, and the real-life situations of patients and families, anti-abortion politicians used this hearing to spread misinformation and stigma about abortion care," Brandi added. "This is plain wrong."
\u201cWe're here on Capitol Hill to call out the lies about abortion that @senjudiciary and abortion opponents keep spewing. What they're trying to do is distract you from all the abortion restrictions and bans that states are trying to pass. #StopTheBans #EndTheLies\u201d— Planned Parenthood Action (@Planned Parenthood Action) 1554818978
\u201cNARAL members are on Capitol Hill this morning waiting to head into the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on legislation that would ban abortion at 20 weeks in ALL 50 STATES. We will NOT be intiminated by these cruel attempts to strip away our basic freedoms. #StopTheBans\u201d— NARAL (@NARAL) 1554818341
Under Graham's proposed legislation, a healthcare provider who performs or attempts to perform the procedure after 20 weeks post-fertilization could be fined, jailed for up to five years, or both. The only exceptions for the time limit would be to save the life of the pregnant person and cases of rape or incest.
Graham claimed during his opening remarks at the hearing that "there is significant scientific evidence that abortion inflicts tremendous pain on the unborn child" and once Americans "understand" that, there will be widespread support for banning the procedure after 20 weeks.
Critics took issue with both his claims about public opinion and medical science:
\u201cSen. Graham has already started out his hearing with a slew of anti-choice lies, suggesting that supporting safe access to abortion is an unpopular opinion in the U.S. That couldn't be further from the truth: 7 in 10 Americans support access to safe, legal abortion. #StopTheBans\u201d— NARAL (@NARAL) 1554819309
Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who denounced the bill as unconstitutional and dangerous, argued that "today's debate is not about passing legislation to improve medical care--it's about advancing an ideological agenda."
Challenging Graham's claims about pain, Feinstein quoted from a memo by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which says that "the fetus does not even have the physiological capacity to perceive pain until at least 24 weeks of gestation."
FactCheck.org, after reviewing relevant research and speaking with several experts, concluded in 2015 that "a firm starting point for pain in the developing fetus is essentially impossible to pin down, and that definitive claims regarding pain perception at 20 weeks are unfounded."
\u201cThis morning, some of our allies in Congress spoke out against a dangerous proposal to ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy in all 50 states. \n\nThank you @SenFeinstein, @SenBlumenthal, @SenatorDurbin, @maziehirono, and @amyklobuchar for standing up for women.\u201d— Center for Reproductive Rights (@Center for Reproductive Rights) 1554842386
Rev. Katherine Ragsdale, head of the National Abortion Federation, noted that "this is not the first time that lies demonizing abortion providers and the women they help have found such fertile ground," recalling the 1980s and 1990s, when "politicians looking for an issue to fundraise on, began spreading misinformation and lies about abortion providers that are echoed today."
"This language went unchecked and abortion providers were targeted by anti-choice extremists who were told they were stopping murderers. Shootings began. Fires. Bombings. A kidnapping. People chained themselves in an attempt to block clinic doors. I remember because I was there and so were many of our members," she said. "It is time for anti-choice politicians and extremists to tell the truth."
Reproductive rights advocates took to Twitter to debunk lies from the GOP lawmakers and their anti-choice witnesses, and emphasize the ultimate goal of "sham" hearings like this one:
\u201cThe purpose of abortion ban hearings like the one in the US Senate today is to lay down a smokescreen & mask the real agenda that anti-abortion politicians and activists are pushing\u2014to ban #abortion. https://t.co/sZBSart0V1 #StopTheBans\u201d— Guttmacher Institute (@Guttmacher Institute) 1554825218
Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center (NWLC), charged that the hearing "makes patients' lives and health care a political game."
"It is another blow in the Trump-Pence administration's all-out attempt to gut Roe, outlaw abortion, and criminalize women for controlling their own bodies," Graves said. "The provocative, inaccurate lies about abortion being spread by this administration and its allies completely strip pregnant people of their dignity and medical needs, putting their health in jeopardy."
Pro-choice advocates also celebrated the testimonies of Valerie Peterson--who shared her story of terminating a pregnancy due to serious fetal abnormalities--and Georgia state Sen. Jen Jordan, a Democrat who has garnered national attention for speaking out against her state's pending "heartbeat" bill.
\u201c"I believe that no one else can know what was best for my family and me or for any other woman." \nThank you, Dr. Valerie Peterson, for sharing your story. #StopTheBans\u201d— National Women's Law Center (@National Women's Law Center) 1554821707
Georgia is one of several states that bans abortions at 20 weeks--at least, until Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signs the heartbeat bill. As Jordan pointed out, the state also has devastatingly high rates of maternal mortality--the worst in the United States, which ranks last among developed countries in terms of pregnancy-related deaths.
\u201c"Since the passage of Georgia's 20-week ban [on abortion] we have seen the maternal mortality rate double, if not triple." \u2014 @senatorjen speaks out on why this ban is an attack on our health. #StopTheBans\u201d— National Women's Law Center (@National Women's Law Center) 1554822592
During the hearing, Sen. Mazie K. Hirono (D-Hawaii) highlighted how abortion bans disproportionately impact people of color and those living in poverty. She also pointed out that many of the politicians fighting to roll back reproductive rights have also attacked other healthcare legislation and programs, from the Affordable Care Act to Medicaid.
\u201cAbortion bans have a "tremendously adverse impact on poor people, poor women, and minority women. We know this." Thank you, @maziehirono for calling out the disproportionate harm of abortion restrictions.\n#StoptheBans\u201d— All* Above All (@All* Above All) 1554819659
\u201c"If the people supporting these laws really cared about women & families they would know that abortion restrictions result in more women dying & they wouldn't be trying so hard to get rid of the ACA & Medicaid." @maziehirono #StopTheBans \n\nYES!!!!!\u201d— Feminist Majority (@Feminist Majority) 1554822294
"If politicians truly want to create a safe, just society, they should focus their time and attention on passing legislation that expands access to healthcare," concluded Brandi. "They should be passing the EACH Woman Act, supporting Medicaid expansion, ensuring young people have comprehensive sex education, reducing the maternal mortality rate, instituting paid family leave, and eliminating discrimination against pregnant people."
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We Trust Women's Reproductive Decision-Making
Statement by National NOW President Toni Van Pelt
Feb 05, 2019
"The moral responsibility of decision making [on abortion], at whatever the gestation, should rest with women, their doctors and their families, because only they can know their circumstances and the results of their actions. There is no reason to assume that any higher burden of justification is required than for earlier procedures." -Jon O'Brien, President of Catholics for Choice.
The National Organization for Women (NOW) stands behind Catholics for Choice's statement on moral clarity in abortion. While abortion rights are constantly under attack by conservative religious groups and extremist abortion rights opponents, the vicious attacks on women's reproductive rights advocates, such as Virginia Del. Kathy Tran (D) are particularly chilling. There is little doubt that these groups will escalate their attacks on women's reproductive health rights - and anyone who speaks out for them -- as we head into a highly contested presidential election year.
Reportedly, President Trump will use his State of the Union message to shame and demean women who seek abortion care. His use of this platform for his own political gain is reprehensible and his presidency clearly endangers women's constitutionally-protected right to abortion.
Last week, in standing up for her female constituents, Delegate Tran (D) demonstrated more moral responsibility and character in decision making than any anti-abortion rights activist ever will. Currently, women in Virginia can get a third-trimester abortion with the certification of three physicians who attest that the abortion is needed to save the woman's life or needed to prevent "substantial and irremediable" harm to the woman's physical or mental health. Tran's bill would have done nothing to change when women can get an abortion. As Tran said herself, the bill would only remove the "medically unnecessary and unduly burdensome barriers" by reducing the number of doctors needed to one, allowing women to make decisions on their own health in a timely manner.
Anti-abortion activists paint this picture of late-term abortions as being common and unnecessary (and they do this to demean women), but the opposite is clear. According to the Center for Disease Control, in 2015 only 1.3% of abortions were considered "late-term" (20+ weeks). Women request late-term abortions for many reasons but most are for medical necessity, such as life-threatening risk to the mother, or lack of fetal viability. These women are not impulsive in their decision making - it is a choice they make consciously for their own health and safety. Denying them the right of choice is saying that women should not be trusted to make their own medical decisions. As Catholics for Choice puts it "if you believe a woman should be able to follow her conscience in decisions around a pregnancy and you respect her bodily autonomy, then you support her right to choose not just in circumstances in which you feel comfortable, but those in which she decides is best."
Most Americans (60%) understand the importance of placing trust in women and the need for a woman's right to an abortion according to Pew Research Center. Additionally, a majority of Catholics say that abortion should be legal in most cases, as do majorities of evangelical and mainline Protestants. Seventy-four percent of religiously-unaffiliated survey respondents say that abortion should be legal in most or all cases.
These extremists attack Tran with no consideration for the situations behind why women would seek out a third-term abortion to begin with - which involve a compelling and often urgent health complication. They purposely misconstrue the facts of the bill to use it for their own political gain; the same tactics they have employed for decades to inflame the right-wing, anti-choice base and to spur anti-abortion rights extremists to take action. Del. Tran has now received numerous death threats.
These kinds of tactics have led to thousands of incidents of clinic harassment, death threats, vandalism, firebombing, and murders of doctors and clinic personnel. Donald Trump's inflammatory statement during the 2016 campaign that women who have abortions should be punished and his appointment of dozens of abortion rights opponents to key positions, including the Supreme Court, has only made the situation worse. The level of the most severe types of anti-abortion violence and threats of severe violence escalated in 2018 and remains dangerously high, according to the Feminist Majority Foundation's 2018 National Clinic Violence Survey.
We urge political leaders to empathize and act with strong moral leadership in advocating for women who have been denied respect and trust in making their own healthcare decisions. And we urge them to push back on colleagues who demean and attack women's decision making in matters of reproductive health.
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NARAL and People's Defense to Hold Massive Day of Action to Oppose Kavanaugh Nomination
“Stand For Justice” Rallies to Happen Nationwide on August 26th
Jul 11, 2018
NARAL Pro-Choice America, The People's Defense, and progressive grassroots organizations will hold a national day of action, "Stand For Justice," on August 26, 2018, Women's Equality Day. On August 26th, Americans will rally in all 50 states to demand that senators oppose Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court.
Groups already signed on to the day of action include: NARAL Pro-Choice America, The People's Defense, American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Color of Change, CREDO, Daily Kos, Demand Justice, End Citizens United, Every Voice, Feminist Majority Foundation, Indivisible, MoveOn, National Women's Law Center, PCCC, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Religious Institute, Stand Up America, and the Working Families Party.
Donald Trump has long promised to only nominate a justice who will end Roe v. Wade and criminalize abortion. Trump has found his man in Brett Kavanaugh. Which is why dozens of organizations and thousands of people are ready to take to the streets on August 26th.
"This August 26th, Americans will stand united in commitment for our freedom and our future to tell the U.S. Senate that they must vote to block Judge Kavanaugh's nomination for the Supreme Court. Brett Kavanaugh is a sure fire vote to end the protections of Roe, criminalize abortion, and punish women just as the president promised," said NARAL President Ilyse Hogue. "People know what is at stake in this fight. Kavanaugh would decimate reproductive rights, voting rights, workers' rights, LGBTQ rights, and immigrant rights for generations. Senators in all fifty states must listen to their constituents, and do their jobs to uphold the will of the people and the soul of our country, and block this nomination."
To learn more about "Stand for Justice" on August 26th, click here.
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