Abortion

January 27, 2010, Naples Daily News

Editor, Daily News:

The current national debate about health care and health insurance is being used as a weapon to assail and undercut women’s reproductive health care.

As the debate continues, it is essential that women’s access to the full range of reproductive health services not be compromised. Under present law, some insurance plans cover abortion services. Under the reforms being considered in Congress, the coverage of abortion services will be either severely restricted or nonexistent.

January 23, 2010, Bradenton Herald

SARASOTA — The 37th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion brought activists on both sides of the issue to the streets Friday.

January 23, 2010, Tallahassee Democrat

There's a move to amend Florida's Constitution, adding this sentence: "The words 'person' and 'natural person' apply to all human beings, irrespective of age, race, health, function, condition of physical and/or mental dependency and/or disability, or method of reproduction, from the beginning of the biological development of that human being."

It's called the Personhood Amendment for short, and you can boil down its 42 words to this: "After conception, it's sacred."

January 22, 2010, Tallahassee Democrat

In January, 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that the right to privacy in the U.S. Constitution protects the right of a woman to choose whether to continue a pregnancy to term or to have an abortion.

Yet, 37 years later we face the remarkable possibility that the United States Congress will enact health care reform legislation that singles out abortion from all other medical procedures, with unprecedented and unnecessary restrictions.

Indeed, these restrictions threaten not only to prevent women who will gain access to health insurance from obtaining abortion coverage, but could also result in women losing coverage they currently have. In effect these restrictions chip away at the rights that women and men have fought for and essentially move women backward rather than forward.

by Cecile Richards, President of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America
and Timothy E. Wirth the President of the United Nations Foundation
Posted January 8, 2010 on Huffington Post

Over the past year, the United States has done much to reestablish its standing in the world. Today Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made another monumental stride forward by announcing our nation's renewed commitment to ensuring that women worldwide have access to safe and effective reproductive health care.

We agree with Secretary Clinton: The status quo is unacceptable.