ProgressWomen

Mark Hodges, KMOX Capitol Bureau –  February 14, 2012 8:26 AM

Supporters of Planned Parenthood spoke out against proposed Senate legislation that would make exceptions to President Barack Obama’s mandate requiring employers to cover contraception in health care plans.

Sen. Chris Kelly, D-Columbia, said the Catholic Church as a business shouldn’t be exempt from Federal law.

“It’s really important to separate the concept of the religious institution, the community of believers, from the corporate entity,” Kelly said. “When a church, including my church, is behaving as a business, it ought to comply with a law having to do with the legal regulation of that particular business. I think that’s an easy principle to understand, or else we could all hide in religious exemptions.”

Democratic Whip Mike Colona described himself as the only openly gay male serving in the Missouri Legislature. He said he doesn’t care if people disagree with his lifestyle, but he does care if people infringe upon his rights.

“What bothers me is when you deny me health care coverage,” Colona said, comparing the discrimination he could face to that of a Catholic woman requesting birth control. “This is a public health issue. And the question becomes, when does that slippery slope get to the point where we say enough is enough.”

On the other side, Sen. John Lamping, R-St. Louis County, said every business should have a right to choose what health care coverage it provides to its employees.

“Health care is a benefit, and not all employers choose to offer that benefit,” Lamping said. “Up until now, employers could choose to offer the benefit however they saw fit. They could have a good plan, a bad plan, it could cover lots of things, it could cover a few things. Now, this really hits home.”

Sen. Scott Rupp, R-St. Charles County, introduced similar legislation. For him, it’s about religious freedom.

“This is just a full-frontal assault on religious liberty in the state,” Rupp said. “You have organizations that are now being told they have to go against their beliefs, and we’re going to force you to do that. I believe in the separation of Church and State, and I believe that the Federal government has no business telling religious organizations what they should and shouldn’t be doing.”

No action has been taken on any of these bills in either the House or the Senate.

Look here for original source from CBS St. Louis Local News from KMOX and here for the bills - SJR 49 and HB 1541.

By Mike McAuliff, Huffington Post

First Posted: 02/ 8/2012 10:38 am Updated: 02/ 8/2012 11:43 am

WASHINGTON — Inspired by the backlash over the brief attempt by Susan G. Komen for the Cure to cut funding for Planned Parenthood, a group of senators Wednesday is launching a bid to organize 1 million people in support of women’s rights.

Led by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), seven Democratic senators and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee are appealing to backers on all of their websites to sign on to “One Million Strong For Women” in hopes of harnessing the energy displayed in the backlash against Komen.

“The strong public outcry in response to the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood last week — which they later reversed — shows how powerful we can be when we come together,” says an email expected to be sent Wednesday by Gillibrand’s office and obtained by The Huffington Post.

“Our right-wing opponents continue to launch attack after attack against women’s rights, women’s health, and women’s economic security — and we’ve got to fight back every single day,” the appeal argues.

“The next battle over the Obama administration’s decision to make contraception more affordable under the new health care law is already underway,” it says, referring to a White House decision to require most employers to include birth control coverage in their insurance plans. “It’s hard to believe that in the 21st century we have to fight for access to birth control, but that is the fact — and there will be many more fights in the weeks ahead.”

One fight as recently as Tuesday in the House of Representatives was over a Republican bill that aims to extend civil rights to fetuses, barring doctors from performing abortions if the physician thinks the woman is seeking to end a pregnancy because of sex or race.

“Our opponents tried to defund Planned Parenthood, in the federal budget and in many states. They tried to destroy our Medicare and Medicaid lifelines, which would be particularly devastating to women,” the email says. “They tried to get the Susan G. Komen Foundation to cut off support for Planned Parenthood.”

Other senators involved are Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Read more here.

A top official of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation who was involved in the controversy over the group’s funding of Planned Parenthood resigned Tuesday.

Karen Handel, vice president for public policy, acknowledged that she had supported Komen’s decision to pull funding for Planned Parenthood in a resignation letter obtained by The Atlanta Journal Constitution. However, she said the decision-making process began before she joined the organization last year, and the policy change was thoroughly vetted at every level within the organization and unanimously agreed to by the board at a November meeting.

“The Board specifically discussed various issues, including the need to protect our mission by ensuring we were not distracted or negatively affected by any other organization’s real or perceived challenges,” Handel wrote to Komen’s CEO and founder Nancy Brinker.

In an interview, Handel acknowledged she played a role in Komen’s decision to defund Planned Parenthood, but also pushed back against allegations that she was the sole actor in the decision.

“I clearly acknowledge [my role] in the process, but to suggest I had sole authority is just absurd,” Handel told Fox News Tuesday afternoon. “The policy was vetted at all appropriate levels.”

Handel reiterated that Komen had stopped funding Planned Parenthood because of new grantmaking policies, further explaining that “controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood” also played a role.

By Jo Mannies – St. Louis Beacon

Thirty-four members of the Missouri General Assembly’s bipartisan Progressive Caucus have formally asked the national Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation “to reconsider their decision to cut cancer-screening funding to Planned Parenthood.”

The group has signed letters sent to the foundation and to its chief executive, Nancy Brinker.

(Click here to read the Beacon’s article on the controversy.)

“The foundation’s decision to cut funding for breast cancer prevention, screening, and education at Planned Parenthood health centers will affect hundreds of thousands of women,” said State Rep.Stacey Newman, D-Richmond Heights and chair of the caucus.

The caucus calls the Komen decision “simply wrong.”

The caucus is siding with more than 50 members of Congress who are defending Planned Parenthood, citing its health care programs for hundreds of thousands of women nationally “who would otherwise have no treatment.”

The Komen foundation had been issuing grants of at least $700,000 annually to Planned Parenthood for health services and education. The foundation is dropping the agency because of a congressional investigation into its activities.

No Planned Parenthood operations in Missouri receive Komen grants.

Said Newman:  “So many women, particularly low income and students, rely on these services. This is about health and preventing cancer, not a political agenda. “We all know many women who have relied on Planned Parenthood for screenings or other well-woman exams which have unexpectedly detected early stages of cancer. Many lives have been saved because of access to Planned Parenthood preventive services.”

Newman noted that the Progressive Caucus recently introduced a joint resolution in the Missouri House in favor of “family planning and wellness services which Missouri women depend on for their reproductive health.”

The letter to Koman is signed by:  State Representatives Atkins, Carlson, Carter, Colona, Ellinger, Ellington, Gray Walton, Hughes, Jones (Tishaura), Kelly , Kirkton, Lampe, May, McCann Beatty, McCreery, McDonald, McGeoghean, McNeil, Montecillo, Morgan, Mott Oxford, Newman, Nichols, Pace, Pierson, Rizzo, Schupp, Sifton, Smith (Clem), Spreng, Still, Talboy, Taylor and Webb.

By Amanda Marcotte  – Slate.com  |  Posted Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012, at 6:24 PM ET

Planned Parenthood clinical assistant Nicki Bailey discusses the new abortion laws with a patient in Austin. Photo by Eric Schlegel, Texas Tribune

In a shocking move Tuesday afternoon, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the country’s most famous breast cancer charity, pulled its grants for breast-cancer screenings from Planned Parenthood. Komen claims that their reason is that Planned Parenthood is under investigation from Congress, but as it’s well-understood on both the left and the right that the investigation, headed by Rep. Cliff Stearns, is a nuisance investigation that will almost surely turn up nothing, this excuse sounds lame indeed. The likelier explanation is the one offered by Planned Parenthood, that Komen caved under relentless pressure from anti-choice activists who oppose Planned Parenthood for offering abortions as well as low-cost contraception and STD prevention and treatment. In addition, Komen has a history of not playing nice with other women’s health organizations. Planned Parenthood has created an emergency fund to replace the Komen grants, to keep the breast-cancer screening service from being interrupted.

The existence of breast-cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood has always been a thorn in the anti-choice side. Most of Planned Parenthood’s services are related to the choice to be sexually active—contraception, STD screening and treatment, cervical cancer screening—making it easy to write off those services as unnecessary if you follow the strict abstinence-only prescription the Christian right has for women. Breast cancer, however, can strike the lifelong virgin, the married woman who only has sex for procreation, and the dirty fornicator (i.e. the vast majority of American women) alike. Because of this, anti-choicers have tried to create a rift between women’s health advocates who focus on breast cancer and those who focus on reproductive health concerns below the waist. Today, they had a victory with Komen’s act of cowardice.

No matter how much anti-choicers wish otherwise, it’s not feasible to create an approach to women’s health that separates good girl concerns from bad girl concerns. For instance, many women land in gynocologist’s offices seeking contraceptive services and cervical-cancer screenings, and doctors use that opportunity to teach the art of breast self-exam. As noted inmy previous post on the Santorums’ pregnancy troubles, even the world of the hated abortion provider and the much-vaunted obstetrician can’t be so easily separated, as the latter is often called upon to have knowledge of pregnancy termination in case of a medical emergency.

In the end, the grant money is less important than the symbolism of Komen buying into the conservative myth of good-girl health care vs. bad-girl health care. In reality, women’s health care can only work if it’s comprehensive health care. Komen has already been under serious scrutiny by those who argue that the organization cares more about shoring up their image than making real progress in the fight for women’s health, and with this move today, they proved their critics right.

Click here for more information.

Thanks to @TrustWomen for bringing this Roll Call article to my attention.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor spoke last week at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. He gave the predictable “pro-liberty, anti-taxes” talking points and criticized President Obama’s foreign policy. Cantor also tossed the conservative crowd some “red meat” on the issue of abortion.

Roll Call‘s John Stanton reports:

On abortion, the marquee issue of the annual conference, Cantor said that while Republicans have worked to block federal funding for abortion in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, “unfortunately, this is not the way things played out. And this is why next week we will stand up again” on a bill so “no health care worker has to participate in abortions against their will.”

Cantor also attacked Planned Parenthood, a family planning organization that has long been targeted by conservatives for its support for abortion rights.

“I can tell you that after November 2012, we look forward to a Senate and a White House that will partner with us” to kill funding for “any and all organizations that perform abortions,” Cantor said.

Never mind that there is and has been a law in place that mandates no federal funding pays for abortions. (See: Hyde Amendment, The) Never mind that 97% of the services provided by Planned Parenthood are not abortion. Never mind that Planned Parenthood is the sole source of health care for many low-income women and men, providing cancer screenings, well-woman exams, STI tests, contraception. Finally, never mind cutting off people’s access to contraception results in unintended pregnancies, 40% of which end in abortion, the very thing that attendees of the Values Voter Summit abhor.

Read the full Roll Call story HERE