The Mercury News reported recently on the increase in birth control related visits across Northern California clinics. Comparing the number of visits per month to the previous year, there has been a peak of 25% more visits in December 2008 compared to December 2007 at these clinics.
The article quotes San Jose clinic manager, Eileen Sims: “women coming to her clinic for birth control tend to fall into two categories: those who want to start and those who are on birth control but lost their job or private insurance and can no longer afford the cost.” Besides the cost conundrum women find themselves in with affording birth control, the article also reports that immigrants, who are here on visas, are concerned about losing their jobs if they become pregnant, and therefore are increasing their birth control usage.
The majority of people served at Planned Parenthood clinics, and other public health clinics in California, depend on Family PACT (Planning, Access, Care and Treatment), the state’s Medicaid program for family planning services. A recent report put out by the UCSF Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, reveals an increase of women in need of Family PACT services from 1999 to 2004, topping off at 1.6 million women receiving services in the 2003-2004 Fiscal Year. Unfortunately this program is at risk of getting its funding cut, due to major budgetary problems in California. Other states, such as Texas, are also experiencing budgetary problems in health care.
We recently wrote about the six Planned Parenthood clinics in El Paso, TX that have been closed due to monetary problems. These Texas clinics provided vital sexual health services to both men and women, and now there are more people who are without a clinic to access, so it is extremely important that we fight to keep the clinics that are left, open in every state.
The debate in the Senate Finance Committee is heating up and comprehensive reproductive health care coverage may be jeopardized. Health care reform is of paramount importance to all Americans, and especially to Latinas who have the highest uninsured rate of women from any racial and ethnic group in the United States. Any restriction on women’s health care is unacceptable and in order to ensure adequate access and coverage for all women we ask you to contact the Senate Finance Committee and demand that essential reproductive health care services are not left out of the health care platform.
The time is now to take a stand and let your voices be heard! Take action to ensure that our reproductive health care services are not compromised!
Ask the Senate Finance Committee to:
• Protect the reproductive health of Latinas
• Oppose onerous bans on reproductive health care services, including abortion care, for all women
• Stand with Latinas to ensure our access to comprehensive reproductive health care
• Stand up against divisive anti-choice restrictions
To contact the members of the Senate Finance Committee, please click on the members’ websites listed here for contact info.
Read NLIRH’s Policy Priorities for Health Care Reform here.
In Arizona, arguably the state with the toughest immigration policies, a legislative proposal threatened to allow and require officials and agencies of the state, counties, cities and towns to perform racial profiling. If the bill had been enacted, police officers in Arizona would have been required to subject immigrants, residents and even American citizens to racial profiling by trying to determine the immigration status of anyone that does not appear to be a documented immigrant.
Furthermore, the proposal had the goal of transforming the civil infraction of trespassing a country’s borders into a criminal infraction by stating that those who are found to have entered the country illegally and are deemed “first-time offenders” will be charged with a misdemeanor and could serve up to six months in prison and that those deemed to be “returning offenders” will be charged with a felony and could serve up to 2.5 years. The Washington Post reported recently that this measure would have made Arizona “the only state to criminalize the presence of illegal immigrants through an expansion of its trespassing law”
The bill, which cleared the state Senate on June 15th with a 16-12 vote was rejected by the House by a five vote margin. The fact that this law got even this close to passing is frightening, and shows how deep seated the anti-immigrant sentiment is in this country.
Recently Congress has started debating how to reform the ailing U.S. health care system. A Senate committee is currently considering a comprehensive bill backed by Democrats and the Obama administration; while the House is conducting hearings this week on the Tri Committee Proposal, a single health care reform bill. Both chambers are striving to vote on bills before the August recess so that the conference committee can negotiate a compromise and send it to President Obama by October.
NLIRH supports health care reform that will move our current system toward one that will improve the health, and well-being of all Latinas, their families and communities. We embrace a human rights approach to health care, ensuring that all health services are accessible, available, affordable, and of good quality for everyone.
In particular, the Latina Institute supports a health care system that addresses the needs of all Latinas, including undocumented and low-income women, recognizing the following key concerns:
The current health care system leaves many Latinas falling through the cracks; 38% of Latinas are uninsured, the highest rate amongst all groups of women.
The new system must include a full and comprehensive range of services, including coverage for family planning, abortions, prenatal care and preventive services.
This system should be not only inclusive of all people and offer a comprehensive range of services, but also emphasize culturally competent and linguistically appropriate services.
The tragic murder of Dr. George Tiller has led to a growing discussion on the topic of access to late term abortions in the United States. However, an article posted on Salon brings to light a graver situation that is not being talked about so far in the popular media: there are less and less physicians offering abortion services at all. As we see the numbers of abortion providers shrinking, it is important to realize what this phenomenon means for Latinas access to abortion in the US.
Literature on access to abortion services for Latinas points out that an important contributing factor is the availability of health care providers who speak Spanish and offer information in a way that is culturally appropriate. Also, the provider must be able to work with Latina immigrants who are less likely to have knowledge about US laws regarding reproductive rights. The lack of providers with this knowledge may affect Latina’s access to general reproductive health services.
We need to pay attention to the number of health practitioners who can provide adequate services: physicians, certified nurse-midwives, nurse practitioners and physician assistants. As the Salon article exposes, medical students are not receiving enough training on family planning during their studies (not even all OB/GYN residents have access to training in abortion procedures). In addition, the fear caused violence and threats to providers are enough to discourage health practitioners from providing these services.
As one of the few doctors who still offer late abortion in the U.S. said in a PBS interview, “You don’t have to make abortion illegal if you make it impossible.” Now, more than ever, the movement for Latina reproductive rights needs the support of professionals who work in the health services arena, especially those who are Latinos/as, in order to ensure that this service will continue to be available to the women in our communities.
If you are or are planning to be a health care provider, learn about how you can make a difference in the Clinicians for Choice website. If you’re not, find out at I am Dr. Tiller other ways in which you can facilitate access to abortion care and positively impact the health of thousands of Latinas.
Contributed by Paula Latortue-Albino, Communications and Development Intern
As a counselor a few years ago, I remember the story of a young immigrant woman. Having been raped by her uncle repeatedly, she eventually wound up pregnant and he forced her to get an abortion. She recounted that he punched her in the face while in his parked car, as people passed by, outside the clinic when she refused to go inside.
Indeed, lately there has been increasing awareness around sexual coercion and reproductive control, as a growing picture of violence against women. This week an article was published on AlterNet and the kNOw MORE campaign debuted last year.
A growing number of studies, experts and young women themselves are testifying to boyfriends demanding unprotected sex, lying about “pulling out,” hiding or destroying birth control — flushing pills down the toilet, say — and preventing (or, in some cases, forcing) abortion.
Such examples of violence, in the form of sexual coercion and reproductive control, result in reproductive health harms including STI’s, HIV/AIDS, unplanned pregnancies, and above all erodes women’s power to make decisions about their bodies and their reproductive health.
As a movement, I think it’s important for us reproductive justice folks, to start paying more attention to this connection and give voice to what is already happening in our communities. We need to mobilize our communities to prevent gender based violence. Raising Voices in Uganda and INCITE! Women of Color Against Violencehere in the U.S. are both examples of organizations mobilizing communities against gender based violence. The time is now to unite to advance the movement to end violence against women!
Maria Elena Perez, Director of Community Mobilization
The El Paso Times is reporting that due to lack of funding, Planned Parenthood is closing all of its health-care centers (six in total) in El Paso, TX today. Sadly, this is not the first time that Planned Parenthood has been forced to close their clinics due to financial difficulties. In recent times, clinics in the West and Northern areas of Michigan, Lynchburg, West Virgina, Seattle and Latham, NY, were shut down for similar reasons.
Conservatives have shown a positive response to the news: they are glad that these clinics are being closed because they believe it will reduce the amount of abortions taking place. But the closings will do nothing to reduce abortions and might even cause an increase. Planned Parenthood (PP) offers not only family planning services but also health services for pregnant women. Because some of the services offered by PP help prevent both unwanted and unhealthy pregnancies, the closing of clinics will mean that women, especially low-income and immigrant women who do not have access to health care, will not have access to reproductive choices. This will have a particularly large impact on Latinas, since El Paso has such a high concentration of Latinas and many of them are low-income.
Another important point is that abortions are only a small portion of the services that Planned Parenthood offers. In some areas of the country, Planned Parenthood is actually the primary provider of gynecological services. For pregnant women, Planned Parenthood offers very important services such as pre-natal care and anti-smoking treatments and other services that improve their health and therefore increase the chances of them of bearing healthy children. The closing of these clinics will also have a negative impact on women suffering from STDs, urinary tract infections, and other infections that Planned Parenthood often treats. Also HIV and (cervical) cancer are other conditions that Planned Parenthood provides services for. This means that many women, those pregnant and those who aren’t, will be suffer the negative effect of this lack of funding.
What is even more alarming is that, due to the financial crisis, services that Planned Parenthood offers have actually become more critical and more needed. An article on the Mercury News argued that, since more and more people are losing their jobs and their medical care, more women “are taking steps to avoid having a child” because they are concerned that they will not be able to afford it. Planned Parenthood clinics in Northern California, like many other family-planning clinics and gynecologists, are experiencing higher volume of women visiting their clinics and requesting family-planning services.
Planned Parenthood Executive Director Analinda Moreno recently told the media that the closing of these clinics in El Paso was one of the hardest decisions they have had to make.
A recent New Yorker article by Atul Gawande has been getting a lot of coverage lately–there are even rumors that Obama has made it required reading for his White House Staff. In the piece, Gawande shares an extensive evaluation of the medical system in McAllen, Texas. We at NLIRH know McAllen well, because it is where for over two years we have been working with the women in the video above, the amazing activists affiliated with La Voz Latina and Migrant Health Promotion.
He started by looking at numbers: “In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per enrollee here, almost twice the national average.” Gawande asked long standing community doctors why the spending rates of Medicare are so high in this area of Texas. They told him: “There is overutilization here, pure and simple.” There is no evidence that the city provides better quality care than any other city, even with it’s up-to-date medical technology. Actually, the health outcomes are worse. Looking outside the community for help analyzing this “Cost Conundrum,” Gawande solicited Jonathan Skinner, a Dartmouth economist, to analyze why the cost of care was so high in McAllen. Skinner also concluded that is was “very simply, the across-the-board overuse of medicine.”
In his analysis of the medical delivery system in McAllen, Gawande did not address many of the concerns of the women we’ve worked with, some of whom are featured in the video above. We know a large portion of the people in this region are undocumented immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Even if they have documents, these immigrants do not qualify for federal programs like Medicare for the first five years they are here. So how do these immigrants get health care? Many reportedly cross the border to Mexico if needing medical attention, or some pay out-of-pocket for services in the area.
Gawande may not be talking about these women, but they are doing their own organizing to address the health care gaps in their communities. We’ve collaborated with them on reproductive justice organizing and advocacy, and it’s amazing to see what they are achieving despite all the barriers they face.
On June 12, award-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa’s piece, “Abortion Providers Under Siege,” examined the roots of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller’s assassination. In a timely and informative report, Hinojosa analyzes whether the violence directed against doctors who perform abortions can be viewed as domestic terrorism. NLIRH sent a letter to PBS producers today thanking them for producing “Abortion Providers Under Siege,” and to applaud NOW and Maria Hinojosa’s journalism.
Hinojosa profiles two abortion providers, Dr. Warren Hern and Dr. LeRoy Carhart, who describe the constant threats to their security and that of their families as well as the endless harassment of their potential patients. Her piece vividly illustrates how the anti-choice movement uses intimidation, violence and other kinds of pressure to reduce the number of providers as part of an overall effective political strategy.
Hinojosa also examines the role of right wing media in drumming up the radical anti-choice movement, showing numerous clips of conservative talk-show host Bill O’Reilly mentioning “Tiller the killer” on air. Turning a critical eye toward anti-choice websites, she shows how they encourage violent action by displaying photos of abortion providers, providing home addresses, aerial photos of clinics and maps of security cameras at the clinics.
NOW on PBS has provided an invaluable contribution the national debate on abortion and Maria Hinojosa should be praised for her important and courageous piece. Unsurprisingly, it has come to our attention that anti-choice groups are organizing against PBS and pressuring the network. Although we are fearful of the effect that this kind of collective action can have on the stories a media company chooses to air, we are confident in the strong vindication of Maria Hinojosa’s journalistic efforts provided by the appointed ombudsman, Ken A. Bode.
We actively supports the right of Latinas and every woman to seek a safe and affordable abortion. Although the Roe v. Wade decision gave women the right to a safe and legal abortion over thirty years ago, the fight for abortion rights and access has continued. With a strong politically conservative constituency and an increasingly vitriolic national debate over a woman’s right to choose, preserving reproductive rights continues to be an uphill battle.
Fair and accurate information from media outlets and reporters, such as that of PBS is essential if we are to succeed in our efforts to achieve reproductive justice for all women. We encourage PBS and other media outlets to continue to produce this kind of programming and support meaningful journalism.
Contributed by Ivette Sanchez, Communities in Action Intern
Miami International Latinas Organizing for Leadership and Advocacy (MI-LOLA), a member of NLIRH’s Latina Advocacy Network will be presenting at this event on Wednesday June 24, 2009:
The Domino Effect of Health Care Inequality
…because healthcare inequality affects more than just our health.
Hispanic women comprise 37% of the uninsured in the U.S. so our voices must be front and center in the healthcare reform debate.
Join the growing movement for healthcare reform in Florida to ensure our voices are heard.
Wednesday, June 24th
6:30 – 8:30 PM
Robert King High Towers
1405 NW 7th Street, Miami, FL
