Anti-choice researcher confirms that restrictions are designed to raise costs for women

A leading anti-choice researcher recently made some remarks at the Values Voters Summit (as if the rest of us don’t vote our values? but I digress!) that stray from the traditional anti-choice talking points, explicitly stating that increasing the cost of an abortion means that less women are able to get the procedure:

You can defund abortion by stopping Medicaid funding or by defunding Planned Parenthood. You can strengthen parental-involvement laws, by requiring both parents to be involved. You can strengthen informed-consent laws: Require the woman to see an ultrasound, or require two trips to the clinic. That raises the costs; that stops the abortion from happening.

Well, that is unfortunately true. Though generally the proponents of obstacles to abortion care – such as waiting periods, ultrasounds, etc. – frame these barriers in terms of giving women time to think, or “information,” or whatever they can muster that betrays their deep distrust of women to make informed decisions on their own, these revelatory remarks tell us that anti-choicers know exactly what they are doing: leaving access to abortion only for the wealthy.

Of course, reproductive justice advocates have known for a long time that the brunt of the weight of abortion restrictions falls on Latinas and other women of color, who are disproportionately poor. In fact, wealth has always facilitated access to abortion, even before Roe, when women who had the resources to do so flew to Sweden and Puerto Rico to get their procedures. The reality is today, and it always has been, that access to safe and legal abortion is an economic justice issue. Everything from waiting periods, to the added cost of an ultrasound, to the fact that federal Medicaid funds cannot go towards abortion hits low-income women and women of color the hardest. And the anti-choice movement knows exactly what they are doing.

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Protecting women’s decisions: Court rules woman cannot be prosecuted for self-inducing abortion

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit published an opinion regarding self-induced abortions.  Idaho mother Jennie McCormack was charged with committing an “unlawful abortion” when she terminated her pregnancy by ordering RU-486 over the web.  McCormack is a single mother of three, was raised as a devout Mormon, and was barely scrapping by.  An abortion would have cost at least $500 and involved multiple trips to a clinic hours away, so she turned to the Internet.  As a result of deciding what was best for her family, she was prosecuted in Idaho under a myriad of laws that included a pre Roe law that criminalized women getting abortions and another that criminalized individuals other than physicians for performing abortions, and during her case, the prosecutor stated that “he was aghast at the idea that McCormack, an unmarried mother of three, was irresponsibly and repeatedly getting pregnant and not ‘protecting the fetus.’”

The Court of Appeals upheld the U.S. District Court for Idaho’s decision that McCormack could not be prosecuted because she was likely to succeed on her constitutional argument that Idaho’s criminal abortion laws enabled the prosecution and incarceration of women who have abortions.  The Court relied heavily on the arguments that McCormack’s attorney and the National Advocates for Pregnant Women and their allies made in issuing their ruling.  The Court ruled that women cannot be charged under “physician only” criminal statutes regarding abortion even if the law does not specifically say so, stating, “[T]here is no Supreme Court precedent that recognizes or suggests that third party criminal liability may extend to pregnant women who obtain an abortion in a manner inconsistent with state abortion statutes.”  Additionally, the Court emphasized the herculean obstacles that low-income women confront when accessing an abortion such as lack of providers, financial barriers, and harassment at clinics, and the medical, moral, and ethical factors women must weigh when making decisions about pregnancies.

The Latina Institute is thrilled that National Advocates for Pregnant Women and their partners, particularly McCormack’s attorney, successfully defeated Idaho’s attempt to criminalize women who are making wise decisions for their families.  However, as advocates for women’s health, including the right and access to have a safe abortion, we know that there will be other cases like this one.  In the future, it may be a Latina who is prosecuted under these laws.  Due to issues such as cultural and linguistic competency, geographic location, transportation, income, and lack of information, Latina women and others may turn to self-induced abortions.  In fact, we know that Latinas have needed to self induce abortions for the reasons stated above.   The laws on the books need to realistically support and protect the decisions women make about their pregnancies.  We don’t need laws that further erode, humiliate, and deny women the ability to make the right choices for themselves and their families.

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What the Affordable Care Act Hydes

As women’s health advocates, we danced for joy on August 1st as we celebrated better access to many critical reproductive health services under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including well-woman visits, breastfeeding counseling & supplies, birth control and emergency contraception.  While this is an important first step in eliminating many of the health disparities faced by women of color, the new policies do not help to ensure the availability or affordability of abortion care. And this means some inequities in health care will persist, if not grow.

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Join us TODAY for Day of Action for Immigrant Women’s Health

This week, the House of Representatives returns to DC after a weeklong recess, and if recent history is any indication, immigrant women should be watching the chamber very closely. The last several weeks have seen an onslaught of legislative attacks on immigrant women, proving that the dangerous and distracting “War on Women” is now targeting our most marginalized and vulnerable populations.

First, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 4970 – a bill which claims to reauthorize the historically bipartisan Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), but actually rolls back protections for immigrant women that have existed for almost 20 years. Then conservative lawmakers tried, but failed, to pass the so-called “Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act” or PRENDA which was engineered as an attack on the reproductive freedoms of women of color. And just before they left DC, Congress found time to pass the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Appropriations Act (H.R. 5855), which includes a provision (Aderholt Amendment) that targets immigrant women’s reproductive health care with unnecessary and mean-spirited restrictions on access to abortion.

Sadly, these sexist, racist, and xenophobic attacks on immigrant women are not confined to Washington, DC. Just last Friday, Arizona Sherrif Joe Arpaio’s office detained a 6-year-old undocumented girl—despite the DHS announcement that same day that young people are to be considered for immediate relief from deportation.

It’s shameless. The good news? Women’s health, reproductive justice, and immigrants’ rights advocates are fighting back, and making our voices heard across the country. National Coalition for Immigrant Women’s Rights (NCIWR) Steering Committee members National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) and National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (NLIRH) were joined by over 50 national, state, and local organizations in standing with immigrant women and opposing the Aderholt Amendment, and the outpouring of solidarity was remarkable. Now we’re ready to take it to the next level.

Here are five ways you can participate:

1. Sign the letter: Join the growing coalition of local, state, and national groups who stand with immigrant women and oppose the Aderholt amendment and other attacks on immigrant women’s health. Email natalie@latinainstitute.org to add your organization to the list.
2. Participate in our Tweet Chat: Join us TODAY from 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm ET (12:00 pm – 1:30 pm PT) on Wednesday June 20 and use the hashtag #Health4ImmigrantWomen to ask questions, share stories from your community, amplify your work, and collaborate with others. We’ll be on hand to answer questions and help to make connections.
3. Send an action alert: Share this action alert with your listervs and networks.
4. Write a blog post: Write a quick post on your blog anytime between June 20-25 about why you stand with immigrant women and why immigrant women’s health matters.
5. Join NCIWR: Review our principles here and fill out the form to apply for membership.

Need more information? Please contact Kimberly Inez McGuire at National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health or Shivana Jorawar at National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum.

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“War on Women” Increasingly Focused on Women of Color, Immigrant Women

Rep. Aderholt (AL-4th), on the right, at the May 16, 2012 Mark-Up of the DHS Appropriations Bill, where he introduced the dangerous “Aderholt Amendment” restricting abortion funding for immigrant women in detention.

VAWA. PRENDA. Aderholt.

What do all these words (and acronyms) have in common?

They represent the three latest attacks on women’s health, safety, and reproductive justice. However, the War on Women has been raging continuously in the 112th Congress.  So what else connects these three?  They represent the escalating attacks on the health and rights of women of color, and immigrant women in particular—their right to reproductive health care, their access to protections from intimate partner violence and other crimes, and their right to bodily autonomy.

Let’s start with the most recent affront: the Aderholt amendment. Last night the House of Representatives passed the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act (H.R. 5855), which includes a provision (Aderholt Amendment) that targets immigrant women’s reproductive health care with unnecessary and mean-spirited restrictions on access to abortion. The provision prohibits federal funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to provide abortion care for women in ICE detention centers—adding yet another layer to the harmful restrictions the Hyde amendment already puts in place.

The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (NLIRH), outraged over the politicized attack on some of the most vulnerable women in our society, led an effort to unite over 50 national, state, and local organizations in opposition the provision—a group that includes reproductive health, rights, and justice advocates as well as faith-based groups, advocates for Latinos health, and groups that represent immigrants, refugees, and LGBTQ people.

In a letter to the House of Representatives, this diverse group united to express deep concern that the Aderholt amendment would take us backwards, making life harder for women in federal immigration custody. Women in detention are separated from their children, their partners, and their health care providers. They have been denied HIV medication, forced to give birth in shackles, and sexually assaulted by guards. This amendment, and any restriction on access to reproductive health care, is yet another insult and humiliation for women who are already facing terrible circumstances. Immigrant women’s health should never be used as a political bargaining chip.

Rep. Adams (FL- 24) introduced H.R. 4970, a bill which takes the VAWA name, but strips protections for immigrant victims that have existed for nearly 20 years.

However, this attack did not operate in a vacuum. It represents a variation on the theme of stripping away the rights of immigrant women, a theme which is alarming, and growing. Just last month, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 4970 – a bill which claims to reauthorize the historically bipartisan Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), but actually rolls back protections for immigrant women that have existed for almost 20 years. Since it was first signed into law, VAWA has been reauthorized twice. And each time, both parties worked together to advance protections for all victims, including immigrants. This time around, the House bill reversed protections for immigrant women and excluded advances included in the Senate bill for LGBTQ victims of violence.

And just last week, the House of Representatives attempted (but thankfully failed) to pass the so-called “Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act” or PRENDA which was engineered as an attack on the reproductive freedoms of women of color. The bill claims to outlaw abortion motivated by sex-selection, and would have imposed strict criminal and civil penalties on abortion care providers who fail to determine the motives of their patients. The bill was first introduced as the “Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act” and additionally banned abortions on the basis of race of the fetus. While the race-related language was stripped from the bill, PRENDA remained an attack on color and immigrant women under the guise of protecting women, pushed forward by legislators with little to no history of supporting gender equity.

Immigrant women deserve better than this onslaught of abuse. They are mothers, daughters, tias, workers, mentors, and valuable members of communities across this country. Their ability to access reproductive health care and  protections from violence are critical to their pursuit of a healthful life in the United States and to the promise of fairness, justice, and equal opportunity.

We urge you to join us in this call to support the lives of immigrant women. Please visit the website of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health for more information.

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Advancing Paycheck Fairness for Latinas means Advancing Immigrant and Reproductive Rights

Latina activists in New York recognize that passage of the DREAM Act advances both economic and reproductive justice.

As we join the call for Paycheck Fairness, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (NLIRH) recognizes that in the fight to achieve economic justice for all women, we must recognize, elevate, and address the unique challenges faced by Latinas and immigrant women.

According to the White House Council on Women and Girls, women make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns through employment. Yet, for Latinas, this rate is 56 cents on the dollar, which represents the largest wage gap of any other group of working women.  What accounts for this widened disparity between men and Latinas, and between white women and Latinas? We know that although Latinas comprise the fastest growing community of color,  more than a third do not graduate high school. Latinas experience the highest level of poverty among women in the labor force at 12.1% and have the lowest employment-to-population ratio of women of all racial and ethnic groups. Furthermore, the recession hit Latinas particularly hard as unemployment rates more than doubled for Latinas in the years between 2007 and 2010.  Immigrant women and Latinas with limited English proficiency not only face systematic bars on their participation in the labor force, but also discrimination, prejudice, and bias from employers. Latina farmworkers face horrific levels of sexual violence, sexual harassment, and retaliation for reporting abuses from their employers. These factors account for the fact that Latinas are overly represented in low-wage sectors, working at jobs that provide few-to-no benefits like health insurance, paid vacation, and maternity or family leave.

We know that these pay inequities impact Latinas’ access to reproductive health care.  Latinas compose the ethnic/racial group with the highest level of health care un-insurance, as they are less likely to have employer-sponsored coverage or  to afford costly individual plans.  And despite the enormous gains under the Affordable Care Act, or health reform law, undocumented individuals will be barred from purchasing health plans on the state health insurance exchanges and remain ineligible for Medicaid. The federally-imposed 5-year bar on legal permanent residents from accessing benefits under Medicaid blocks Latinas’ access to reproductive and sexual health care, including contraception and important preventive care such as  Pap tests – and did we mention that Latinas have the highest incidence of cervical cancer of women of all racial/ethnic groups? On top of this, federal funding bans on abortion care make abortion just as inaccessible as if it were illegal for far too many Latinas.

And while NLIRH celebrates and supports the advances called for in the federal Paycheck Fairness Act, introduced to the House of Representatives by Representative Rosa DeLauro (CO-3) and in the Senate by Senator Barbara Mikulski (MD), we view this legislation as part of a comprehensive solution to economic justice for all women, including Latinas. Utilizing a comprehensive approach means addressing injustice in immigration, health care, education, and employment  to reverse the culture of devaluing Latina labor.  In recent years, a wave of political and policy developments in states are, instead of seeking to address the wage gap between Latinas and other groups, actively limiting Latinas’ opportunities for a quality education, optimum participation in the workforce, and the comprehensive, quality, and affordable reproductive health care needed to plan their families and their participation in the workforce.

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley signs bill which adds more immigration restrictions on top of HB 56.

Let’s briefly look at two states-  Arizona and Alabama –  where the wage rate for Latinas is 53 cents and 41 cents, respectively, for every dollar a white man earns working full-time year-round. Instead of working to elevate the economic status of Latino families, the political classes in Arizona and Alabama have embarked on a radical anti-immigrant agenda aimed directly at limiting the employment and educational opportunities of immigrant and Latino families.  HB56, enacted in Alabama in 2011, requires public school boards to attain the immigration status of newly enrolling children and their parents. Section 8 of this  law forbids undocumented students from attending public universities and colleges and from receiving financial assistance. And despite the recent special legislative session called by Governor Robert Bentley to address concerns in HB 56, the changes actually tack on more dangerous provisions.  Both HB56 and Arizona’s SB1070 forbid employers from hiring undocumented workers, and both work to create a culture of fear and discrimination against those without papers.

At the same  time, the two states in our case study here, Arizona and Alabama, have embarked on a dangerous anti-abortion and anti-family planning agenda. In both Arizona and Alabama, 20-week abortion bans disproportionately impact low-income women, including Latinas, who face numerous barriers to full information about their pregnancies, and for whom financial, geographic, and other challenges delay the process of attaining abortion care. Arizona has also put in place a race- and sex-selective abortion ban which appropriates the language of civil rights and gender equity to target the reproductive freedom of women of color. Oh yeah, and in Arizona, you are apparently pregnant two weeks before conception,  so this combined with the 20-week abortion ban puts abortion care out of reach for even more Latinas.

Beyond abortion, we are seeing attacks on access to contraception and family planning programs. In Arizona, Governor Jan Brewer signed into law a bill that permits “religiously-affiliated” employers to refuse to include contraception in employee health plans, a form of discrimination that intersects directly with reproductive and economic justice.  And this only scratches the surface in terms of the amount roll-backs to reproductive health care access we are seeing in these and other states.

Here at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, we view the attacks on immigrant families and reproductive health as working hand-in-hand to diminish Latina opportunity. Because the question begs being asked, how can Latinas achieve their economic potential when they cannot attend university or work legally? How can Latinas fully participate in the labor force and provide for their families without the ability to space and plan their pregnancies? How can Latinas acheive equality of opportunity in the United States without equal access to health care?

Members of NLIRH’s Latina Advocacy Network in Texas fight for reproductive justice.

Despite the enormous challenges, Latinas across the country are mobilizing for reproductive justice. Our Latina Advocacy Network in Texas is fighting against dramatic cuts to the Texas Women’s Health Program, a program which has been central to their ability access needed breast and cervical cancer screenings. Our Latina Advocacy Network in Miami is mobilizing to build broad coalitions bridging reproductive justice to other social justice work. Our Latina Advocacy Network in New York recognizes that passage of the DREAM Act, and the ability for undocumented immigrants to attain higher education, is central to the fight for reproductive justice. NLIRH is also an advisory board member of We Belong Together, a coalition united for children and families, which participated in a delegation to Alabama to bear witness to the impact of HB 56 on the lives of Alabama’s families. And through  ¡Soy Poderosa!/ I am Powerful!, NLIRH’s civic engagement campaign, we will ignite the political power of all Latinas to advance health, dignity, and reproductive justice.

Together, we can make inroads in the fight for economic and paycheck fairness. However, this work must be intersectional, comprehensive, and take into account the lived experiences of all women, including Latinas. As we work to pass the important Paycheck Fairness Act, let’s also mobilize communities for immigrant rights, reduce barriers to quality and affordable health care, expand opportunities for education and job training, and last, but certainly not least, ensure that all women, including Latinas, have access to quality and affordable reproductive health care.

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Congress celebrates National Women’s Health Week by rolling back women’s health

This week, Congress decided to celebrate National Women’s Health Week by undermining Latinas’ rights to safe, legal abortion in immigration detention and in the District of Columbia, and by striping advances made in the Violence Against Women Act to prosecute intimate partner violence and other crimes. Muchas gracias por nada, Congress!

Here is a run-down of what has been going down on the Hill:

DHS Appropriations Abortion Rider

Rep. Price (left) opposed the anti-abortion amendment by Rep. Aderholt (right.) Source aderholt.house.gov

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday morning decided to strip the right to abortion care for Latinas’ and all women in immigration detention when they added an amendment (the “Aderholt” amendment) to a bill funding the Department of Homeland Security. The amendment, which passed in a party-line vote of 28-21, prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion care for women under immigration detention custody. The original amendment only allowed exceptions for life and rape, but not incest. The incest exception was added later. However, as our Executive Director Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas noted in NLIRH’s press statement, “Passage of the Aderholt amendment shows remarkable contempt for some of the most vulnerable women in our community.”

This amendment was completely unnecessary, as the dangerous and restrictive Hyde Amendment already applies to women in detention. Additionally, DHS has the Performance Based National Detention Standards (PBNDS), which are comprehensive stake-holder reviewed standards for health care in detention centers. This amendment would only open the door to interpretation to restrict access to services around abortion care, like transportation, follow-up care, and counseling, in instances where detained women pay for an abortion themselves.

With high levels of rape and sexual assault in immigration detention centers, and the fact that detainees may be U.S. citizens and those whose only crime was their presence in this country, attacking access to reproductive health care in detention is a dangerous and unjust move by House Appropriations leadership.

VAWA: The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act

Rep. Sandy Adams- Sponsor of H.R. 4970, a bill that takes the VAWA name, but leaves Latinas behind. Source: adams.house.gov

Just a few hours later, on Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 4970, a bill which calls itself the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). In reality, this bill rolls back protections for immigrant victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) and other crimes and excludes new protections for LGBTQ and Native American survivors approved in a bill passed by the Senate to reauthorize VAWA. The Violence Against Women Act, first enacted in 1994 with strong bipartisan support, has been reauthorized several times over the past decades with a history of cooperation across party lines. However, yesterday’s move by the House of Representatives broke that strong tradition. In doing so, they advanced a bill that actually rolls back protections for immigrant women, by allowing abusers to insert themselves into an IPV survivor’s immigration proceedings, and undermines the U-visa system, which is an important tool for abused immigrant women whose immigration status is used as a form of control. This House bill also notably excludes strong provisions for LGBTQ and Native American victims that which  were approved by the Senate in their bill to reauthorize this vital tool to combat domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and other crimes.

Rep. Gwen Moore- sponsor of H.R. 4271 modeled after Senate-passed VAWA and opponent of H.R. 4970. Source gwenmoore.house.gov

To add insult to injury, the powerful House Rules Committee, which establishes rules for debating legislation, prohibited any amendments to be added to H.R. 4970 before the vote. This meant that opponents of the bill, like Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI 4th), herself a survivor of sexual violence who faced challenges prosecuting her abuser, was unsuccessful in her many attempts to remove dangerous provisions for immigrant victims and include protections for LGBTQ and Native Americans.

D.C. 20-Week Abortion Ban

And today, House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution is hoping to advance legislation to deny the right to abortion care to the residents of the District of Columbia.

Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ-2), author of the racial profiling anti-abortion bill, the so-called “Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act,” now has his sights on imposing a dangerous abortion restrictions for the women of the District of Columbia. H.R. 3803, or the “District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” relies on the medically-debated concept of “fetal pain” to strip a Latinas’ and all women’s rights to essential and potentially health- and life-saving abortion care.

The bill, in addition to imposing an unconstitutional pre-viability abortion ban, contains a number of dangerous provisions that endangers women’s health and makes women vulnerable to numerous lawsuits. While the bill contains an exception in cases where women’s lives are in danger or when they face “substantial and irreversible” harm to a “major bodily organ,” this essentially means that women have to be on the brink of death or permanent disability in order to receive the abortion care she needs to preserve her health.

Official Photo of Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton. Source http://www.norton.house.gov

The bill allows the “father” of the fetus, or “maternal grandparents” in cases where a minor seeks abortion care, to file a civil lawsuit against an abortion care provider who violates this bill, showing a complete disregard and distrust of women to make the best health care decision for themselves. The bill also opens up the door to any party – spouses, parents, siblings, health care providers, guardians, even the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia- to file a lawsuit against abortion providers who provide abortion care at or after 20 weeks of gestation. What legislators, and even the U.S. Supreme Court, have failed to realize is that many post 20-week abortion are absolutely essential to preserve the health and life of a woman seeking abortion care. No woman should die or become ill as a result of a pregnancy.

Again, to add insult to injury, Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Rep. Franks and author of the 20-week abortion ban, has prohibited Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton from testifying.

NLIRH will be submitting testimony for the hearing today, as well as live Tweeting from Rep. Holmes Norton’s press conference and the hearing itself.

Stay posted by following our blog as well as our Twitter page.

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Health equity can’t wait! Latin@ and LGBTQ health

For day 3 of the Health Equity Can’t Wait! blog carnival, we’ve teamed up with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to write about LGBTQ and Latin@ health, making clear the importance of an intersectional analysis and advocacy:

We will never fully understand the struggle of someone trying to access an abortion if we do not also know how being a transgender man of color has affected his experience. We cannot know an immigrant’s struggle to access culturally competent and affordable health care if we do not think about how being queer has affected where she feels safe. If we do not look at the intersections, we paint an incomplete picture and we fail to see the very real ways that multiple marginalized identities play out in people’s lives.

Check out the whole piece over at the Task Force blog!

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NLIRH fights law that will endanger young Latinas

Today, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (NLIRH) is taking a strong stance in opposition to proposed federal legislation that will threaten the health and safety of young Latinas seeking reproductive health care. Our new fact sheet on The Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, or CIANA, (H.R. 2299, S.1214) illustrates how this harmful piece of legislation will have particularly harsh effects on young Latin@s.

CIANA provides for fines or even prison time for an individual, other than a parent or guardian, who assists a minor in traveling to another state to obtain an abortion. The law also places burdensome and unworkable restrictions on abortion care providers to comply with the law of another state.

Although the bill’s supporters claim that this legislation will protect young people, CIANA may actually place young people in complicated and dangerous situations. While many minors do involve their parents/guardians in matters of their health, what happens to the young people who live in violent domestic situations? What about a young Latina who is seeking to terminate a pregnancy that was caused by incest? What about a Latina who knows her own circumstances and concludes that a trusted aunt, family friend, or mentor may be her best sources of support and assistance during a difficult decision and experience?

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 87% of U.S. counties have no abortion provider, so traveling long distances to seek abortion care may be necessary for many. CIANA would make it even more difficult for young people to obtain needed care, while also stripping them of support.

Despite the overwhelming negative implications of CIANA, the U.S. House of Representatives is advancing this legislation, which has the support of 163 Congresspeople, most of whom are outright opponents of abortion rights. On March 23, the bill was voted out of the House Judiciary Committee, which means this notoriously anti-reproductive health Congress could be voting on the bill soon.  The Senate version of the bill is sponsored by Florida Senator Marco Rubio (R) with the support of 32 co-sponsors and is sitting in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Put simply, the federal government cannot mandate family communication or healthy family relationships. If CIANA were to pass, Latinas, who are younger than the general population and already face numerous barriers to reproductive health care, would face increased risks of physical harm and decreased access to the reproductive health services they need. NLIRH works for health, dignity, and justice for Latin@s of all ages and will continue to work to stop CIANA from hurting our young people, our families, and our communities.

Please visit the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health’s website today as we release a new fact sheet on CIANA, which includes an excellent scenario of how this law would play out in the life of a young Latina living in Texas.

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The Arizona 20-week abortion ban and immigrant women

Stephanie and Veronica at the March for Immigrants' Rights on March 21, 2010

Yesterday, the Arizona House passed an omni-bus anti-choice law that included a ban on abortion past 20 weeks. These 20 week bans are all the rage now  in anti-choice legislating, and proposals for 20 week bans have been popping up all over the country in the last few years. The fact that this  most recent ban passed in Arizona, however, hit a nerve.

As you probably know, Arizona has one of the harshest anti-immigrant laws in the nation. And laws that criminalize immigrants and create harsh enforcement procedures do damage on a lot of fronts: they split families, they cost a lot of money. But anti-immigrant sentiment also has an effect on health. It is laws like these and the sentiment behind them that put up barriers to health care access for immigrants. Many immigrants, even some with legal documentation, cannot access public health care programs like Medicaid even if otherwise eligible; others who have found places where they could access health care that is affordable avoid going for fear that accessing this care will alert immigration authorities, or because the authorities have set up shop and are waiting outside the clinic (a practice our activists have witnessed and told us about). And abortion is health care.

You see, there are many barriers to obtaining safe, legal abortion services, and access to health care is a huge issue for immigrant women. Barriers to health care add time: time to gather up the money for the procedure, time to travel to a location where there is a provider, waiting periods, ultrasound appointments…it all adds up. For immigrant women in states like Arizona, who face many barriers in obtaining health care and abortion services, it takes time to get all the ducks in a row to get the services they need, and this ban will impact them the hardest. An abortion is not cheap, and it only gets more expensive as the weeks keep moving along; a woman may have gathered what she thinks is enough money for a procedure only to find that the price has gone up, meaning she will need more time – during which the procedure just gets more expensive.

It’s important to look at all of these systems together, for they paint a picture of who will be most affected. As usual, it is low-income women and immigrant women.

 

 

 

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