NEWSBYABIGAIL EVE

On Friday, a judge in Oklahoma City decided to prolong a restraining order blocking the implementation of a law that would require doctors to post private information about women who have abortions online. Never fear -- names won't be included. In fact, that's pretty much the only shred of personal information that won't displayed. Among the things that will appear are a woman's age, race, education, marital status, and reason for seeking an abortion.

Phew, what a relief! Here I thought this was going to be a gross invasion of privacy. Still, it shouldn't be too hard to Nancy Drew your way to a woman's identity with all her other relevant information handily available via the world wide web.

Oklahoma Senator Todd Lamb and supporters claim that, by identifying the reasons women seek abortions, the law will help prevent future unwanted pregnancies. Allow me to cut through this crap and save Oklahoma the estimated $250,000 it will take to implement this law. Women seek abortions for a wide variety of reasons -- all of them highly personal and no one else's damn business. Tada! Now go funnel that money into sex education or a free reproductive health clinic.

You know what will lower the number of abortions in this country? Ensuring that people, especially young people, receive comprehensive sex education early, so that they understand the importance of practicing safe sex, what the risks are, and where they can access quality, affordable birth control. Then -- and here's the tricky part -- make sure they can access quality, affordable birth control.

You know what WON'T lower the number of abortions in this country? Creating a law that requires women to answer a series of intensely personal questions and then posting their answers on a public website!

In a victory for women's health, the House of Representatives voted to remove a ban on abortion funding in the District of Columbia, allowing the nation's capital to direct local taxes toward helping low-income women with the cost of abortion. It's miraculous that this bill passed at a time when anti-choice Congressmen are falling over one another in their eagerness to ensure that no tax dollars are used to fund abortions in the health care reform bill.

I suppose we would call them demonic trailblazers if the Hyde  Amendment didn't already exist. Passed by Congress in 1976, the Hyde Amendment excludes abortion from the comprehensive health care services provided to low-income women by the federal government through Medicaid. Anti-choice Congressmen are now trying to create further barriers by making it nearly impossible for private insurance companies that participate in the new health care system to offer abortion coverage, essentially denying women the right to purchase a plan with abortion coverage.

Anti-choice opponents are spinning the tighter abortion restrictions for the health care reform bill as simply "codifying" the Hyde Amendment. You say codifying, I say politicians continuing their back door efforts to undermine Roe v. Wade and disrupt major health care legislation. Of course, these tactics of politicizing abortions are what we’ve come to expect from anti-choice opponents.  What’s unsettling is our government’s continued willingness to appease them.

You've probably seen the tag line for Plan B emergency contraception (EC): Because the unexpected happens. Well, what women may find even more unexpected is that the morning-after pill can still cost up to $70! These are hard economic times and, even for a gal with a credit card, that's a tough pill to swallow.

Thanks to the determined efforts of women's reproductive health advocates, Plan B was finally approved by the FDA for nonprescription sale to women 18 and older on August 24, 2006.  Unfortunately, this hard won victory was less sweet because of the vulnerable populations of women it left out in the cold: minors, undocumented women who cannot produce a government-issued ID to prove their age, and low-income women who cannot afford the cost or whose Medicaid coverage requires a prescription.

It's not rocket science: when a drug's effectiveness is tied to a 72 hour window, the few hours or days it can take to get a doctor's prescription has real consequences. And the price -- on average $40 or more -- forces low-income women to make a difficult choice and possibly take a real gamble.  After all, EC is a preventative measure and the federal minimum wage is about $290 a week.  Would you pay such a large chunk of your paycheck out-of-pocket if you weren’t even sure you were pregnant?

So how can we lower the cost of EC and increase access to more women? First, more states need to expand their Medicaid coverage to include over-the-counter (OTC) emergency contraception. According to the National Institute of Reproductive Health, eight states have changed their policies to include OTC EC, some even using state dollars to cover the cost. Here's hoping more states will follow in their footsteps. Wouldn't it be nice if low-income women didn't always have to take it on the chin in reproductive health so a few politicians could feel morally righteous by creating obstacles to family planning services?

There are few things more uncomfortable than arguing against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, a Federal law passed in 2004 during the Bush administration that recognizes a child in utero as a victim if he/she is injured or killed with the mother.  It's easy to come across as severely insensitive, so I usually avoid this debate like the plague.

However, the recent tragedy at Fort Hood has made it difficult to ignore.  Army Private Francheska Velez was six weeks pregnant when she was killed in the violent rampage by Army psychiatrist Major Hasan, who opened fire at the Texas military post, killing 13 people.  Now two U.S. Senators and an anti-abortion group are insisting that Hasan be charged with a 14th murder count for Pvt. Velez's fetus.

There is a way to appropriately punish perpetrators for violence against pregnant women without setting a dangerous anti-choice precedent. In early 2004, Senator Dianne Feinstein did just that by introducing The Motherhood Protection Act, an alternative bill which sought stiffer penalties for injuring or killing a pregnant woman and allowed prosecutors to make a double, but not separate, charge -- all without attempting to define when life begins. Unfortunately, her bill failed, and we were stuck with Mike DeWine's Unborn Victims Act instead.