Stealth War On Reproductive Rights 

After enduring the horror of sexual assault, imagine going to a pharmacy to fill a prescription from your doctor that would greatly reduce the chance of pregnancy, only to be told by the pharmacist that he would not fill the prescription because it conflicts with his “morals.”

In January 2004 this very scenario played out in Denton, Texas at Eckerd pharmacy. The distraught rape victim was eventually able to fill her prescription for emergency contraception (EC), but unfortunately, this incident is not isolated. Stories of pharmacists refusing to dispense birth control on “moral grounds” are coming in from across the country. Even more alarming, by law, health care professionals can refuse to provide contraception services in twelve states and abortion services in forty-six states, based upon “moral” beliefs.

Refusal clauses aren’t new. But in a political climate that is increasingly hostile to reproductive health care access, they serve as yet another reminder of the gradual policy shift that has occurred in recent years. Antichoice, anti-family planning legislators are working, often in the shadows, to severely limit access to reproductive health care, including contraception. From the signing of the first ever federal ban on abortion to an exponential growth in federal dollars funding abstinence-only programs, antichoice proponents are steadily advancing an agenda of incremental restrictions. Together, these restrictions are substantial and ultimately, may severely limit women’s ability to make decisions about when they will have children.

Already, the lives of real women, many of whom are young, poor, and of color, both here and abroad, are being adversely impacted. They are the silent casualties of the stealth war being waged on reproductive rights, and their numbers are growing.

Social conservatives who oppose a woman’s right to choose, and in many cases contraception, were emboldened by George W. Bush’s ascension from Texas governor to commander-in-chief. It didn’t take long for President Bush to limit access to reproductive health services upon taking office. His first executive order as president was to reinstate the global gag rule, a policy that stifles free speech among family planning providers abroad and denies access to potentially lifesaving services for some of the poorest and most vulnerable women on earth.

While the 1973 Helms amendment bans taxpayer dollars for the provision of abortion services abroad, under the global gag rule, overseas providers can’t even discuss all of the reproductive health care options, including the availability of abortion, with women who are facing an unplanned pregnancy. Because these restrictions defy medical ethics and severely hinder doctors’ ability to provide their patients with quality care, many family planning organizations forgo U.S. funding rather than comply with the gag rule’s draconian restrictions. The result: Family planning organizations working in the poorest nations on earth have been forced to scale back vital family planning services because of a lack of adequate funding.

The Bush administration, beholden to the religious right that helped put them in office, has made a series of overtures to placate its base. Government websites were changed to remove accurate information about condoms. Judges who oppose reproductive choice and have records indicating hostility to civil rights continue to be nominated to lifetime appointments to the federal bench. A regulatory change allowed the Department of Health and Human Services to elevate the status of the fetus by declaring that fetuses, but not pregnant women, are eligible to receive health care under the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Medical privacy was threatened as John Ashcroft’s Department of Justice subpoenaed hundreds of abortion patients’ medical records. Family planning funding has been frozen at the federal level, leaving clinics scrambling to support the increasing need for their services. While their antichoice, anti-family planning attacks may not draw the public’s attention nearly as much as would an all-out assault on Roe v. Wade, in totality they were devastating.

On the ground these stealth attacks have real consequences. Overseas, in countries like Ethiopia, HIV/AIDS rates are skyrocketing in part because funding restrictions imposed by Bush’s gag rule have severely limited many family planning organizations from providing contraceptive and other health care services to poor women and families in rural areas. Further, the administration’s insistence that abstinence programs be the primary component of its strategy to prevent HIV/AIDS abroad undercuts family planning providers’ efforts to promote contraception as a means to stem the rising tide of HIV transmission.

In the United States, young women struggle to access birth control in economically depressed communities because of the lack of adequate funding for family planning services. For the moment, the courts remain a last line of defense in stopping unconstitutional attacks on reproductive health services. Such was the case when federal judges in New York, San Francisco, and Nebraska ruled a law signed by President Bush in 2003 that would have outlawed abortion procedures as early as twelve to fifteen weeks of pregnancy was unconstitutional. Cruelly, the law—the so-called “Partial Birth Abortion Ban of 2003”—offered no exception to women whose health is endangered by a pregnancy.

However, even this last line of defense could be lost if Bush achieves his goal of stacking the courts with antichoice ideologues, or congressional Republicans invoke the “nuclear option” to end the longstanding tradition of the Senate filibuster, which enables opponents to prevent a vote on a nomination.

Sadly, the list of threatening actions by this administration and its anti-choice allies goes on and on. In state legislatures from Florida to Idaho, antichoice zealots are pushing regressive measures to scale back reproductive rights and family planning access. Since President Bush took office, nearly two thousand antichoice bills have been considered by legislatures nationwide that would, among other things, limit young women’s access to abortion and contraception, ban abortion after the first trimester, provide refusal clauses for providers and medical entities that wish to deny women access to reproductive health care, and require women to receive biased counseling and undergo mandatory delays before receiving an abortion. About one hundred fifty of those antichoice bills have been enacted to date.

Those of us who spend our lives in the service of providing vital reproductive health care to women and families have become disheartened by these seemingly endless attacks. We know that the damage inflicted as a result of the political climate in Washington and state houses throughout the United States is having a very real and decidedly negative impact on the health and well being of women and teens.

But there is a silver lining. The American public does not support the radical agenda being foisted upon it by the conservative right. The majority supports access to family planning and medically accurate sexuality education. They do not want to see Roe v. Wade overturned. In fact, for all the talk about “moral values” impacting the 2004 election, analysis has shown that Americans are just as pro-choice today as they’ve always been.

A CNN exit poll showed that 55 percent of Americans are prochoice while 42 percent described themselves as pro-life, which is consistent with every election since the inception of Roe v. Wade in 1973. An even higher majority supports women being able to access family planning, even if the government has to pay for it. When Americans voted on November 2 of last year, terrorism, the war in Iraq, and the economy were front and center in their minds. Yet the Bush administration stood ready to push its radical antichoice agenda on the American people come November 3.

The American people are with us. We share their values. The vast majority of Americans want to live in a society that is dedicated to preventing unintended pregnancy and protecting our youth from sexually transmitted disease. People want access to vital information that will help them make responsible choices about sexuality. People support a woman’s right to determine when to have her children and the size of her family.

But if we are truly going to affect change in this country and beat back the stream of attacks that threaten the health of millions of people, we must realize that the battle over health care has become overtly political in the modern era.

We must speak clearly and passionately about the issues that concern us, but we must also rededicate ourselves to appealing to the moral sensibilities of the American public. We must advance an agenda that speaks to the values as well as to the intellect. It’s time we stop being on the defensive and reclaim the moral high ground that is rightfully ours. And it’s time we pressure our political leaders to protect the vulnerable and support women’s health, without equivocation.

The intersection between politics and reproductive health care access is seamless. We can either enter the political arena full force or cede victory to the extremists. Denton, Texas may not be ground zero in the reproductive rights battle, but it should serve as a chilling reminder of what can happen if we allow the antichoice community to continue its political agenda unchecked. Access will continue to wane and women will not have their most basic health care needs met.

If that doesn’t awaken the prochoice majority, I don’t know what will.

Dian Harrison is the president and chief executive officer for Planned Parenthood Golden Gate, one of the largest Planned Parenthood affiliates in the United States. Each year Planned Parenthood Golden Gate provides reproductive and primary health care to more than sixty thousand women, teens, and men in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dian is also a board member of NSRC’s National Advisory Council.