Author: Feminist Majority Foundation Blog

On Monday, the Supreme Court refused to stop a federal court ruling that requires Alabama state officials to recognize same-sex marriage rights, and, despite some objections, the state began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The order issued by the Supreme Court says it turned down an application to stay the decisions by the lower court in order to wait for justices to figure out among themselves whether the Constitution allows same-sex marriage. This action came only hours after Alabama’s Chief Justice Roy Moore ordered the state’s probate judges to not give any marriage licences to same-sex couples. Last month, District Court Judge Callie V. S. Granade moved last month to call Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. About 81 percent of Alabama voters in 2006 supported an amendment to the Constitution that would ban same-sex marriage. Despite Moore’s order, Alabama began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, some of which had been waiting in line for hours. One couple, Dee and Laura Bush, have been together for seven years and have five kids together. “It is great that we were able to be part of history,” Dee Bush told the Associated Press. She and Laura received their license, then walked over to a park where a minister was performing wedding ceremonies. Alabama is now the 37th state to issue same-sex marriage licenses. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court announced it would tackle the issue of same-sex marriage on a federal level. The Court will begin hearing arguments in late April, with a decision expected before the term’s end, which is in June.

Lawmakers in Michigan have introduced this month yet another reporting requirement for physicians performing an abortion, with the specific aim of increasing the number of reported complications from abortion.

State Bill No. 27 is an amendment to a current abortion reporting law requiring physicians to report instances of infection, perforation, and other physical complications from abortions provided in the state. SB 27 would add “allergic response” and “anesthesia-related complications” to the list of complications that physicians performing an abortion must report to the state.

Anti-choice group Right to Life of Michigan claims the bill is necessary, citing the 2014 reported rate of complication as “unrealistically low” at 0.008 percent. Significant research has shown that very few women face medical complications resulting from an abortion.

Amber Truehart, a family planning fellow at the University of Chicago, says that adding allergic reactions and anesthesia complications will not increase the rate of complication by much as all. She says that politicians are unaware that it will increase the rate of complication, as allergic reactions and anesthesia complications are “very rare and very minor,” and this proposed bill “just speaks to the fact that [politicians] don’t understand the procedure.”

Other concerns about the bill include patient confidentiality. The existing bill states that the patient’s name or other “common identifiers” are not to be included in the report; however other personal information about the patient, such as age, race, marital status, town of residence, number of children, and more must be included.

With Texas on the verge of shutting down all but 8 of the state’s abortion clinics, activists are taking up a new method to increase access to clinics: bringing women across state lines.

Texas abortion clinics have been under attack in recent years, significantly reducing women’s access to comprehensive reproductive health care, largely due to HB 2, the Texas omnibus anti-abortion law that has forced 80 percent of abortion clinics in the state to close. As a result, abortion rights advocates are increasingly helping women seeking an abortion travel from Texas to neighboring New Mexico.

“For a long time I’d had my eye on New Mexico,” says Amy Hagstrom Miller, the chief executive officer of Whole Woman’s Health. Although the closing of abortion clinics is far more common than the opening of new clinics, Whole Woman’s Health successfully opened a clinic in Las Cruces, New Mexico last fall, just 50 miles away from El Paso, Texas. “Going into Las Cruces felt like a really smart thing to do on behalf of the women of west Texas and south Texas so that they could have an option no matter what,” Hagstrom Miller continued.

Organizations to help women afford the costs of abortion in Texas have also been in response to HB2. Some of them, such as Fund Texas Choice, are dedicated entirely to funding travel costs for women seeking an abortion in Texas. The organization funds bus or airline tickets, hotel stays, and expects the demand for their services to go up in the near future.

A bomb went off near a Colorado Springs, Colorado, chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Wednesday morning.

The FBI called the incident intentional, according to the Los Angeles Times. The homemade explosive went off outside the building, which caused damage to the NAACP chapter’s offices as well as a barber shop also located inside the building.

“There was smoke everywhere, the building on the side was burnt,” a witness told KDVR, a local news station. According to FBI spokesperson Amy Sanders, an improvised bomb was placed against the outer wall of the building next to a gasoline can, which didn’t explode with the bomb. At 10:45 AM local time, witnesses heard a loud boom. No one was killed or injured as a result of the bomb.

Many suspect the incident was a hate crime, though this has not yet been confirmed. “It has also not yet been determined if the motive was a hate crime, domestic terrorism, a personal act of violence against a specific individual, or other motive as there are numerous individuals and entities tied to the building in the vicinity of the explosion,” Sanders said in an email to the Los Angeles Times. If the bomb was purposely targeted at the NAACP, it would not be the first time the organization has faced violence since it was founded in 1909.

The FBI along with its Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are conducting an investigation of Wednesday’s incident, though FBI officials said the explosion “was caused deliberately.”

Our nation’s capital is making feminist history. As of January 2, Washington, DC is being led by a trio of trailblazing women, two of whom are women of color, making it the only city in the US where the mayor, chief of police, and school chancellor are all women.

Muriel Bowser, the second woman to be elected as Mayor of Washington, DC, announced last week that she will be keeping top DC leaders Police Chief Cathy Lanier and Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson. After the announcement, the Washington Post referred to Bowser, Lanier, and Henderson as “DC’s Matriarchy.”

“How fitting for the nation’s capital to have three women in charge, women who have gotten things done in this city for years,” said Bowser. “We want to the whole world to know we are a city on the move.”

Police Chief Lanier has lived an inspiring and difficult life that has undoubtedly contributed to her leadership, perseverance, and understanding of the problems of poor people struggling to make their way. She dropped out of high school at 14 after becoming pregnant, and supported herself through two master’s degrees before joining the police force. Kaya Henderson, who has been DC schools chancellor since 2011, is widely credited with the rapid and sudden progress of DC public schools.

Furthermore, Bowser nominated Polly Donaldson as director of the city’s Department of Housing and Community Development. An out lesbian and expert in affordable housing, Bowser calls Donaldson “a person with a proven track record and proven leadership.”

And we cannot forget, in Congress, the District of Columbia is represented by delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton. Norton is a strong voice in Congress for women’s rights, civil rights, economic justice, and statehood for the District of Columbia.

With this collection of impressive female leadership, Washington DC can boast of a feat no other city can claim.

Deliberate sex segregation is on the rise in public K-12 classrooms across the country, despite evidence that it is often illegal and educationally unsound.

Tuesday, the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Education Equity Program released a second multi-year study “Identifying US K-12 Public Schools with Deliberate Sex Segregation.”

According to the new study, there has been a 24 percent increase in public coed schools with single-sex academic classes since the period covering 2007-2010. In the first FMF study, there were 564 public coed schools with single-sex academic offerings. That number jumped to 699 in the new study, with a slightly larger increase in the number of all-female and all-male public schools. The number of single-sex schools jumped 29 percent, from 82 schools to 106 schools by 2012.

South Carolina, Florida, Texas and North Carolina had the most public coed schools with single-sex classes. New York and Texas had the most all-girl and all-boy schools.

The FMF study also found that more of the single-sex academic classes were for male students than females, however, the number of all-girl schools exceeded the number of all-boy campuses.

Most of the coed schools with single-sex academic offerings are middle and high schools.

“We are concerned that the numbers of single-sex K-12 public education programs are growing despite increased evidence that they are legally and educationally unsound,” says Sue Klein, Ed. D., Education Equity Director for the FMF. “This growth is of particular concern because schools with deliberate sex segregation often serve a predominantly African American and/or Latino student populations in urban areas. Only 35 percent of coed schools with single-sex academic classes had a 75 percent or higher white student population,” Klein said.

Writing for the fall 2013 issue of Ms. Magazine, Susan McGee Bailey wrote that the data supporting the persistence of single-sex education “have not withstood scientific scrutiny.”

“Rather than offering a hoped-for fix to problems of low student achievement, single-sex instruction has failed our students and encouraged school districts to risk breaching both Title IX and the 14th Amendment”s Equal Protection Clause,” Bailey wrote.

While federal law mandates that public school single-sex education must be voluntary, the new FMF study found that almost none of the schools provided information on their websites about the nature of, or justification for their single-sex environment, leaving parents and students without adequate information to make informed decisions about their child’s participation in a deliberately sex-segregated setting.

Earlier this month, the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued long awaited guidance for K-12 schools interested in offering single-sex classes while staying in compliance with federal laws barring sex-based discrimination.

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Take Action!

The new study contains lists of 805 public K-12 schools with intentional single-sex settings by name and state. Help FMF take the data further:

1. Do the schools on the above lists in your state still practice deliberate sex segregation?
2. Are there other public schools that should be added to the lists?
3. Are schools with sex segregation violating any of the equity principles in the December OCR guidance or other review criteria such as the FMF suggestions for evaluations?

Please share what you learn with FMF’s Education Equity Director, Sue Klein at sklein@feminist.org

The families of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Akai Gurley, Tamir Rice, and Reverend Al Sharpton will be marching in Washington, DC tomorrow to call for an end to police violence.

A coalition of civil rights groups led by Reverend Al Sharpton at the National Action Network organized the “Justice for All” march, which will begin at Freedom Plaza at noon on Saturday, December 13, and proceeds down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol. The Justice for All march, announced on Wednesday, is not expected to have record-setting numbers, but to make a strong national statement in support of street demonstrations nation-wide. Charter buses, however, are coming from many cities and states across the east coast.

Those participating in the march are calling on Congress to take legislative action to combat racial profiling, and police discrimination and violence. For more information on the march and how to get involved, visit the National Action Network’s webpage.

The US House of Representatives passed a $1.1 trillion, 1603-page spending bill late last night, 219-209. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) led the fight against passage, asking if Congress was representing Wall Street or representing the people. She said the bill represented “the worst of government for the rich and the powerful”. The bill contains a provision that weakens the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act by easing restrictions on banks, which ultimately contributed to the financial debacle of 2008.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) took to the floor to denounce the bill saying members were being blackmailed to pass the measure in the closing hours of the session with the threat of a government shut-down. The bill was passed within 3 hours of the deadline.

The bill contains many provisions impacting millions of people. It includes the Hyde Amendment, which bans spending federal dollars on abortion, and it includes provisions spending $5 million and upwards to $12-15 million more for ineffectual and harmful abstinence-only education. But it also contains level funding for the Teen Pregnancy Initiative which covers comprehensive family planning education at $101 million.

One of the most controversial aspects of the legislation is that it includes language that could result in cuts to pensions for millions of retired workers under the age of 75 years and even minimal cuts to those over 75.. It allows cuts to multi-employer underfunded pensions plans usually sponsored by employers and unions. It allows the plans to cut benefits well before they reach insolvency. The teamsters claim that one of the proposed revisions could save UPS $2 billion. Some pensioners could lose as much as a half to two-thirds of their pension.

This pension cutting provision is supported by both Democrats and Republicans and some unions and employers. AARP and the Pension Rights Center among other advocacy groups opposed it. Karen Friedman, the pension rights center policy director, warned “this sets a precedent for cutting social security and senior employer plans.”

A provision having nothing to do with government spending was included allowing wealthy individuals to increase their contributions to national political party committees from a maximum of $97,200 in 2014 to possibly as much as $777,600. Calculations differ, but the increase is substantial, giving more power, as if they needed it, to wealthy donors. The citizens united Supreme Court decision, allows individuals to give to non-profit independent expenditure campaigns unlimited secret funds. One can argue this provision provides more power to political parties in fighting groups like the Koch brother’s Americans for Prosperity.

The Senate denied a vote for the Military Justice Improvement Act yesterday, blocking the act for the second time this year.

A bipartisan group of senators approached the senate floor yesterday to push for the Military Justice Improvement Act (MJIA), spearheaded by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). Gillibrand was hoping the Act would be added as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, but said that she will push for it as a stand-alone bill, and is even prepared to urge President Obama to take executive action. The bill is hoping to combat recently released data from a Pentagon report showing little progress over the past year in preventing sexual assault in the military, making it easier for survivors to report assault, and eliminating retaliation for those who do report. The bill fell short of being passed by only five votes earlier this year.

The MJIA would move the decision to prosecute military sexual assault outside the chain of command and give it to trained, independent professional military prosecutors. “The Department of Defense has failed on this issue for over 20 years now,” Senator Gillibrand said yesterday, “and the data shows they still don’t get it.” She continued “Why should our service members enjoy a lesser standard of justice and fairness than you and I, whose freedoms they risk everything to protect?”

The need for reform was emphasized by Col. Don Christensen (Ret.), former Chief Prosecutor of the Air Force, who called the current process an “ineffective, broken system of justice,” that “undermines the military I love.” Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) agreed, saying “What we’re doing now is not working.”

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who led the objection to the bill, said he feared that it would undermine the authority of commanders in the military, although Sen. Gillibrand clarified that this bill would only affect the top 3 percent of commanders.

In a victory for women’s health, a unanimous panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit on Friday rejected a challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) contraceptive coverage benefit brought by Priests for Life, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington and other religiously affiliated non-profit organizations.

Judge Nina Pillard, a former law professor who was nominated to the DC Circuit by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate in December, wrote the opinion for the Court, which found that the ACA birth control benefit did not substantially burden or violate non-profits’ religious freedom.

Under the Affordable Care Act, health insurance companies must cover the full cost of all FDA-approved contraceptives – including the pill, IUDs, and emergency contraception – without requiring co-pays or cost-sharing. Religious employers, like churches, are entirely exempt from this requirement. Religiously affiliated non-profit organizations that object to providing birth control coverage to their employees, are entitled to an accommodation. These non-profits must only inform their health insurance issuer, third party administrator, or the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) of its objection. At that point, these organizations are no longer required to play a role in providing or subsidizing birth control. The insurance issuer or third party administrator would be solely responsible for providing birth control benefits to affected employees.

The DC Circuit panel found that this accommodation – which the plaintiffs in Priests for Life claimed would violate their religious beliefs – put no substantial burden on religious non-profits exercise of religious freedom.

“All Plaintiffs must do to opt out is express what they believe and seek what they want via a letter or two page form. That bit of paperwork is more straightforward and minimal than many that are staples of nonprofit organizations” compliance with law in the modern administrative state,” wrote Judge Pillard. “Religious nonprofits that opt out are excused from playing any role in the provision of contraceptive services, and they remain free to condemn contraception in the clearest terms.”

The fact that others may provide contraceptive coverage to these religious non-profits’ employees did not mean that the non-profits were aggrieved under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). According to the Court, there is “no RFRA right to be free from the unease” of knowing that third parties may “act in ways their religion abhors.”

The decision also pointed out that the religious accommodation provided the least restrictive means to achieve a compelling government interest – namely, ensuring women’s health and providing to women the equal benefit of the preventive care coverage guaranteed by the ACA. Judge Pillard specifically noted that “The contraceptive coverage requirement derives from the ACA’s prioritization of preventive care, and from Congress recognition that such care has often been modeled on men’s health needs and thus left women underinsured.”

Directly after the ruling, Rev. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life indicated that the group would continue to challenge the law. “The court is wrong,” he said, “and we will not obey the mandate.”

The DC Circuit is the third federal appeals court to reject non-profits’ challenge to the accommodation. This decision is the first appeals decision since the US Supreme Court decided Burwell v. Hobby Lobby this summer. The Feminist Majority Foundation, along with 12 other national and local organizations, joined an amicus brief, submitted by the National Women’s Law Center in support of the birth control benefit rule in the DC Circuit case.

After a two-day preliminary hearing, an Oklahoma state court judge ordered that Daniel Holtzclaw, an Oklahoma City police officer, will stand trial for sexually assaulting 13 African-American women while on duty.

Holtzclaw is charged with 36 counts of sexual assault, including six counts of first-degree rape, and multiple counts of forcible oral sodomy, sexual battery, and indecent exposure.

During the hearing, all 13 women gave testimony against the police officer, who is alleged to have used his power as an officer to commit these crimes. One woman testified that she was forced to perform sexual acts: “It was either that or the county jail.” Another woman testified, “He was an officer. And I was scared. And I knew he could hurt me.”

A 17-year old girl also offered testimony that Holtzclaw, after threatening her with arrest, pulled down her shorts and forced her to have sex with him on the front porch of her mother’s home. “What am I going to do? Call the cops? He was a cop,” she testified. “I was afraid of what could happen to me if I was snitching.” Prosecutors introduced DNA evidence found inside of Holtzclaw’s pants matching that of the girl.

Another woman testified that Holtzclaw stopped her as she was walking through her neighborhood. The 52-year-old said the officer put his hands under her blouse, and when she resisted, he put his hand in her pants. After this, she said Holtzclaw told her, “OK, you don’t have anything in there. You can go.”

Police began investigating Holtzclaw after one of the survivors reported an assault in June. The other 12 women had not reported Holtzclaw until they were contacted by detectives investigating the June assault. Many of the women feared reprisal or that they would not be believed.

“Who are they going to believe?” the 17-year old told the court. “It’s my word against his. He’s a police officer.”

In their written testimony to the United Nations Committee Against Torture, the Black Women’s Blueprint referenced the Holtzclaw case as symptomatic of a larger pattern of practice among law enforcement officials in the US that most often plays out in communities of color. In their report, they highlighted that despite the fact that black women and racially-mixed black women are more often the victims of rape than their white counterparts, they are much less likely to get a conviction for a sex crime.

Holtclaw has pleaded not guilty. He remains out on $609,000 bail. During the hearing on Tuesday, protesters outside of the courthouse called on the court to rescind bail.

The Pentagon is conducting its largest-ever report of sexual assault in the military this year, with over half a million active-duty troops being called on to submit responses.

The report, to be conducted this year, will be issued online to all 200,000 active-duty servicewomen and 300,000 servicemen.

The Pentagon hired professional Rand Corp to create and distribute the poll in the hopes of getting more responses than ever before. “Rand’s survey methodology will allow the department to accurately compate data among all previous surveys so that we can semlessly asses progress the department is making in preventing and responding to the crime of sexual assault,” says Army Major James Brindle, a spokesperson for the Pentagon.

“Great care was taken to obtain a representative sample,” says Rand Corps spokesperson Jeffrey Hiday, who added that the survey will not exclusively be about sexual assault.

The US military faced massive criticism in 2013 in the wake of a report on sexual assault which revealed an increase of unreported sexual assaults from 19,000 in 2010 to over 26,000 in 2013. A separate report released at the same time showed an increase of 6 percent in reported sexual assault cases. The 2013 report sparked outrage on Capitol Hill, where President Obama held a conference to urge officials to take charge and assigned Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to “step up our game exponentially” in both preventing sexual assault in the military and charging those responsible.

The Rand report is part of a requirement made by President Obama in 2013 for a full-scale report on progress made to eradicate military sexual assault by December of this year. The President has fought to end military sexual assault throughout his term, most recently in January when he signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act of 2014, which expanded efforts for sexual assault prevention and strengthened victim protections. Efforts to curb the military sexual assault epidemic have floundered in Congress, where legislators remain split about whether or not to remove prosecution of sexually violent crimes from the chain of command.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and Nigeria’s military are reportedly negotiating the release of the nearly 300 young women and girls who were abducted by Boko Haram more than six months ago, ostensibly bringing an end to six months of activist efforts calling for their return.

An adviser to President Jonathan, Hassan Tukur, told Voice of America that President Jonathan and the self-described “secretary-general of Boko Haram,” Danladi Ahmadu, have been in talks in Saudi Arabia regarding the over 270 schoolgirls abducted by the extremist group in April. The President of Chad, Idriss Deby, and high-ranking Cameroonian officials have also been party to the dialogue.

Although videos released by Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau indicated that they intended to sell the girls into slavery and hold them until members of the group were released from prison, Ahmadu said the girls are “in good condition and unharmed.” A spokesperson for Boko Haram claimed the girls will be released Monday in Chad.

Initial reports of the girls’ disappearance were met with inaction by the Nigerian government, which sparked acts of resistance in Nigeria and eventually spurred the viral – and global – #BringBackOurGirls campaign. In the United States, activists staged protests and rallies calling for government support to help locate the missing girls. Ultimately, President Obama announced that he had dispatched a team of military and law enforcement agents to the region, but although the Nigerian army announced in May that they had located the girls, they remained missing months later, over 100 days after their abduction. As activist and media attention waned, advocates and the families of the abducted were frustrated and angered by the failure to rescue the girls.

“As far as our girls are concerned, they have been abandoned,” Mkeki Mutah, uncle to two missing teens, told Al Jazeera prior to the news of the neogitations. “There is a saying: ‘Actions speak louder than words.’ Leaders from around the world came out and said they would assist to bring the girls back, but now we hear nothing. The question I wish to raise is: ‘why?'”

Even so, optimists have pointed to Boko Haram’s release of 27 hostages last weekend as evidence the tide could turn in favor of parents and loved ones who have come to fear the worst. Last Saturday, the wife of Cameroon’s Vice-Prime Minister, Akaoua Babiana, and 10 Chinese workers were among those released. That group was taken captive during two separate raids in May and July. How or why the group was set free is unknown, but to date, of the 276 captured over 180 days ago, far fewer have been so fortunate.

Of the young women and girls abducted in April, 57 successfully fled. Late last month, a young woman kidnapped by Boko Haram in early April from her dormitory was found roaming a small village. The 20-year-old was pregnant and “in a state of extreme trauma.” 15 young Chibok women who managed to rescue themselves from Boko Haram were granted scholarships to continue their studies made possible, in part, by Nobel Prize winner and champion of girls’ education, Malala Yousafzai. This summer, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan also announced government-sponsored scholarships to support the young women’s return to school by improving infrastructure, telecommunications, and community engagement to decrease the risk of comparable attacks and create a model for school safety in conflict zones.

The freed are encouraging thousands of other girls – who’d stopped attending school for fear of Boko Haram – to bravely resume their studies.

After Republicans filibustered the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA) earlier in this session, the Senate has now voted 73-25 to allow the bill to move forward to a debate.

The public overwhelmingly supports equal pay for equal work, but for far too long Senate Republicans have refused to allow a floor vote on a modest bill that will enable women workers to discuss their pay with co-workers, provide stronger tools to fight sex discrimination in wages, and grant the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) power to collect pay data from employers by sex and race.

The Paycheck Fairness Act is long overdue. Women – now some 50 percent of the workforce – deserve better.

Today’s vote allowed the PFA to clear one hurdle. Now, the Senate must act to move the bill to an up or down vote. The House must also pass the PFA in this session, and President Obama – a strong supporter of equal pay – must sign it, for the Paycheck Fairness Act to become law.

The House Republican leadership still has not scheduled the PFA for a vote in this session.

WASHINGTON – The Feminist Majority Foundation applauds U.S. District Court Judge Lee Yeakel’s decision Friday striking down parts of a Texas anti-abortion law.

The court deemed unconstitutional a provision of House Bill 2 that would have required Texas abortion clinics to meet the stringent building code requirements of ambulatory surgical centers – a provision that would have caused most of the state’s remaining clinics to close.

“A woman’s constitutionally-protected right to seek out a safe and legal abortion should not hinge on the width of a doorway,” said Feminist Majority Foundation President Eleanor Smeal. “Access to abortion and birth control is under attack across the nation. No other outpatient service has been made to adhere to these medically unnecessarily and harmful requirements. We will not rest until women’s access to constitutionally-protected reproductive services are available to all women. These TRAP laws, if allowed to go into effect, will surely cost some women their lives.”

“We are pleased Judge Yeakel once again recognized this law for what it is – an unconstitutional burden on the rights of women and abortion providers in Texas,” said duVergne Gaines, director of the Feminist Majority Foundation’s National Clinic Access Project.

“We commend abortion Texas providers like Amy Hagstrom Miller for continuing to fight against these relentless, unconscionable and unconstitutional attacks. Women’s lives are on the political cutting board.”

Today, Judge Yeakel rightly acknowledged the “undue burden” the requirements would have placed on the shoulders of women seeking safe and legal abortion services in Texas. In just over a year, HB 2 has effectively reduced the number of abortion clinics in the state from 41 to barely more than a dozen. Across the nation, TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws like HB 2 are undermining women’s access to truly comprehensive reproductive health care.

The first stages of HB 2 went into effect in November 2013 and severely restricted women’s access to abortion. The bill currently prohibits abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, requires doctors to obtain hospital-admitting privileges and, as of September 1, would have required abortion clinics to spend millions of dollars in unnecessary renovations to meet the surgical center requirements.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 29, 2014

J.T. Johnson: (office) 703-522-2214 | (cell) 202-681-7251 | jjohnson@feminist.org