NARAL PRO-CHOICE COLORADO LAUDS SENATE COMMITTEE VOTE AGAINST ANTI-WOMEN’S HEALTH MEASURE
For Immediate Release
Monday, February 11, 2008 NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado
Contact: Emilie C. Ailts
Office: 303.394.1973, ext. 12 NARAL PRO-CHOICE COLORADO LAUDS SENATE COMMITTEE VOTE
AGAINST ANTI-WOMEN’S HEALTH MEASURE Proposed legislation would have imposed mandate,
opened door to government making health care decisions for patients DENVER (Feb. 11) – Today, women across Colorado benefited from the decision by the Colorado Senate State, Veterans, & Military Affairs Committee to vote down Senate Bill 95, an anti-women’s health measure that would have imposed a one-size-fits-all mandate on reproductive health care and forced unnecessary delays in the provision of health care services. The measure, sponsored by Senator Dave Schultheis (R-Colorado Springs) and Representative Kevin Lundberg (R-Berthoud), would have allowed politicians, not doctors, to decide what type of medical care a patient receives. Specifically, the bill would have imposed a delay in the receipt of an abortion by requiring physicians to disclose certain information, to perform or refer out certain medical procedures, and to document a woman’s receipt of such information and/or procedures at least 24 hours before an abortion is performed. This would have disproportionately impacted the women living in the 78 percent of Colorado counties that do not have a licensed, trained physician who will perform an abortion. During a committee hearing on the bill, NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado Political Director Toni Panetta delivered the following testimony: “NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado represents the 1 million Colorado women of childbearing age and their families. We work to ensure that those women have access to the full range of reproductive health care services to prevent unintended pregnancy, bear healthy children, or choose safe, legal abortion. “I thank you for your time today. I am here before you to ask you to please vote no on Senate Bill 95. “Senate Bill 95 is little more than an attempt to impose a one-size-fits-all mandate on personal, private, and complicated decisions that are anything but simple or uniform. “According to statistics published by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a research institution that examines reproductive health care policy nationwide and that Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi describes as ‘reliable,’ 60 percent of women who receive abortions already are mothers with children. “According to statistics provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, in Colorado in 2004 – the most recent year for which data are available – 64 percent of all abortions were performed before 8 weeks of gestation. Less than 3 percent were performed after 21 weeks of gestation. According to the National Abortion Federation, those that occur after 26 weeks generally involve very real human tragedies – instances when pregnant women find themselves unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer or other life-threatening diseases; when surviving a car accident makes continuation of a pregnancy a threat to a woman’s life; or when a fetus is discovered to have an undeveloped brain, a severe metabolic disorder, or vital organ failure. “I present those numbers to you not to bore you with statistics but to illustrate for you the context in which decisions to terminate a pregnancy are made. “Women who have abortions are mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, nieces and neighbors. They are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist agnostic or atheist. They are chief executives, nurses, students, elected officials, athletes, retail workers, church leaders, anti-abortion activists, teachers, housewives, grocers – and myriad others from every stripe of industry. They are members of our community – a community in which: Women living in 78% of Colorado counties have no licensed, trained physician who will provide an abortion, meaning they must cross county lines to have an abortion; White women lose 26 cents for every dollar that their male co-workers earn today, African American women lose 37 cents on the dollar, and Hispanic women lose 46 cents; Nearly 2/3rds of all women on Medicaid nation-wide are in their child-bearing years; and The Federal Family and Medical Leave Act, which requires employers to grant up to 12 weeks unpaid leave for such circumstances as childbirth and newborn care, DOES NOT apply to small businesses that employ fewer than 50 people.
“I give these facts to describe the realities of life for a significant number of the female population of Colorado and those are only some of the many factors that women are compelled to consider when deciding whether to continue or to terminate a pregnancy. Those do not include the multiple conversations with loved ones and the private conversations with professionals and those that occur in a woman’s private deliberations. “If a woman in Colorado decides to seek an abortion, she – like any of us who go to a doctor – must schedule an appointment based on a physician’s availability, arrange child care, take time off of work or school, and decide whether to ask someone to accompany her. However, unlike any of us seeking other forms of medical care, she may also be forced to walk past screaming protesters waving placards of bloodied, dismembered fetuses before she even opens a door, signs in, changes her clothing, arranges herself in a paper gown, has her vital statistics taken, waits, and finally consults with a trained medical professional. “That is an imposing process. Senate Bill 95 would add to that process a 24-hour delay and a procedure that is already an option within the current process. I ask you today, what gain would be recognized through this mandate? “I am here to ask you to respect a woman’s ability to make that decision – just as you respect their ability to make decisions about how to raise the children they already do have, as you respect their ability to make decisions to complete their education, or as you respect their ability to make decisions to ensure economic self-sufficiency for themselves and their families. “I am here to ask you to respect the medical profession as you do any other field. As you’ve heard today, the medical profession has developed standards and guidelines to ensure that standards for medical care appropriate to a patient’s unique needs are delivered. “I am here to ask you to respect the fact that every woman who walks through a door to a physician’s office, having determined to have an abortion, is in a situation that is unlike any other woman’s – and because of that, I ask you to reject this one-size-fits-all mandate and vote no on Senate Bill 95.” NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado (NPCC) is the political action arm of the pro-choice movement in Colorado. NPCC has more than 30,000 supporters statewide and works to develop and sustain a constituency that uses the political process to guarantee every woman the right to make personal decisions regarding the full range of reproductive health choices, including preventing unintended pregnancies, bearing healthy children and choosing legal abortion. ###
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