(MintPress)– “Reproductive health care is not for some women; it is a fundamental right of all women,” says National Organization of Women (NOW) President Terry O’Neill.
In the wake of increasing activity amongst anti-abortion and anti-birth-control activists, women’s rights groups are ramping up efforts to combat erosion of their access to contraceptive health care.
In the latest round, evidencing what some are calling a full-blown war on women in the United States, this week it was ruled that women in Kansas may be denied access to contraception by their pharmacists and doctors after Republican Gov. Sam Brownback signed a new bill into law.
Anti-abortion and anti-contraception measures ramp up
The new bill, called the Health Care Rights of Conscience Act, which was sponsored by GOP state Rep. Lance Kinzer, was signed into law Monday. It bars anyone from being required to prescribe or administer a drug they “reasonably believe” might result in the termination of a pregnancy.
To date, the the National Conference of State Legislatures reports that four other states including Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and South Dakota have laws allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill an emergency prescription for contraceptives. Moreover, Florida, Maine and Tennessee have laws on the books which allow for broad refusal measures without specifically mentioning pharmacists.
MintPress previously reported that 1,100 anti-choice laws were introduced in 2011, marking a new record. Eighty three measures have been passed into law. And so far in 2012, another 430 have been introduced.
It would seem that these measures fly in the face of popular public opinion. The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association reported that even 80 percent of anti-choice Americans support women’s access to contraception last year. And, a definite majority of women in America have used or regularly use some form of contraception.
Same old rag
However, measures such as the newly minted Kansas law are becoming increasingly common, as the anti-birth-control movement employs tactics such as pressuring insurance providers to refuse coverage of contraception, writing “conscience clause” legislation into law allowing pharmacists to choose whether or not they will dispense prescriptions for contraception. Similar legislation has been around for over 40 years following Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1973 legalizing abortion.
Gloria Feldt, the former president of Planned Parenthood, says the anti-birth-control movement is nothing new. “After Roe v. Wade was decided, the debate focused on abortion instead of birth control. But [for anti-choicers] they are not separate issues.” She believes that what’s going on today is the revival of an old movement, using old rhetoric. “It’s been there from the beginning. If you go back and look at the rhetoric against birth control from 1916, it’s exactly the same as the rhetoric now.”
Yet, laws like the one in Kansas perhaps demonstrate Feldt’s point that more activism is needed to ensure that women’s access to contraception are not diminished. “It is very hard to awaken people to the threat, because who can believe that something so accessible can be at risk? ” she said in an interview with Salon.com.
Feldt says that what is at the heart of the war on women is a question of where women belong in society. She explained, “When you peel back the layers of the anti-choice motivation, it always comes back to two things: What is the nature and purpose of human sexuality? And second, what is the role of women in the world?” Sex and the role of women are inextricably linked, because “if you can separate sex from procreation, you have given women the ability to participate in society on an equal basis with men.”
Groups like NOW have pledged political activism around these issues, with O’Neill writing that members on a national level would “work tirelessly to elect officials who will support women’s access to the full range of reproductive health care services, and defeat those who don’t.”
And Kari Ann Rinker, Kansas State Coordinator of the NOW organization, said in an interview with MintPress that those plans are already being carried out in her state.
“Sad state” in Kansas
“It’s a sad state in the state of Kansas right now,” she said, referencing a slew of anti-abortion and anti-contraception measures adopted under Governor Brownback, who has already signed bills requiring new licensing criteria for abortion clinics and requiring parental consent for juveniles to get an abortion, another bill banning insurance coverage of abortion and one which shored up the limits on late-term abortion.
Rinker said that the new law was unnecessary, as a 1969 Kansas law already on the books had ruled that no one should be required to perform or participate in abortion procedures.
“To deny the right of women to control when and if they want to have children is morally wrong,” Rinker said.
Kansas is being viewed as a testing grounds for the so-called war on women this year according to many.
And women are fighting back. On April 28 members of NOW participated in the We Are Women marches at state capitols in Kansas and across the U.S. Rinker said there was a large turnout at the event in Kansas. “I have been doing activism, lobbying and this type of work for years, and generally I am a very pessimistic person, but I am feeling a renewed sense of optimism.”
Rinker says that in the wake of “the state and national war on women” she has seen new chapters of NOW springing up across Kansas in areas which traditionally have not had chapters and aren’t major metropolitan areas, such as in the southeastern area of the state. “The outrage is the fuel,” Rinker says, speaking of women’s anger over such measures. ”Civil rights and human rights and issues of human justice and dignity should not be taken away through popular vote,” she said.
The group has plans for its chapters to get involved in local political elections “at the grassroots” level in Kansas Rinker said, “We know there’s a lot at stake, and we have to work at the grassroots level.”