Wednesday, April 29 marks the 100th day of President Barack Obama's administration.
As the political leader of the pro-choice movement, NARAL Pro-Choice America will mark this milestone as yet another reminder of how electing leaders who support the fundamental American values of freedom and privacy does make a difference in the lives of women and their families.
President Obama is leading our country during an especially challenging time and many of our family and friends will discuss what's happened during his first 100 days on a number of fronts. When the topic turns to women's reproductive freedom and choice, we want you to be prepared to share the following signs of change:
• President Obama rescinded the global gag rule, the Bush administration policy that canceled U.S. family-planning funds to many overseas health centers and denied the world's poorest women access to birth control. (January 23)
• President Obama re-funded the U.N. family-planning program, UNFPA, which President Bush had de-funded for seven years straight. Obama also signed legislation into law boosting UNFPA funding to a record $50 million. (January 23 and March 11)
• President Obama signaled his commitment to medically accurate sex education by including it in his first-ever budget outline. (February 26)
• President Obama announced his intention to repeal the controversial, last-minute Bush policy known as the Federal Refusal Rule. The regulation could have allowed entire health-care corporations to refuse to provide medical services - including, potentially, birth control. (February 27)
• President Obama signed legislation into law fixing the birth-control price crisis at college health centers and safety-net provider clinics across the country. (As a senator, Obama authored this legislation.) (March 11)
• President Obama signed legislation increasing family-planning funding for American women by $7 million, and cutting the failed "abstinence-only" programs by $14 million. (March 11)
• President Obama signed legislation increasing international family-planning funding at the USAID by more than $30 million. (March 11)
We have reason to celebrate after reading this list, but let's not forget that we're marking the first 100 days of what will be a long and bumpy road to progress. There will be budget debates, a possible vacancy on the Supreme Court, and more.
As Pulitzer-Prize-winning columnist Cynthia Tucker said at our annual event marking the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision in Washington, D.C. during the early weeks of this administration: "Obama didn't say, 'Yes, I can,' he said, 'Yes, we can.'"
How right she was. We must be Partners for Change to build on the success of the first 100 days--especially because our opposition is going to extreme depths to attack President Obama.
Look at the right-wing attacks on three of President Obama's key nominees: Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas for secretary of Health and Human Services; former NARAL Legal Director, Prof. Dawn Johnsen, for assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice; and Judge David Hamilton for a judgeship on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
What do these nominees have in common? In addition to impeccable qualifications for the respective positions for which they've been nominated, they also have taken pro-choice positions.
Before you sit down to watch the president's press conference on Wednesday evening, I ask you to take tangible action to become a Partner for Change and call on the Senate to reject the divisive political attacks from right-wing groups and confirm these qualified nominees.
The actions we take now will determine what additional points we add to this pro-choice primer in the next 100 days.
UPDATE: U.S. Senate confirmed Gov. Sebelius. Take action on Prof. Johnsen and Judge Hamilton here.
Follow Nancy Keenan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/NARAL
Compulsory childbearing is slavery.
Pro-choice advocates are talking of only a few choices. The right to terminate the heartbeat of a infant in the womb and the right to teach fifth graders how to put condoms on the cucumber.
It's "pro-life" to condemn girls and women to death and septic wards and mutilation in back alleys. Ohh, you're so moral!!!!!!
Birth control price "crisis"? If students can afford to go to college, I can imagine they would have the money to purchase birth control devices for their extracurricular fun. It's not a crisis considering they're being used for "chosen" activities.
My point is that we make it so easy to have this done with no precondition, such as the mothers health or a rape, etc that life has no value when its still inside the mother. Im not very religous so dont go there. Im just thinking of what could have become of my first child and i never gave it a chance to find out.
Dont preach to us about torture we do it every day !
Not everyone believes a fetus is a baby.
Not every religion believes a fetus is a baby.
If you think just because you have had a bad experience that everyone else who does the same thing will have the exact same outcome you are wrong. I feel sorry for you but maybe if you had learned to wrap it you would not have the guilt you carry with you know.
Do not force your personal trauma onto my reproductive rights..
Let us teach our children now.
Pro-birth control!!!
If you sleep better at night thinking this, oh well.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/blog/2morrowknight
My God, you people are truely sick and selfish.
If men want to continue having sex with women they better get on board with the fact that women are at risk of pregnancy no matter how careful they are. And, by the way, every time a woman is pregnant she risks her life and her health, so forced reproduction will never be the law of the land.
Those who are "pro-life" tend to hold their views on account of the fact that they view the fetus as a human being, seperate from it's mother and with it's own individual rights. With this is mind, as much opposed to the viewpoint as one may be, it becomes very difficult to declare that a man somehow has less of an ability to speak out on the issue.
As for the "cheap labor" and "cannon fodder" argument, this is nonsense and hardly warrants a response. On a side note, anyone who would demonstrate to raise the minimum wage obviously has little knowledge of basic economics and the futility of a minimum wage and similar types of price control. Also, while an argument could be made that abortion is the evasion of a very serious responsibility, those who argue against it's legality do so not to "punish" the woman but to criminalize (or to delegate this decision to the states, as is the constitutional argument) her ability to punish the child for her irresponsible actions. And I would doubt very much that they feel abortion is acceptable if the woman is married.
By the way, isn't the term "unborn child" a bit ridiculous? Should we not say "pre-born child"?
You're side's against all those things. You just advocate forced pregnancy.
It's obvious you want to turn the clock back on women. My god, you'd rather condemn poor women to back alley botched abortions than allow them a safe, cheap medical procedure. How twisted is that?
What happens in my uterus is only my business.
If you understood the meaning of Eternity, you would do everything you could to attain it.
In all kindness and sincerity, say at least one "Chaplet of Divine Mercy".
Did you see Hillary Clinton response to Chris Smith during her congressional testimony a few days ago? Reality Check said it was the most courageous statement ever made by any Administration official on the subject of reproductive rights.
I thought it was magnificent myself.
The central question in the abortion debate is whether or not the fetus is a human life. The government can only permit the killing of one person by another when they are acting in self-defense - that is, when the one is intentionally attempting to extinguishing the other's life.
If Mrs. Clinton believes that the fetus is NOT a human life, then why does she have any interest in lowering the rate of abortions? And if she does believe it is a life but holds her views because she believes them more practical, why doesn't she say so?
Traditionally, Christianity held that "ensoulment" didn't occur until weeks later. Calling all abortions "the killing of one person by another" is a radical revision that's hard to support based on traditional Christian concepts or on biology. It's not until well into the multicellular stage that a human embryo is visibly distinguishable from a sea urchin embryo. Anything resembling consciousness or self-awareness doesn't occur until very much later.
People who are certain that a zygote (the single-celled product of the fusion of an egg and a sperm) is a distinct human life with a soul need to address these questions: If the embryo splits, resulting in identical twins, does the soul split, too? Do identical twins each have half a soul? If two genetically distinct embryos fuse (this is known to happen but no one knows how often) does the resulting individual -- a genetic mosaic -- have two souls?
But some people think that complex, highly personal decisions are best left to be made by a woman, her doctor, and a police officer.
Pro-life my ass.