California NOW

Prop. 4 Polls Mean California Teens Need Your Help!

Polling is showing Prop. 4 gaining support, and we're only one month out from the election!

We need to spread the word and let California voters know the truth about how dangerous Prop. 4 would be for California's most vulnerable teens.

The recent Public Policy Institute of California poll shows Prop 4 winning 47%-44%, and a SurveyUSA poll shows Prop 4 winning 52%-36%.

The Campaign for Teen safety needs your help now more than ever! Please volunteer to make calls, hand out information, and to help in any way you can. Make sure that you spread the word to everyone you know that Prop. 4 is a deceptive initiative that will hurt California teens and families.

You still have until October 8th to donate to the No on 4 campaign and have your gift matched, dollar for dollar, to double your impact!

Say No On 4 Twice As Loud!

Former state Senator Becky Morgan and her husband Jim Morgan know that Proposition 4 is a bad idea for our teens. They understand that parental notification doesn't work - that Prop 4 can't force teens to talk to their parents, but it might force them to do something desperate and dangerous, like delaying critical medical care or turning to self-induced or back-alley abortions.

They have made a commitment to match every donation to the No on Prop. 4 campaign made online - dollar for dollar. If you donate $25, so will they; if you pledge $100, their additional contribution means $200 will go toward protecting teen safety in California through the No on Prop 4 campaign.

This special donor match will only last until 11:59 p.m. on October 8, so donate today to double your donation's impact. Together, we will once again - and as often as necessary - protect our teens, our families, and our community.

We can't stop the fight now. We can't let our teens down. Join Becky and Jim - and thousands of other Californians - by supporting the Campaign for Teen Safety. Click here to donate today.

The Future of Sexual And Reproductive Rights: Part 3

This is the third in our posts about the series of articles on reproductive rights for The Future of Sexual And Reproductive Rights conference at Yale being hosted at Balkanization.

This week's posts are:

Anita Allen: Constitutional Privacy? New Directions for Reproductive Rights in the U.S.

Dawn Johnsen: Why the 2008 Election Matters for Reproductive Rights

John Donohue: Have “Woman-Protective” Studies Resolved the Abortion Debate? Don’t Bet on It

Judith Resnik and Reva Siegel: Health Excepted, Health Accepted: Abortion, Health, and Law

These articles provide a very different perspective on the issue of reproductive rights, and are well-worth reading.

You can read our list of earlier articles in the series.
Part 1
Part 2

Immediate Action Needed!

We have just learned that California’s federal waiver for the Family Planning Access Care and Treatment program--that we’ve had since 1999--will be eliminated as of Oct 1, 2008. This is a serious crisis: there is NO state money to replace the $9 federal fund match to the CA $1 contribution. We must get this money restored this week. Yesterday we failed to get the funds into the House of Representatives Continuing Budget Resolution because Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, would not put it in.

Yea, that’s what I said! Wha?

We need to demand that she restore this waiver in any House bill alive.

Family PACT provides family planning and reproductive health services for Californians earning less than 200 percent of federal poverty level, approximately 1.65 million women and men annually, and averting nearly 170,000 unwanted pregnancies every year! As it is, enrollment is at point of service, allowing immediate access to services. It is the most successful and cost effective family planning program in the country, but this decision would undermine access to high quality, low cost care for millions of Californians.

PLEASE CALL Assembly Member Pelosi’s office RIGHT NOW and ask her to fix this for California women. Her number is Washington is 202-225-4965 and her District office in San Francisco is 415-556-4862.

When the Facts are Known, People Say No on Prop. 4

Every initiative on the California ballot must have a legislative hearing before election day. Last week, a joint Assembly-Senate health committee held the hearing for Prop. 4.

Watch the footage of the hearing.

Assemblymember Dave Jones wasn't afraid to challenge Prop. 4 supporters on the deceptive language of the proposition, including the fact that the woman the measure is supposedly named after ("Sarah") was a married woman to whom none of the Prop. 4 provisions would have applied. Prop. 4 opponents discussed the dangerous effect of Prop. 4 on California's teens and why voters should reject this third attempt at legislating family communications. Read more on Prop. 4.

A new PPIC poll confirms that California voters remain strongly (71%) against any government interference in a women's right to choose.That's the good news...but the same poll shows that the Proposition 4 race is very tight -- with 47% voting YES and 44% voting NO. While this is "within the margin of error" it still shows that we have a lot of work to do to let our pro-choice friends know about 4 and come on board to move the NO side up past the 50% mark!

Thanks to California Progress Report for the link to this footage!

Bush: Squeezing in As Much Evil As He Can Before He Leaves Office

We've told you about Bush's swan song to restrict women's access to reproductive health care before he leaves office, by expanding a Department of Health and Human Services policy that allows any federally funded entity to deny services. This would allow doctors, nurses and nearly anyone else employed in a health care setting to deny women access to birth control, based on their personal belief that birth control is immoral. It would deny funding for clinics and medical facilities who do not put punitive, often redundant, rules in place. It would also likely flood so-called crisis pregnancy centers--which provide no information about abortion or birth control--with tax payer money.

In addition, in California, it would be in conflict with several laws on the books that protect patients from the whims and politics of people in the health care industry. Even providers who support access to services might refuse mainstream family planning counseling and birth control for fear of losing funding.

Senator Hillary Clinton and Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Cecile Richards explain in their NYT op/ed that, "laws that have been on the books for some 30 years already allow doctors to refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further, ensuring that all employees and volunteers for health care entities can refuse to aid in providing any treatment they object to, which could include not only abortion and sterilization but also contraception." They also point out that "Health and Human Services estimates that the rule, which would affect nearly 600,000 hospitals, clinics and other health care providers, would cost $44.5 million a year to administer."

Sarah Palin: Clinic Blockader?

This just in from Salon via DailyKos: did Sarah Palin participate in blockading a doctor's office (please note, not a clinic where abortions were being performed) simply because that doctor had defended an Alaskan woman's right to have access to abortion without having to travel to Seattle?

From the Salon Article:

In 1996, evangelical churches mounted a vigorous campaign to take over the local hospital's community board and ban abortion from the valley. When they succeeded, Bess and Dr. Susan Lemagie, a Palmer OB-GYN, fought back, filing suit on behalf of a local woman who had been forced to travel to Seattle for an abortion. The case was finally decided by the Alaska Supreme Court, which ruled that the hospital must provide valley women with the abortion option.

At one point during the hospital battle, passions ran so hot that local antiabortion activists organized a boisterous picket line outside Dr. Lemagie's office, in an unassuming professional building across from Palmer's Little League field. According to Bess and another community activist, among the protesters trying to disrupt the physician's practice that day was Sarah Palin.

There's a question I'd like to see someone asking on a national news program.

Take a look at our video on clinic defense work done by Sacramento NOW.

I know we may be overusing this image, but I just love it.

The Future of Sexual And Reproductive Rights: Part 2

This is the second in our posts about the series of articles on reproductive rights for The Future of Sexual And Reproductive Rights conference at Yale being hosted at Balkanization.

This week's posts are:

Barry Friedman: The Subterranean World of Abortion Politics

Nada Stotland: The Woman-Protective Strategy as a Campaign of Misinformation

Robin West: Reproductive and Sexual Rights: The Need for a Critical Jurisprudence

Cass Sunstein: Trimmers

These writers provide a perspective on reproductive rights that we don't often get to read, and it's very thought-provoking.

You can read our list of earlier articles in the series here.

The Future of Sexual And Reproductive Rights

We all feel strongly about reproductive justice (which covers a lot more than abortion, thank you very much) but how many of us know the legal background for our reproductive rights?

Balkanization has been hosting a series of articles on reproductive rights for The Future of Sexual And Reproductive Rights conference at Yale.

Here is a list of the posts so far:

Robert Post: Rough Weather Ahead

Neal Devins: It’s All over but the Shouting: The Increasing Irrelevance of Abortion Politics

Michael J. Klarman: Roe's Backlash

Gene Burns: Abortion, Federalism, and the Curious Case of The Southern Abortion Reform Laws

Reading these is a fascinating look at the issue of reproductive rights from a different perspective.

More Reasons to Vote No on 4

A new report by Child Trends found that approximately 18 percent of women aged 18 to 24 years old report having experienced forced sexual intercourse at least once in their lives.

The fact is, young women are more likely to be assaulted. Most young adult women report being age 16 or younger at the time of first forced sexual intercourse, including 13% who were age 11 or younger, 15% who were ages 12-14, and 30% who were ages 15-16. Moreover, they are more likely to experience reproductive coercion including birth control sabotage, refusal to accept birth control use, or other attempts to force pregnancy. Read more on the reproductive health consequences of intimate partner violence from the Family Violence Prevention Fund.

A pregnant teen already in a dangerous situation doesn't need the restrictions of Prop. 4. Most teens do go to their parents when faced with an unintended pregnancy. But teens in crisis need options.