Standing Up for Choice

This morning NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota hosted a press conference along with the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault and several legislators to call on Governor Tim Pawlenty to "stop action on a draft regulation that could undermine a state law that requires hospitals to provide emergency contraception in the emergency room to rape survivors." According to a July 15th article in the New York Times on the new regulation, "The Bush administration wants to require all recipients of aid under federal health programs to certify that they will not refuse to hire nurses and other providers who object to abortion and even certain types of birth control."

Linnea House, Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota, stated that "The proposed regulation, which confuses the definitions of abortion and birth control, would allow health-care corporations to refuse to provide many commonly used forms of birth control, including emergency contraception that Minnesota hospitals are currently required to provide to rape survivors who request it in the emergency room." The regulation challenges a 2007 Minnesota law, passed by the Minnesota Legislature with overwhelming support, that guarantees rape and sexual assault survivors access to and information about emergency contraception in hospital emergency rooms.

Speaker of the House Margaret Anderson Kelliher also spoke out against the federal measure with the support of some of her colleagues in the legislature. She was joined by Dr. Lynn Hagedorn of Park Nicollet Clinic and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Dr. Hagedorn emphasized that emergency contraception is not an abortion drug, but that the proposed regulation could increase demand for abortions. She said that the move by the Bush administration was "demeaning to American women."

Donna Dunn, Executive Director of the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault, also issued a statement on behalf of her organization. The following is an excerpt:

"Let us remember that our legislature and our Governor did not leave rape victims without relief but stepped up and provided the kind support and protection that rape victims need as they work to put their lives together after an assault. This measure was clearly understood and embraced in a show of bipartisan unity when it was passed into law in 2007.

"While many may argue the various aspects of the language of DHHS' proposed rules, we want to stand firm and say that victims/survivors of sexual assault should not be pawns in this debate.... We must protect barrier-free access to emergency contraception so that a survivor may be able to give up that particular fear as she weighs the other post rape fears....

"The MN Department of Health issued a report last year citing the Costs of Sexual Violence in Minnesota to be nearly $8 billion in 2005; 61,000 Minnesota women, men and children are assaulted in over 77,000 separate incidents in one year. For many female victims the number one fear is that of becoming pregnant by the event that was so horribly traumatizing. Not surprisingly, some of those costs cited in the MDH report are connected to the emotional and physical costs of bearing a child as a result of rape. For the pre-teen girl whose body is not prepared for bearing a child, the frightened teen, the gang raped college coed, this cost is too high not to prevent."     - Julia Quanrud, 2008 Summer Intern

Comments

[Bonnie]

Absolutely outrageous federal proposals and surely Gov. Pawlenty will not allow this to undermine the great bill that passed in Minnesota in 2007! Thanks for excellent response NARAL and others, and for excellent coverage, Julia.