Elizabeth Warren has just announced her abortion platform. It's aggressive.



[ad_1]

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Friday issued a statement calling on Congress to adopt a list of laws to ensure abortion and other reproductive rights throughout the country, even though Roe v. Wade falls.

The statement, published on Medium, comes as a wave of strict anti-abortion laws sweep the country. On Wednesday, Governor Kay Ivey of Alabama enacted a law banning almost all abortions in the state, without exception for rape or incest. On Thursday, the Missouri State Senate passed a bill banning the procedure to eight weeks (the bill is now being returned to the State House for approval). Many of these laws are designed to overthrow roe.

"It's a dark moment," Warren writes. "People are scared and angry. And they are right to be. But this is not the time to back down, it's time to fight back. "

While many Democratic candidates have condemned restrictive anti-abortion laws in recent days, only a few, like Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), have taken concrete positions on how they defend access to abortion.

With his statement, Warren joins this group. She calls on Congress to register the right to abortion in a federal law, in case Roe v. Wade is overthrown and current federal law on abortion is withdrawn. She also calls for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding of most abortions, as well as federal legislation preventing states from imposing unnecessary medical restrictions on women. abortion clinics. It also proposes to reverse the Trump administration's national gag rule, which prohibits recipients receiving federal family planning funds from performing or recommending patients for abortion.

The legislation that Warren argues is unlikely to be passed without a Democratic majority in Congress. But in recent years, anti-abortion groups have abandoned the phased approach to adopt a more aggressive approach and have won significant victories across the country. Now, Warren offers an equally aggressive response.

Elizabeth Warren wants abortion protection to be enshrined in federal law

The Supreme Court stated in Roe v. Wade and in the 1992 decision Parenting Planning v. Casey that states can not prohibit abortion before viability, when a fetus can survive outside the uterus. But no federal law guarantees the right to an abortion. It means that if roe If the question were to fall, the question would be up to the States, which could prohibit abortion as they wished. Warren wants to change that and enact other federal laws to protect access to abortion and other reproductive health care. Here is what his proposal calls:

A parallel federal law Roe v. Wade

"Polls show that 71% of Americans oppose the overthrow of Roe – including 52% of Republicans," Warren writes. "Congress should do its job and protect its constituents from these efforts by establishing parallel affirmative and statutory rights Roe vs. Wade. "

Prohibition of targeted regulations on abortion providers (TRAP)

State TRAP laws, as well as conditions requiring abortion providers to have admission privileges in a nearby hospital, have multiplied in the years following 2010 when Republicans took over power over many legislatures. Opponents of abortion say they are needed to protect women's health, but many doctors say they are useless.

In 2016, the Supreme Court struck a blow to the laws, ruling in Health of the whole woman c. Hellerstedt In Texas, two such laws did not provide the medical benefits necessary to offset the burden they placed on patients seeking abortions. But that was before the appointment of Judges Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Court, and a new Court could overturn the decision Whole woman's health.

To prevent a resurgence of TRAP laws, Warren calls for passage of a bill, the Women's Health Protection Act, which prohibits states from imposing restrictions on abortion clinics that "do not significantly advance women's health or the safety of abortion services. "

An insurance guarantee for abortion and birth control

Warren asks Congress to repeal the Hyde amendment, allowing federal programs like Medicaid to pay for abortion care. She also calls for the adoption of the EACH Woman Act, which would ban abortion restrictions in private insurance. And, she writes, "we should make sure that any future health coverage, including health insurance for all, includes contraceptive and abortion coverage."

Reproductive justice advocates, a holistic approach that views access to abortion as part of a range of health and other issues, have long pointed out that the right to abortion does not matter. a lot of sense if a person can not afford the procedure. Warren's insurance recommendations are designed to make abortion affordable and legal.

Repeal of the rule of the Tromp Trump Administration Interior Gag

In March, the Trump administration issued a rule prohibiting groups offering abortion services to aborted patients from receiving X-ray funding, which provides family planning funds for low-income Americans. The rule would remove funding from Planned Parenthood, which currently serves about 41% of patients benefiting from Title X services, and reproductive health advocates say it will undermine the ability of poor Americans to obtain contraception.

The rule has been blocked by the courts for now, but Warren asks to get rid of it. "We must reverse the efforts of the current administration to restrict women's access to reproductive health care," she writes, "including ending the Trump gag rule and fully supporting funding for family planning under Title X ".

Warren also directly mentions the movement of reproductive justice, writing that the women of color who founded it "teach us that we must go beyond the choices to ensure meaningful access to all women in the world." America – and not just the rare privileged and wealthy.

"We must build a future that protects the right of all women to have children, the right of all women not to have children and the right to bring up their children in an environment safe and healthy, "she added.

Warren's recommendations are similar to those published Thursday by Gillibrand. Gillibrand also called for codification roe in law and repealing the amendment Hyde. And it went further by committing to "create a source of funding to ensure access to reproductive health centers in all states and all regions of the country."

Most of Warren and Gillibrand's proposals can not be achieved with the current composition of Congress. But both have distinguished themselves from the rest of the Democratic field by calling for specific and far-reaching changes in response to the growing pressure from the country's legislatures to reverse the trend. roe.

[ad_2]

Source link