NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts Applauds Attorney General Coakley for Challenging Bush’s Last-Ditch Attack on Birth Control and the Right to Choose
NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts applauds Attorney General Martha Coakley for her leadership in challenging federal regulations published on December 18th that could radically expand the ability of health care providers, medical institutions, and insurance plans to refuse to provide women necessary and appropriate care. For immediate release January 15, 2009 Contact: Andrea Miller
617-556-8800 x12 NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts Applauds Attorney General Coakley for Challenging Bush’s Last-Ditch Attack on Birth Control and the Right to Choose Disputed Rules Designed to Give Comfort to Hospitals Who Fail to Offer Emergency Contraception to Rape Survivors and Other Health Care Providers Who Deny Care Boston, MA – Today, Massachusetts has stayed true to its tradition of protecting privacy and promoting access to reproductive health care by joining a lawsuit against the Bush Administration’s last-ditch effort to jeopardize women’s access to birth control and undermine the right to choose. NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts applauds Attorney General Martha Coakley for her leadership in challenging federal regulations published on December 18th that could radically expand the ability of health care providers, medical institutions, and insurance plans to refuse to provide women necessary and appropriate care. These regulations are especially pernicious because they appear calculated to eviscerate state laws – like those now in place in the Commonwealth – that protect women’s access to reproductive health services. This includes the requirement that all hospital emergency rooms make emergency contraception (EC) available to sexual assault survivors and that health plans cover birth control if they offer prescription coverage. Last month, NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts released new research about access to EC in Massachusetts ERs, which proved that – even with strong laws on the books – some medical institutions may deny women who have been raped the compassionate care they need and deserve. In short, the new rules are totally unnecessary. Federal law already allows health care institutions and medical personnel who receive federal funding to refuse to provide abortion or sterilization services. And any entity that receives federal health dollars – including state government – is prohibited from “discriminating” against health care facilities, medical personnel, or insurance plans for refusing to provide, cover, or refer for abortions (the penalties for doing so include loss of federal dollars, like Medicaid, which provide essential health care funding). We also applaud Governor Deval Patrick and Public Health Commissioner John Auerbach who – along with the Attorney General – publicly opposed these rules from the very beginning, and we urge all of our elected officials to continue to stand behind the Commonwealth’s fair and sensible laws promoting access to reproductive health care. NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts is the state's leading advocate for privacy and a woman's right to choose. For more information, including our recent survey of access to EC in ERs, please visit www.prochoicemass.org. # # #
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