Issue #3 RETURN OF THE GAG RULE
Abortion: Talk About It Keep abortion accessible. Speak up and speak out.
QUICK QUIZ
The Trump administration prohibits federally funded domestic health clinics from providing abortion information. This “gag rule” could affect reproductive health services for:
a. 1.8 million women b. 2.8 million women c. 3.8 million women
The answer is 3.8 million women.
Nothing fake about our facts. Check out References.
RETURN OF THE GAG RULE
In 1836, the US House of Representatives adopted the first gag rule to prevent members from considering anti-slavery petitions. Now, our government is using a gag rule to prevent staff from talking about abortion in Title X programs, which primarily provide reproductive health services for low-income people.
Title X has never funded abortions, but staff could counsel pregnant women about all their options––continuing the pregnancy, adoption, or abortion. With the gag rule, clinics will lose their Title X funding if staff discuss abortion. Some reproductive health organizations are unwilling to be silenced, and nearly 900 of them have already lost their funding for refusing to submit to these new regulations.
Given these restrictions, US rates of unintended pregnancy and unplanned births are likely to rise by 30% and even higher for teenagers. What makes this worse is that funds diverted from reproductive health centers could be funneled into anti-abortion and abstinence-only crisis pregnancy centers.
OWRS (Older Women Remember and Speak Out) is developing Abortion: Talk About It, a series of short emails with reliable information that you can use to start conversations and support others doing the same. (Previous issues at Archive.) Share these emails on social media. Forward to friends, family, and co-workers. Ask them to go to OWRSpeakout.org and sign up.
We can’t change something we don’t talk about!
From Older Women Remember & Speak Out
OWRS Issue #3, Nov. 2019
from Humanospere.org