Obama’s Affordable Care Act has served as a focusing event
for a number of issues related to healthcare, and has brought women’s
reproductive rights and abortion to the forefront of political debates and
policy reforms. On Friday,
Wisconsin passed a new state law, ACT 217, that could lead to criminal charges
for doctors who provide nonsurgical, medical abortions.
As a result of ACT 217, Planned Parenthood was forced to
announce that it will no longer be using RU-486, a steroid used to induce an
abortion during the early stages of pregnancy. This is bound to have negative repercussions on the clinic
and its patients, given that nonsurgical abortions make up about 25% of the
procedures at the clinic, and women seeking abortions are now required to make
three separate doctor visits to prove that they are not being forced into
having one. Teri Hyuck, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, said that the law is "ambiguous and difficult to interpret," and that "decisions about childbearing should be made by a woman in consultation
with her family and doctor -- not by politicians,” in a statement Friday.
On the other side, proponents of the legislation say that it is intended to protect the health of women and the lives of their fetuses. Wisconsin Right to Life supported the
decision saying the, "suspension will result in another decline in
Wisconsin abortions which is great news for mothers and babies." STOPP, an
interest group on a crusade to end Planned Parenthood, is another group in
support of any action to bring down the organization. (As
part of their campaign, they have produced Youtube
videos like this one claiming Planned Parenthood is “hooking kids on sex.”)
Wisconsin is not the only state in the Midwest that has
contributed to the campaign against Planned Parenthood. Ohio’s new budget bill puts clinics
that provide abortions, including Planned Parenthood, at the bottom of
their funding. On Wednesday, Ohio
Democrats put up a petition to stop the House’s plan to defund the clinic, and
already 12,000 women have signed it.
Regardless, the GOP-controlled House is expected to pass the bill
within the next week.
With the increased polarization, party stances on these issues related to women's reproductive rights have only strengthened and ACT 217 is just the latest example of anti-abortion measures being pushed by conservatives and adopted around the country. These various actions on the state level in Wisconsin and Ohio are a
testament to federalism in the US, which allows for states to
serve as laboratories of democracy and implement their own policies. Whether
this is negative or positive depends on one’s political leanings—for
those who are pro-abortion, this legislation is a serious setback, but for
those on the other side of the divide, these acts are considered triumphs. For now, we will have to see the effects of these decisions and whether any action will be taken on the national
level in the coming months.
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