The city of Baltimore, together with the Center for Reproductive Rights, is asking that the court dismiss the lawsuit filed by the Archbishop of Baltimore and the Greater Baltimore Center for Pregnancy Concerns, Inc., claiming that the city ordinance asking crisis pregnancy centers to have truthful signs outside their centers constitutes a denial of their freedom of speech.

From a Center for Reproductive Rights press release:

Today, the City asked the court to dismiss the case, arguing that the Archbishop’s claims against the ordinance are not supported by the facts or the law.  The ordinance protects women from deceptive advertising and ensures that women seeking birth control or abortion services have prompt access to those services.

“These facilities have a long documented history of misleading and manipulating women seeking abortion or contraceptive services.  It’s about time that they were required to tell women the truth,” said Stephanie Toti, staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Anti-choice advocates are upset with the ordinance stating that they must post signs declaring that they are not medical centers, and that they neither dispense nor provide referrals for abortions or birth control services.  According to the Archbishop, the ordinance is a form of religious harassment.

Catholics Call on Pope Benedict to Reconsider Vatican’s Ban on Contraceptive Pill

Fifty years ago this week, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the contraceptive pill. The man most prominently associated with the development and introduction of the pill, John Rock, was an Irish Catholic doctor from Boston. Dr. Rock didn’t set out to make waves with the Vatican; in fact, he was sure that his invention would gain approval from the Vatican and finally allow Catholics to practice safe and effective family planning. He was successful on both counts. Three different layers of a Vatican commission approved the pill back in 1965. But Pope Paul VI decided to ignore the findings of those panels and condemned Catholic women to a variety of unreliable methods if they were to follow the Vatican’s dictates. To this day, most Catholic women ignore the Vatican’s decree, and many millions of them have safer and more reliable family planning thanks to Dr. Rock’s pill.

The story of the pill’s genesis is a fascinating one. John Rock was an infertility expert who was a pioneer behind many modern methods of assisting couples to conceive. In the course of his work, he also met many fertile Catholic women who wanted to space the births of their children, and sometimes to avoid having children. The Vatican’s ban on artificial methods of contraception meant that they had to rely on so-called natural methods, when a couple can only have sexual intercourse during the time each month when a woman is infertile if they want to avoid pregnancy. This was unacceptable to many, unworkable for those who have unreliable cycles and impossible for women who could not negotiate their sexual relationship with their partners.

Rock, who worked with biologist Gregory Pincus to develop the pill, was convinced “that every couple should be able to choose freely the number of children they could afford — materially and emotionally — to bring into the world.”

Rock figured that he could invent a hormonal pill that suppressed ovulation and therefore extend the safe period for sex as long as a woman stayed on the pill. He reasoned that the Vatican would accept this, and Catholic women who did not want to go against the Vatican would be able to have a healthy sex life.

Contraception was an issue the Vatican had addressed before, and the advent of the pill raised new questions about Catholics and family planning. The Vatican had imposed a ban on “artificial” methods of contraception, such as condoms and diaphragms, in the1930 encyclical Casti Connubii. There was growing debate in the church about whether this ban should be continued, and if so, whether it should be broadened to include the new pill.

This was a huge issue for the Catholic church, and not long after the introduction of the pill, in 1963, Pope John XXIII convened a panel to study the matter. The papal commission on birth control was composed of bishops, priests and lay people, including married Catholic women. They considered Catholic theology, modern science and the lives that married Catholics lead. The commission voted overwhelmingly to recommend that the church rescind its ban on contraception. The pope, concerned that overturning the ban would call all of the hierarchy’s teachings into question, appointed a second commission, made up of 15 bishops, which also voted overwhelmingly to recommend that the church rescind its ban on contraception.

The results of these votes were leaked, and there was widespread rejoicing among Catholics. It was therefore a significant shock to Catholics — and indeed most of the world — when the encyclical Humanae Vitae was finally released by Pope Paul VI on July 29, 1968, proclaiming the teaching on contraception unchanged and unchangeable.

The pope had completely ignored the work and recommendations of his own commission, despite five meetings over three years and a vote by 30 of the 35 commission’s lay members, 15 of the 19 theologians and 9 of 12 bishops that the teaching be changed (three bishops abstained).

There is little need to reconvene a commission to study this issue. Not much has changed to negate the findings of the majority votes in the commission. Indeed, we have learned so much more about safe reproductive health that supports the real world application of the commission’s findings. It makes no sense to continue the Vatican’s wrong-headed approach to family planning. Even without the twin scourges of maternal mortality and HIV/AIDS, there are billions of good reasons to allow women to plan their families and to allow them to decide when and whether to have children: namely the 3.5 billion women in the world, of whom about 600 million are Catholic.

It would be a lasting and wholly positive legacy if the current pope got behind the majority report of the 1963-68 commission and lifted the ban on the use of contraceptives to allow Catholics to plan their families. Given the fact that today, in the United States, 97 percent of sexually active Catholic women above the age of 18 have used some form of contraception banned by the Vatican, it makes little sense to continue the ban. In fact, the ban does more harm to the Vatican and its teaching authority than would changing it.

Dr. Rock was a Catholic champion of women’s health. If the Vatican wants to regain some relevance and respect on this issue, it’s time to join him in his support for contraception.

Jon O’Brien is the president of Catholics for Choice

Of all the creepy things I don’t want to see in my campus newspaper, up around the top of the list is advertisements lying to and shaming rape victims who choose to have an abortion.

In a series on RH Reality Check, Robin Marty looked at anti-choice advertising by the Human Life Alliance (a Crisis Pregnancy Center). Marty reports that the “advertising supplement” is riddled with lies, starting with the Table of Contents, where it claims that abortion in America “is legal through all nine months of pregnancy for any reason.” Seriously, if that was true, pro-choicers wouldn’t have any work to do.

From there the insert pursues further common anti-choice deceptions, such as breast cancer scare tactics; inaccurate conflation of birth control with abortion; and gory, frightening, but completely false descriptions of abortion procedures and side effects. But what really takes the cake is the shaming and manipulation of rape and incest survivors, who are told they will feel they’ve “conquered” their assault by giving birth.

The advertising supplement informs students, “In the only major study of pregnant rape victims ever done, Dr. Sandra Mahkorn found that 75 to 85 percent chose against abortion” (underlying message: so if that is your choice, something is clearly wrong with you). What was the “major study”? Why, it was the decisions of 37 women who came to the study’s author for advice. Besides the fact that this is not enough women to be scientifically significant, gee, I wonder if the biases of the rape counselor against abortion had any impact. The medically unsound ad further takes it upon itself to tell doctors to advise against the trauma of abortion for rape victims, without consideration of the unique situation facing each woman.

Oh, and in case of incest, according to the insert, abortion has never ever had a positive impact for the victim. It’s just the abusive parent who wants it; “the incest victim is more likely to see the pregnancy as a way out of the incestuous relationship because the birth of her child will expose the sexual activity.” Really, incest victims should hope they get pregnant as a means of escape? And it won’t be clear to anyone unless she give birth? There are better ways to address incest than saddling a child — since most incest victims are minors — with a child she can’t take care of, and her immature body might not be prepared to give birth to.

The Human Life Alliance has particularly targeted University of Wisconsin schools, with at least seven papers in the system agreeing to disseminate their lies (kudos to the student newspapers who have rejected these ads). Many students are upset at seeing the deceptive ads, however, and are speaking up; in a Letter to the Editor in the Student Voice at UW-River Falls, Nikki Shonoiki denounced the inaccurate “ads”: “Nothing was being advertised here; instead, you [the editor] contributed to the dissemination of 12-page tasteless booklets of disinformation designed to denigrate and shame women who receive abortion care.” And at Stony Brook University, where a campus paper also ran the ads, the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance began a campaign against these problematic inserts and Crisis Pregnancy Centers.

Insist on truth in advertising by signing this petition telling student newspapers running HLA inserts to join their peers who have rejected these inaccurate, agenda-driven ads.

I asked each of them the same question, Why was this Health Care Reform legislation important?

I received four unique answers.

From their website…

“It has long been the tactic of anti-abortion activists in Wisconsin and around the country to try to scare women out of visiting women’s health and family planning centers through campaigns of harassment and intimidation outside of family planning and abortion clinics. This year is no exception.

The Family Planning Health Services (FPHS) clinic in Wausau and the Madison Surgery Center in Madison have both been targeted by anti-choice protestors who use graphic and misleading photographs and signs, shout slogan, block access, and create a general atmosphere of fear in their attempts to harass patients and staff.

To counter these actions, the Wisconsin Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin Foundation have partnered with FPHS to create the Forty 4 Forty pledge campaign. The name is inspired by what the anti-choice movement refers to as “40 Days for Life” which manifests itself in “40 Days of Harassment” as anti-choice demonstrators maintain a constant 40 day presence outside of clinics during which they harass patients, staff, and others approaching the health centers.”

For more info please visit Forty4Forty.

These young people appear to be on a field trip from Newman High School in Wausau, Wi.

The Truth About 1353

Idaho Senate Bill 1353

Planned Parenthood Refusal Letter to the Senate Floor