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The Center for Reproductive Rights would like to wish you and your loved ones a safe and joyful holiday season. We hope you will continue to join us as we work toward the day when all women are free to live their lives with choice, hope, and dignity. Click here to make your gift today.
Oklahoma Agrees to Delay Distribution of Funds from "Choose Life" License Plates to Anti-choice Pregnancy Centers
Oklahoma officials have agreed to delay the distribution of proceeds from specialty "Choose Life" license plates to anti-choice pregnancy counseling
centers until next summer. The Center and the firm of Debevoise & Plimpton filed a lawsuit challenging the state legislature's approval of
"Choose Life" license plates. The Center is arguing that the legislature's refusal to authorize the sale of "Pro-Choice" plates discriminates
against pro-choice motorists and violates their right to free speech.
>>Learn more
President Signs Spending Bill with Anti-abortion Conscience Clause
On December 8, President Bush signed a Congressional spending bill that includes the Weldon Amendment, which allows medical
professionals and institutions, including insurance companies, to refuse to perform or cover an abortion because of a religious or moral
objection to the procedure. This so-called "conscience clause" could dramatically restrict women's access to comprehensive reproductive
health care throughout the United States. This month, the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA) filed a
lawsuit in federal court to block the provision and California's attorney general announced plans to do the same.
>>Learn more about the Weldon Amendment and the legal challenges.
Abortion Rights Face Perilous Future in America
In late November, Center President Nancy Northup published an op-ed in the National Law Journal about a future without the federal protection for abortion in the Supreme Court's landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
"If the president's nominations to lower courts are any indication, his promise during the debates that he will not apply an abortion "litmus test" for nominees to the highest court rings hollow. Not one of his judicial nominations to date is on record defending Roe, and many are openly hostile."
>>Read more
Read the Center's report, What If Roe Fell? The State-by-State Consequences of Overturning Roe v. Wade.
Center Joins Legal Battle Against IVF Ban in Costa Rica
On December 10, the Center joined a group of Costa Rican couples who are challenging a Supreme Court ban on in-vitro fertilization (IVF) before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The ban maintains that human life begins at conception and from that point on must be protected by law. Courts throughout the Americas could cite the ban to undermine women's access to reproductive technologies, contraception, and abortion.
>>Learn
more
Slovak Government Passes Public Health Law that Upholds Women's Rights
In October, the Slovak government passed a comprehensive public health law that
protects women from involuntary sterilization. The new law includes
most of the comments submitted by the Center in a bid to safeguard
women's rights to non-coercive reproductive health care and access to medical files. In early 2003, the Center published
Body and Soul,
which exposed the government's grave violations of women's human rights through the coercive sterilization of minority Romani women.
>>Learn more |
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