The Department of Health and Human Service’s (HHS) Office on Women’s Health removed a webpage dedicated to breast cancer and other helpful reproductive health information, including important insurance information for low-income people, according to a new report.
The Sunlight Foundation’s Web Integrity Project first reported the missing webpage. The group has been documenting page or link removals from the OWH website and shared its most recent report with ThinkPro...
reproductive-rights
Here’s how Texas is using Medicaid to defund Planned Parenthood
Republicans in Congress weren’t able to “defund” Planned Parenthood last year, but some remain hopeful that they can in 2018.
While eyes fixate on Congress, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — an agency packed with anti-abortion sympathizers — signaled it would approve efforts to withhold federal dollars to Planned Parenthood if states asked. Texas has already sought federal permission to do so and the green light could come any day now.
In June 2...
The Trump administration’s Orwellian plan to gut Roe v. Wade
Two women, known by the pseudonyms “Jane Roe” and “Jane Poe,” are being held at federal facilities for undocumented minors who enter the country without an adult guardian. They are pregnant and want abortions. Yet they cannot obtain one because the Trump administration will not let them leave the facility to obtain the medical care they seek.
If this scenario sounds familiar, it should. Last October, the Trump administration made a similar attempt to hold a w...
‘Hands off my birth control’: 500,000 personal objections to one Trump administration policy
The Iowa family clinic Chelsea Vargas went to recently closed, forcing her to reconsider her current form of birth control. The clinic provided her a free birth control ring. Without the clinic’s financial assistance, she won’t be able to afford her preferred contraception. (Although most plans cover the ring, she hasn’t been able to pay off her deductible to use her insurance.)
Before the clinic closed, she switched from the ring to an implant, a tiny rod inserted...
The U.S. abortion rate fell dramatically. Will Trump learn the right lessons?
A new study found that the U.S. abortion rate fell dramatically between 2008 and 2014, thanks in large part to more people using effective birth control. But researchers are worried that lawmakers won’t learn the right lessons from the study’s findings — and that recent progress in the area is already being reversed under the Trump administration.
One of the other central findings of the study, authored by Guttmacher Institute researchers Rachel Jones and Jenna Jer...
U.S. abortion rate falls, but the procedure is still common among certain groups
The U.S. abortion rate fell 25 percent between 2008 and 2014, though the procedure is still a common experience, according to a new study published Thursday in the Journal of Public Health. The falling rates were also not even across all groups, and the procedure has become increasingly concentrated among lower-income people.
The study found that, in 2008, there were 19.4 abortions per 1,000 women and gender minorities between the ages of 15 and 44. By 2014, that number had...
Trump’s Health Department is adopting a lot of anti-choice rhetoric
The Trump administration has repeatedly delivered on a campaign promise to the religious right that he’d prioritize a faith-based, anti-choice agenda. The latest evidence comes in the form of the draft strategic plan released by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which defines life as “beginning at conception.”
The draft was released two weeks ago, before HHS Secretary Tom Price resigned, and it outlines the priorities of the agency and its governin...
Federal judge blocks law requiring anyone offering abortion advice to register with the state
A federal judge in Florida blocked a law on Friday that would have required anyone offering advice about abortions to register with the state and provide those seeking advice with a detailed explanation of the abortion procedure and alternatives.
The law, which was signed by Gov. Rick Scott last year, would have required abortion “advisers” to pay a $200 fee and offer a “full and complete” definition of abortion and its benefits and drawbacks. What that definition needed to include ...