Front Page Features Archive

Himalayan Times: Safe and Affordable Abortion is a Woman’s Right

Three years ago, Nepal’s Supreme Court (SC) catapulted the nation to the forefront of the global women’s rights movement by unequivocally ruling that women have a constitutionally protected right to safe and affordable abortion services…

Groundbreaking Victory in Oklahoma: Medication Abortion Protected

Today, a court delivered another stinging rebuke to the Oklahoma legislature, striking down the government’s latest attempt to choke off women’s access to reproductive health services—an arbitrary and severe restriction on medication abortion.

Judge Donald Worthington ruled that the law was “so completely at odds” with standard medical practice that it “can serve no purpose other than to prevent women from obtaining abortions and to punish and discriminate against those women who do.”…

A Repugnant Attack—Defeated

With a unanimous decision yesterday by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, the Center for Reproductive Rights has won our legal challenge to strike down a ballot initiative that would have given every fertilized egg the full legal rights of a person.

We challenged this initiative as soon as it went on the ballot—arguing that this frontal assault on reproductive rights clearly violated the U.S. Constitution. The Oklahoma court agreed…

Time to Get Emergency Contraception Right

The rules on who can get emergency contraception without a prescription are confusing. They don’t need to be, and they shouldn’t be, not for a drug deemed safe by government experts.

A recent study, though, revealed that many pharmacies are denying the medication to women who meet the legal requirements and don’t need a prescription…

The Real-Life Consequences of a Personhood Measure

Here we go again.

Anti-choice extremists in Oklahoma are shooting for the pinnacle of reproductive rights rollbacks—a personhood amendment to the state constitution that would send reproductive rights back to the very dark days before Roe v. Wade made it legal for women to seek abortions from licensed reproductive health care providers—and not through life-threatening, illegal means…

Demeaning Oklahoma Ultrasound Law Defeated

When it comes to fighting for reproductive rights, there’s often no sweeter word than “unconstitutional.”

It’s sounding especially sweet today: A district court just struck down Oklahoma’s demeaning and invasive mandatory ultrasound law for being an “unconstitutional special law”—treating abortion differently from other medical procedures without justification. …

Next Stop in the Battle to End the Bait-and-Switch of Crisis Pregnancy Centers

Every year, tens of thousands of women are lured to crisis pregnancy centers in the U.S. …

The Fight for Contraception Rages On

The new federal requirement that private health insurance cover the cost of birth control has generated much heated controversy these last few weeks: Congressional hearings, proposed legislation to unwind it, multiple legal actions…

Advocacy in Action: Senate Defeats Blunt Amendment

Moments ago, the U.S. Senate voted 51 to 48 to block the Blunt amendment—an extreme legislative effort to allow any employer to refuse coverage of any service required under the new U.S. health care law based on religious or moral objections…

Standing Behind Science…And Not in the Way

On January 20, the Obama Administration demonstrated that it wouldn’t allow religiously affiliated organizations to dodge their responsibility for the reproductive health of the women working for them. Those organizations—not churches, synagogues, and mosques, but universities, hospitals, and some charities associated with religious institutions—will have to comply with the Affordable Care Act and offer insurance coverage of contraception without copayments, putting family planning within reach of all.

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