Moving in a New Direction
A new resource shares innovative and effective state policies that successfully improve women’s reproductive lives.
Forced ultrasound. 72-hour waiting periods. Medically unnecessary clinic requirements. We often hear about the outrageousness of anti-abortion laws. Where are the proactive policies that improve women’s reproductive lives?
A new report, Moving in a New Direction: A Proactive State Policy Resource for Promoting Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice, has some good news for supporters of women’s health and freedom.
Created by the Center for Reproductive Rights in collaboration with more than 60 national and state organizations, the guide serves as both a concrete resource and an inspiration for state lawmakers looking to counteract the relentless attacks on family planning and abortion services by advancing proactive policies to improve the health and lives of women and their families.
The resource includes evidence-based policies that have already been introduced in at least one state legislature and show real promise of improving women’s health and access to care. Here are a few highlights:
1. Fulfilling the promise of the Affordable Care Act
California’s SB 1005 addresses problematic gaps in health coverage for undocumented and lawfully present immigrants in the state by using state funds to expand health care access. This measure would allow millions of women access to affordable, crucial reproductive care.
2. Promoting sexual health and access to family planning services
Rhode Island and Washington State have both put forth legislation that would make contraception more affordable, accessible, and effective by requiring insurance providers to cover a full-year supply of birth control purchased all at once.
3. Empowering young people to make informed sexual and reproductive health decisions
New Mexico and Florida have enacted forward-thinking legislation that exempts pregnant and parenting students from standard school absence policies, provided they make up missed classwork, to make it more possible for them to complete their education while building a healthy family.
4. Advancing the health and rights of pregnant women
African American women are four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women. This startling statistic points to serious structural barriers—including discrimination and poverty—to health care. Texas has passed a new law establishing a maternal mortality task force to address pregnancy-related deaths, half of which are considered preventable.
5. Ensuring meaningful access to abortion
In 2014, seven states adopted laws that would ensure that in the event the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade or Casey v. Planned Parenthood, a woman’s right to decide whether to have an abortion remains intact. Colorado’s legislators similarly advanced a measure that acknowledges every individual’s “fundamental right of privacy with respect to reproductive health care decisions” and provides that “every individual is entitled to make reproductive health care decisions free from discrimination, coercion or violence.”
6. Supporting the right to parent and parents in the workplace
In 2014, West Virginia passed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, allowing “pregnant women to continue to do their jobs and support their families by explicitly requiring employers to make the same sorts of accommodations for pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions that employers already must make for temporary disabilities not related to pregnancy.” Until more comprehensive federal legislation is enacted, a number of states have adopted such broad pregnancy accommodation laws.
There is a lot of energy in the movement right now to address the growing disparities in reproductive health care outcomes and the structural barriers to care facing low-income and underserved populations, according to Kelly Baden, the Center’s director of state advocacy and one of the guide’s creators.
“In many places, whether or not a woman can obtain contraception or abortion care is increasingly dependent on her zip code and the contents of her pocketbook,” says Baden.
“From expanding Medicaid to protecting pregnant women’s rights to broadening the types of licensed professionals who can provide contraception and abortion care, our hope is that this resource can harness the passion and creativity we are seeing at the state level to spread sound pro-women’s health policies throughout the country.”
