Stop Sneak Attacks on Abortion!

The misogynist right wing is cynically using the COVID-19 pandemic to broaden its attacks on a woman’s essential right to control her own reproduction.

Thanks to pressure from you and other feminists, Texas, Ohio, and Alabama’s prohibitions are temporarily on hold due to court orders. But the attack is spreading like a contagion, with Oklahoma, Iowa, and Louisiana moving toward defining abortion as a “non-essential,” “elective” procedure that wastes precious medical facilities and safety gear.

It is ludicrous and false to classify abortion as a delayable procedure like a colonscopy – especially in light of prohibitions against late-term abortions. As always, the fetus-fetishists stand exposed. Their concern is control, not a particular medical procedure. In a letter to federal Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, more than 50 anti-choice organizations urge him to maintain restrictions on medication abortions during the crisis, despite the heightened need of this option.

We need to mount a counter-offensive in defense of women!

Please take a moment to email Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to demand he defend and expand access to surgical abortion, Plan B, abortion drugs, and contraception in this time when people are losing jobs, medical coverage, childcare, and loved ones. Poor and working women, women of color and immigrants are most at risk from the coronavirus because of their jobs in the service sector and their role as unpaid care-givers to their families. They need to be defended not further attacked in this critical time.

Please personalize the suggested message below and send to HHS Secretary Azar, with copies to the governors indicated. While you’re at it, send a copy to the governor of your own state to demand that he/she speak out against the assaults on reproductive rights even if things seem ok in your state for the moment.

Thank you for taking action!

Helen Gilbert Organizer, Radical Women U.S.

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Secretary@HHS.gov

Dear Secretary Azar,

Cynical forces are taking advantage of the coronavirus crisis to accelerate their attacks on reproductive rights. It is the height of hypocrisy that they choose this time of crisis to undermine one of women’s most fundamental life decisions: the choice and timing of whether or not to become a parent.

These forces are the same ones who have severely limited access to late-term abortion, so it is incredibly self-serving and hypocritical that they now demand abortions be stalled for weeks so that “more urgent” medical needs are met, while also pushing you to maintain barriers to abortion drugs and telemedicine consultations.

I urge you to:
-- Declare that abortion is an essential medical procedure that should not be delayed
      or during the coronavirus epidemic
-- Ban all requirements that force patients to make repeat trips to facilities, which put
     them at risk of exposure to the virus
-- Lift all state restrictions on pharmaceutical abortions in order to lessen the pressure
     on clinics and medical personnel
-- End barriers to late-term abortions for any woman forced to delay the procedure due
     to the COVID-19 crisis

Decisions on reproduction are essential to women’s health and their aspirations for education, jobs and equality. Around 70,000 people seek abortion care in the United States every month.

You have a choice to defend the health and well-being of more than half the population or buckle to a self-serving minority.

I urge you to stand up for women’s rights and health.

Sincerely,

Cc (post on these websites):
Governor of Iowa Kim Reynolds, https://governor.iowa.gov/contact
Governor of Oklahoma Kevin Stitt, https://www.governor.ok.gov/contact/leave-comment
Governor of Louisiana John Bel Edwards, https://gov.louisiana.gov/index.cfm/form/home/4


My governor: _________________