Tag Archives: women’s health

I Support Planned Parenthood, Why Isn’t Planned Parenthood Supporting Women?

Planned ParenthoodFifteen women and mothers whose lives have been devastated by medical negligence wrote to the CEOs of Planned Parenthood today asking them to reverse a position that is devastating to women’s health and access to justice in California. The letter asked the CEOs to reverse their position on a proposed ballot measure to change a law that has discriminated against women for the last 38 years.

Read the letter here.

“We are women whose lives have been shattered by medical negligence,” they wrote. “We take issue with Planned Parenthood’s leading role in opposition to ‘The Troy and Alana Pack Patient Safety Act,’ a pending California ballot measure that would simply update for inflation the state’s 38 year old cap on compensation in medical malpractice cases. The outdated cap is unfair to many who have suffered medical harm, regardless of gender. But it has a disproportionate impact on women.”

“Planned Parenthood’s opposition to the Troy and Alana Pack Patient Safety Act is against the interests of women in this state – your core constituency. The unfair, antiquated and sexist cap perpetuates an injustice against women that must be remedied. As a group that has been so deeply impacted by medical negligence and this outdated law, we would welcome the opportunity to meet with you in hopes you will reconsider your position on the ballot measure and support a reasonable index of the cap for inflation to bring California’s patient safety laws and women’s access to justice into the 21st century.”

Read more about the medical negligence suffered by the 15 women and their families here.

The letter explained how the limits on patients’ legal rights in medical negligence cases particularly harms women.

“In much the same way that the glass ceiling continues to undercut the income of working women, the malpractice cap on noneconomic damages means compensation for those harmed by medical negligence is largely determined by the income of the person who was injured. The calculus is simple and sexist.”

“A stay-at-home parent with no income or a parent who works only part-time to be able to spend more time with the children will be treated very differently under the cap than someone who is working full-time at a high-paying job.”

“A woman whose child was killed by medical negligence, or who lost her ability to have children due to medical negligence, or who underwent an unnecessary mastectomy due to medical negligence, is not likely to lose income.  But she has clearly suffered a grievous injury. Her compensation for her loss is limited to an amount below what anyone would consider fair in 2013.”

Planned Parenthood is usually a champion for women’s rights, so their backwards position on this issue is particularly stunning. Luckily, there’s still time before the initiative reaches the ballot for the leaders of Planned Parenthood to listen to the women of California and recant.


Posted by Carmen Balber, Executive Director of Consumer Watchdog.  For more information on Consumer Watchdog visit us online or following us on Facebook and Twitter.

Throwing Women Under the Bus: Healthcare Reform? -NOT!

Hannah-Beth Jackson, Speak Out California

This past week, America’s women were, yet again, thrown under the bus. Make no mistake about it; this healthcare bill eradicates years of effort, blood and lives lost by brave physicians and healthcare providers, to take this nation back to the dark ages of back alleys, dead mothers and orphaned children. At the very last hour, the House leadership acquiesced in a provision to the great Healthcare Reform bill that takes away access to abortion coverage for millions of women, despite the fact that the majority of health insurance policies currently provide that coverage.

While the spin machines are hailing this as a great victory for Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, it is a black day for America’s hard-fought battle for reproductive freedom.

While politics is a nasty game, on a good day, there are certain principles that those who believe in equality cannot sacrifice. Reproductive choice is one of them. Those who oppose the use of public funds to pay for abortion services had already won a victory in June when pro-choice representative Lois Capps agreed to introduce, as a stop-gap measure the Hyde amendment which has, for years, prohibited federal funds from being used to pay for abortion services. Representative Capps believed that this would be the line in the sand against further erosion of abortion rights in America.

The Stupak amendment (and I will refrain from the obvious here) goes much further than this: It denies poor and middle-class women access to abortion services when they purchase their own insurance with their own money yet qualify for a partial subsidy. Stupak also denies abortion services to women who seek (now mandatory) coverage through the “public option” (such as that is).

While the pundits and democratic leadership celebrate their great victory, we must rally every woman and man in this state and nation who believe that our daughters, sisters and mothers deserve the ultimate freedom of deciding whether, when and with whom to have children. We have fought long and hard to exercise our constitutionally protected right to reproductive choice to lose it now to the hands of political expediency and lunatic fringe politics.

The fight moves to the Senate where Senate leader Harry Reid and other anti-choice men hold the key to the future of every woman of child-bearing years. Without the option of insurance coverage for abortions, women will effectively be denied their fundamental right to control their own destinies. Of course, what good is a right without the ability to exercise it?

Will we be back to the butchers and back alleys because women can’t afford to pay for the right to exercise their fundamental freedoms and even if they can’t, those freedoms have been denied to them? Well, that’s what the “Stupak” amendment does.

The bottom line here is that we cannot allow this to stand. President Obama has committed to removing this blatant violation of women’s fundamental rights from the final bill that he plans to sign. It is incumbent upon every person who believes in freedom of choice, women’s equal rights and the Constitution of this country to step up and do something.

What to do? Write a letter to the President of the United States and demand that he fight for us; send a letter to your Senators and demand that they do the same.

What is it we want, we demand?

WE DEMAND THAT THE SENATE PASS A BILL FREE OF THESE UNPRECEDENTED RESTRICTIONS ON ABORTION AND THAT THE FINAL BILL PROTECT A WOMAN”S RIGHT TO SAFELY ACCESS THIS LEGAL MEDICAL PROCEDURE.

What else can we do?

Write a check to an organization that will bring the battle to the hallowed and hollow walls of Congress, should this measure remain in the Senate version. There is a way to beat this, and we must all stand together to do so.

We’ll be doing an action-alert on this shortly. In the meantime, contact your Senators and Congressmembers and tell them your vote for them is dependent upon their protecting reproductive freedom. Too many lives depend upon it.

Visit us at Speak Out California!