PHOENIX — From the U.S. Capitol and the White House to far-flung battlegrounds in Arizona, Iowa and elsewhere, it’s been a dramatic fortnight in the debate over access to abortion and birth control. Foes of abortion celebrated a series of advances and claimed new momentum, as abortion rights supporters mounted protests to try to blunt it.
Planned Parenthood, the anti-abortion movement’s prime target, called it “the world’s worst week for women’s health.”
Among the developments in recent days:
House Republicans passed a health care bill that would halt most federal funding to Planned Parenthood for a year and expand restrictions on private insurance coverage of abortion.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order on religious liberty that will likely make it easier for employers to drop coverage of contraceptives from their health care plans. The secretary of Health and Human Services, conservative physician Tom Price, said he would act swiftly “to safeguard the deeply held religious beliefs of Americans who provide health insurance to their employees.”
Trump appointed a prominent anti-abortion activist, Charmaine Yoest, to serve at HHS as assistant secretary of public affairs. Yoest, as president of Americans United for Life from 2008-2016, played a key role in the enactment of scores of state laws restricting abortion access. Her appointment was lauded by Vice President Mike Pence, who declared in a speech, “For the first time in a long time, America has an administration that’s filled top to bottom with people who stand without apology for life.”
Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad signed a bill banning most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. A similar bill has reached the governor’s desk in Tennessee; a third such measure is pending in Missouri. Similar laws are in effect in at least a dozen other states, and Trump has promised to sign a federal 20-week ban if it can survive a potentially difficult path through Congress.
Republican lawmakers in Arizona and Iowa took steps to join a growing list of states that have acted to curtail public funding for Planned Parenthood, which is the leading provider of abortions in the U.S. but also provides a range of other health services that would be affected by the funding cuts.