Posted originally on MomsRising as part of their blog carnival with Ms.  on August 25th, 2011 by Kathleen Scully

The passage of health reform brought many wonderful new protections and benefits for Americans. Unfortunately, for women, these protections and benefits came with a price tag.

States now have the choice to either allow abortion coverage to be included in the state health exchange – with women having to pay for the coverage with a separate check – or states can exclude it from the exchange completely. Many states have already chosen not to include abortion coverage, forcing those who find themselves in need of an abortion also burdened with paying for the procedure out of pocket. This year, in Pennsylvania, an abortion ban in the state exchange was the Senate’s third order of business. While it moved quickly but hasn’t passed just yet, no other medical procedure was excluded from the exchanges in such a way.

The Pennsylvania state legislature is also considering a bill that would add to the already strict restrictions and regulations that medical centers providing abortions face. The new regulations would require facilities to either make costly changes, therefore increasing the cost of their services, or may even force them to close their doors. While Pennsylvanians need so much else-including access to better jobs and better education- the legislature has spent over 30 percent of their days working to restrict access to a safe, legal abortion.

Throughout the country, women are facing similar attacks on their right to make a choice when it comes to their body. In Pennsylvania, an ever-growing group is saying “We’ve Had Enough”.

Personally, I’ve had enough of the government spending their precious time in Harrisburg arguing over a legal medical procedure. I’ve had enough of hearing stories of people not being able to get the care they need because they have no way to pay for it. And I’ve definitely had enough of the government telling me what I can do with my body.

If you’ve also had enough, join our campaign. Whether you are in Pennsylvania or another state, speak up and help us declare that we’ve had enough of the attacks on women.

• •Check out the We’ve Had Enough Campaign Website
• •Follow the Campaign on Twitter @WeveHadEnoughPA
• •Like the Campaign on Facebook
• •In Pa? Join us on September 27th in Harrisburg – RSVP Here
• •Send a picture of yourself holding up a sign saying “I’ve Had Enough” or “We’ve Had Enough” to wevehadenoughcamp@gmail.com. They will include them on the website.

Read more: http://www.momsrising.org/blog/have-you-had-enough-i-know-i-have/#ixzz1WBWkKLvx

By Tricia

Invasive and dangerous attacks on abortions rights are now considered part of the normal political process and I’ve had enough.

In the first six months of 2011, Pennsylvania lawmakers spent 30% of their days at the Capitol working on legislation to restrict abortion. The legislature’s interest in abortion bills is not just irresponsible it is also unprecedented. Before 2011 the Pennsylvania Sate legislature has not voted on bills restricting access to abortion since the early 1990s.

The Pennsylvania Sate legislature, which has not conducted a vote on any bill restricting abortion access in the entirety of my lifetime, is ignoring pressing economic problems in favor of spending their precious time limiting the right to a safe and legal abortion. 

This summer, when benefits were being cut while the recovery is helping men disproportionately, the legislature wasted time that they could have used to create a more equitable budget on Senate Bill 732 and House Bill 574. The outcome of the legislature’s dangerous focus on abortion was that necessary programs like adultBasic were cut and a bill restricting abortion is primed to pass when the legislature comes back in the fall.  I’ve had enough.

Join me at the rally on September 27th to tell legislators why you’ve had enough and be sure to share the video with your friends and family!

By Sue

I’ve had enough of listening to women’s heartbreaking abortion stories.

Is there a woman alive who doesn’t have an abortion story, about herself or her sister or mother or friend?  I have heard hundreds of them.

The cancer victim I met in Planned Parenthood’s recovery room who agreed to give us an affidavit for a challenge to Pennsylvania’s Medicaid policy, which won’t cover medically necessary abortion care until you are actually in the process of dying. 

The battered, abandoned farm wife choking on her words, “You have absolutely no idea, no idea what this means,“ when I told her we’d found the $500 she needed for a safe procedure in Philadelphia. 

The immigrant woman who drank bleach to end her pregnancy and had to convince a mental health hearing officer that, given her choices, this was an entirely rational act. 

The pregnant young girl, couldn’t have been 16, whose family threw her out into a snowdrift; we got her funding, transportation, housing, and a coat. 

The woman carrying an anencephalic fetus certain to die, who could not get her doctors to end the doomed pregnancy, so she tried to end it herself through suicide; they saved her and the pregnancy, so she tried again. 

Such intense suffering, such bitter misery, over what’s typically a five- or ten-minute procedure that carries about as much risk as a shot of penicillin, which one in three American women will have by age 45. 

I’ve had enough of hearing the stories of the wholly avoidable anguish women suffer because our government deliberately impedes their access to necessary medical care.

By Jeff

Anti-choice legislators in Pennsylvania have really outdone themselves this time. Instead of coming out and telling women that they’re trying to take away their right to choose, they are pretending to protect them while really only following an agenda that removes their ability to get a safe, legal abortion in this state.

What is the justification for applying Ambulatory Surgical Facility (ASF) regulations onto abortion clinics? Larger rooms? Giant janitor closets? Nurse on duty at all times?

Do these regulations protect women’s health? Do they make abortion clinics safer? Do they make access to safe, legal abortion easier and less expensive?

Definitely not. And these are all questions the legislators refuse to answer. When questioned repeatedly on the floor about SB 732, the only answer was that we need to stop a repeat of the Gosnell clinic by adding more regulations.

That would be a good statement if ASF regulations actually did that. But the truth is that extensive regulations exist, the Pennsylvania Department of Health simply is not enforcing them. For clinics that abide by the law – which Gosnell’s clinic certainly did not – there will be no improvement to quality of care, instead only astronomical costs and unnecessary burdens. It could shut down many, if not all, clinics across the state, forcing women seeking an abortion to go back to unsafe providers or go out of state.

And if that sounds exaggerated, just look at Kansas, where abortion providers were given a long list of new regulations in June and told to comply by July 1. Two of the state’s three abortion providers were prepared to shut down, but luckily a federal judge granted a temporary injunction barring enforcement of the legislation until the trial for the lawsuit against the regulations can take place.

Similar laws went into effect in Virginia and Utah this year, while many other states have such laws on the table. These laws have already been shutting clinics down. That’s not a belief – it’s a fact (sadly Senator Orie doesn’t seem to understand the concept of a factual statement).

These bills do not help women and will not stop abortions. The result will be a public health crisis.

Nearly 40 years after Roe v. Wade made abortion a legal right in this country, our elected officials are trying to take that right away by lying about their intentions.

When it comes to debating this issue, I can respect the other side so long as the debate is honest and fair. This has been anything but that. I can’t help but to have lost respect for the legislators pushing this legislation as they repeatedly lie about both the intentions and effects of these bills.

Don’t be fooled by these bills. It’s time to say that we’ve had enough.

By Sarah

My mother, who died in 1989, was a prominent educator, feminist, and outspoken supporter of reproductive rights.  In 1985, she responded to a public call for women to write then President Reagan about their personal experience with abortion.  She wrote a powerful letter about her illegal abortion. 

In 1948, she was married but her husband (& my father) was unemployed. She had a job but was certain that if her employer found out she was pregnant she would be fired.  Here’s how she described her abortion in pre-Roe America: 

The horror was trying to find a “safe” place to have the abortion. And raising the tremendous sum required.  When we started asking friends, we found that many of them had gone through the same experience; it was the untalked of secret of women.  We had to go thru several clandestine links before we were told where to come.  There I was, one of five terrified women, who were transported in a curtained car to an isolated farmhouse.  There the operation was performed without any anesthetic, but in clean surroundings with very sympathetic “nurses”.  The “doctor” was hurried and nervous.  They were fearful of being raided at any moment.  After a half-hour rest we were taken back to the original location.  My doctor came to my house to examine me and said I had suffered no damage.  She said I was one of the lucky ones.  A close friend almost died from a similar operation at about the same time.

The Pennsylvania Legislature and Governor Corbett will not be satisfied until we return to the days where women, just like my mother, risked their lives or their future fertility to end an unplanned pregnancy.  

We have got to make it politically difficult for our elected officials to be cavalier in their efforts to end the right to abortion. It must have consequences for them (because it will certainly have consequences for women).    Help us make “Wevehadenoughpa” a viral phenomenon so that the Legislature and Governor Corbett pay attention.  It is time declare that we can never go back, we have had enough!  

By Joanne

Across the country, women’s reproductive rights are being attacked.  Sometimes these attacks are in the form of shouting and harassment when a woman seeks treatment at a women’s health clinic for either an abortion or for other reproductive health services. 

In other instances, they are legislative attacks that attempt to deny a woman access to all forms of reproductive health services, including screenings, contraception, and abortion services.  Some attacks attempt to restrict or even ban funding for Planned Parenthood.  Fortunately, at the federal level, the effort failed but several states have taken action to restrict funding including Indiana, New Hampshire, and Texas. 

Other states legislatures, including Pennsylvania’s have mounted attacks on women’s reproductive health by introducing TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Provider) bills which require extensive renovations that may be physically impossible in existing facilities and are different and more burdensome than those requirements for other medical facilities.

In several states, efforts to ban abortion coverage are under way.  Specifically, Tennessee and Missouri, as well as Pennsylvania, are attempting to pass “Stupak on Steroids” bills that will prohibit women who purchase health insurance through the new state health insurance exchanges from purchasing coverage for abortion services with their own money. 

Against the backdrop of this wave of anti-choice legislative assaults, Operation Rescue/Operation Save America are targeting abortion clinics in Orlando, FL and Germantown, MD in an attempt to shut these clinics down via efforts to block clinic entrances and harassment of women attempting to receive treatment at abortion facilities in these two cities. 

In Orlando, Operation Rescue/Operation Save America attempted, but failed, to shut down six clinics during the week of July 22.  In Germantown, Operation Rescue has announced plans for a “Summer of Mercy 2.0” focusing on Dr. LeRoy Carhart in Germantown, MD, July 31-August 7.

Operation Rescue is the same organization that harassed Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, KS for years until he was assassinated by one of their supporters in May ’09. Their original “Summer of Mercy” in 1991 shut down access to the Dr. Tiller’s clinic for six weeks resulting in 3,400 arrests; they are invoking this alarming history again in their “Summer of Mercy 2.0” event.

We’ve Had Enough! Have you?

You can show your support for women seeking abortion services by helping out in Germantown this week.  Between July 31 and August 7, volunteers will be needed from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. outside of Dr. Carhart’s clinic, located at 13233 Executive Park Drive in Germantown, Maryland. These shifts will kick off with the Summer Celebration of Choice Kick-Off Walk on Sunday, July 31 and continue through the evening of Sunday, August 7. To sign up for a shift, please go to www.summerofchoice.com or contact NOW Field Organizer Anita Lederer at fieldorg@now.org.

You can also speak out against the legislation winding its way through the Pennsylvania General Assembly by participating in the “We’ve Had Enough” rally on September 27 in Harrisburg in the Capitol Rotunda.  Join us totell the PA Legislature to STOP the attacks on women’s health in Pennsylvania!  You can sign up at http://www.wevehadenoughpa.org/take-action.html to join in our effort to stop this legislation.  Help us fight these dangerous bills and join us in declaring that…

WE’VE HAD ENOUGH!