"get out of my exam room" [View all]

[niyad]

"Get Out of My Exam Room"

Fighting back against outrageous anti-woman state restrictions

By ROBIN MARTY

"We won't go back."

Those words reverberate from every corner of the country as feminists and their allies— including union and civil rights leaders, pro-choice public officials, doctors and women’s health specialists—declare themselves ready to protest lawmakers who have spent the last three years focused on taking away a woman’s right to control her body.

They were heard in Columbus in October when 65 Ohio women’s, labor, civil rights and civil liberties organizations joined with local physicians, state legislators, college students and hundreds of other pro-choice activists for a “We Won’t Go Back” rally on the steps of the Capitol. The rally, organized by long time feminist activists Lana Moresky, Kathy DiCristofaro and Cindy Demsey, condemned the GOP-dominated state Legislature’s sneak-attack budget amendments that created some of the most restrictive antiwomen state laws in the country. Showing the importance of the Ohio fight nationally, Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority, and Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, were featured speakers.

The Ohio amendments include provisions requiring ultrasounds before all abortions, creating a priority system for family-planning funding that will result in taking away funds from Planned Parenthood and adding funding for crisis pregnancy centers (which oppose abortion and promote ineffective “natural” family planning) and banning public hospitals from entering into state-required transfer agreements with abortion clinics for emergency care. Three of the new Ohio provisions are now being challenged in state court by the national and Ohio American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on the basis of Ohio’s “single subject” rule, since they were adopted as part of an unrelated budget bill.

“I’m here today…to demand that Ohio politicians get out of my exam room,” said Cleveland gynecologist Lisa Perriera at the rally, holding her 2-week-old son in her arms. She told demonstrators that she recently counseled a young woman and her husband on the need to end her pregnancy for medical reasons, and had to force her to undergo an unnecessary ultrasound and listen to her fetus’ heartbeat. But under Ohio law, Dr. Perreira could not perform the lateterm abortion and had to send the couple to a neighboring state. She was outraged that Ohio had placed yet another difficult, unnecessary burden on this suffering couple.

On top of that, the Ohio Legislature is considering a bill that would ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected—which could be as early as six weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant. The Legislature is also considering a bill requiring doctors to tell patients that abortion leads to breast cancer and that fetuses feel pain, although both are scientifically unproven.

Ohio women’s rights activists aren’t alone in their response to new War on Women laws:

. . . .

http://www.msmagazine.com/Fall2013/WeWontGoBack.asp