Attempts to restrict and even ban abortion at the state level are part of an ongoing effort to deny women their right to make their own personal medical decisions. As state politicians in Utah succeed in restricting access to abortion, women are paying the price. Laws that restrict access to abortion hurt women’s health and endanger their safety.
The Utah Legislature is attempting to restrict access to abortion again in 2019, and have two abortion bans (House Bill 136 and House Bill 166) making their way through the legislative process. Some legislators would like to add two more restrictions on top of the 18 barriers and restrictions on abortion that our Legislature has put in place in the last decade, all the while doing very little to enhance women’s health.
Enough is enough. We need legislators to stop passing abortion bans under the guise of protecting “women’s health” or “the most oppressed,” and instead create policies that truly enhance the health of women and families in Utah. Policies that:
* Expand access to family planning by maintaining the no-copay birth control provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and expand Medicaid health coverage to the women and men currently left out in Utah.
* Clean up the air that we breathe. The poor air quality along the Wasatch Front increases a woman’s chance of having a miscarriage and reduces the health of our children and their performance in school.
* Bring down our maternal mortality rate — that has doubled over the last 30 years. Giving birth is much more dangerous than abortion in Utah. Far too many women die from childbirth and related complications in Utah every year.
* Put an end to the omnipresent and systematic oppression of marginalized communities in Utah.
Rep. Cheryl Acton would have you believe that HB136 is about protecting women from themselves. It would seem that women can’t be relied on to make the best decision about their pregnancy in consultation with their doctor, family and faith. Acton has indicated that women in Utah need or want policymakers to decide who can access what type of health care. When, in reality, it is the anti-women’s health lobby that asked her to get another restriction on the books.
Her Feb. 24 opinion piece printed in the Salt Lake Tribune quoted rhetoric and data straight from the websites of the groups working to overturn Roe v. Wade. The latest abortion ban is not about what Utahns need or want, but rather it is a part of the national agenda to roll back a women’s right to make decisions about her health.
Utah women know what they want. We want to make our own private medical decisions in consultation with our loved ones and the doctors that we trust. Every medical procedure has risks. Women are more than capable of weighing risks and deciding what is right for them without the interference of state legislators.
Heather Stringfellow | Planned Parenthood of Utah
Heather Stringfellow is vice president of public policy for the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah.
