[News-releases] Feminists Condemn House Passage of DeceptiveAbortion Ban, Urge Activists to March on Washington

NOW Press Office
202-628-8669 Rebecca Farmer, x 116
202-785-8576 (fax) 

For Immediate Release
October 2, 2003

Feminists Condemn House Passage of Deceptive Abortion Ban, Urge Activists
to March on Washington

"No one is surprised by the House's passage today of the so-called
partial birth abortion ban, but I know it will help us rally reproductive
rights supporters across the country to join us in marching on Washington
next April," said National Organization for Women (NOW) President
Kim Gandy. "This bill--now on its way to the Senate--is deceptively
named and another step in the plan to ban all abortions."

"Try as you might, you won't find the term 'partial birth abortion'
in any medical dictionary. That's because it doesn't exist in the medical
world--it's a fabrication of the anti-choice machine," Gandy said.
"NOW calls this bill what it really is: an abortion procedures ban.
Like each of its predecessors, H.R. 760 was intentionally worded so
vaguely that it could criminalize even some of the safest and most common
abortion procedures after twelve weeks and well before fetal viability.
It doesn't even contain a provision to permit the procedure if it is
necessary to preserve the woman's health and future 
fertility."

"This abortion procedures ban moving through Congress is a political
game in which lawmakers in the pocket of the anti-abortion rights
movement are using women's health and lives as the pawns to further a
regressive agenda," Gandy said.  "The bill is not
supported by the American Medical Association, the American College of
Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Medical
Women's Association, the American Nurses Association or the American
Public Health Association. The country's top medical associations know
that an abortion procedures ban--no matter what you call it--is bad
medicine and bad public policy."

"Feminists and other supporters of reproductive rights won't stand
for any attempt to send us back to pre-Roe days when countless women died
from illegal abortions. That's why NOW, Feminist Majority, NARAL
Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood Federation of America are
organizing a march on Washington next spring," Gandy said. Save
Women's Lives: March for Freedom of Choice on April 25, 2004 will be
the largest-ever mass action for reproductive freedom, with activists
from coast to coast. "Those are
voices and voters that even this White House won't be able to
ignore."

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