For Immediate Release: July 19, 2018
Contact: [email protected]
After the House passed its FY’19 Financial Services and General Government spending bill, NARAL Pro-Choice America Vice President Adrienne Kimmell issued the following statement:
“This bill is yet another outright and shameless attack on reproductive freedom and restriction on women’s rights. Anti-choice Republicans are showing all Americans their true colors, and priorities, with these riders that will harm women and families. Once again the House punished residents of D.C. and made a mockery of the democratic process in the nation’s capital by restricting access to abortion care and blocking employee discrimination safeguards. Additionally, the measure would ban abortion coverage in some private insurance plans. In one bill, they showed us that being ‘pro-life’ means jeopardizing the health and safety of millions of women.
“Thank you to Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton and Rep. Nita Lowey for standing up for women’s rights by trying to offer amendments to strike some of the bill’s harmful provisions.”
Key measures in the bill ban abortion coverage for federal employees and enact multi-state abortion coverage bans. The bill also includes two important restrictions for the District of Columbia: a ban on using their own funds to cover abortion care and a provision that blocks D.C. from enforcing the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Amendment Act (RHNDA) that protects employees in D.C. and their dependents from employment discrimination based on their personal reproductive health care decisions.
NARAL Pro-Choice America and its network of state affiliates are dedicated to protecting and expanding reproductive freedom for all Americans. NARAL works to guarantee that every woman has the right to make personal decisions regarding the full range of reproductive choices, including preventing unintended pregnancy, bearing healthy children, and choosing legal abortion. In recognition of its work defending our constitutional right to choose, Fortune Magazine described NARAL as “one of the top 10 advocacy groups in America.”