Mandatory Parental-Involvement Laws Threaten Young Women's Safety
Parental consent and notice laws endanger young women's health by forcing some women - even those from healthy, loving families - to turn to illegal or self-induced abortion, to delay the procedure and increase the medical risk, or to bear a child against their will.
Mifepristone Is a Safe Choice
Mifepristone (RU 486) has been proven safe. Approximately 650,000 women in the United States have used mifepristone since its FDA approval. The adverse drug event rate for mifepristone is just 0.26 percent. In other words, fewer than three out of every 1,000 women who use mifepristone have any adverse event.
Refusal Clauses in Current Law
Since 1973, Congress has limited a woman's right to choose by enacting dangerous refusal clauses to permit a broad range of individuals and institutions to refuse to provide, pay for, counsel about, or even refer for medical treatment.
Refusal Clauses: Dangerous for Women's Health
Refusal clauses, which permit a broad range of individuals and institutions to refuse to provide, pay, counsel or even refer for medical treatment, pose serious dangers to Americans' health.
Roe v. Wade and the Right to Choose
By striking down laws that forced women to resort to back alley abortion, Roe saved women's lives. According to one estimate made before 1973, "more than five thousand women may have died [per year] as a direct result [of criminal abortions]." As Roe enters its fourth decade, its protections remain a bulwark of freedom for American women, though our rights have been eroded and are in grave peril.
Scheidler v. National Organization for Women
Supreme Court decision in Scheidler v. NOW is a hindrance to reproductive-health-care clinics' efforts to protect their patients and employees from anti-choice violence and intimidation.
