Pro-Choice Maryland

From Ultraviolet:
The House Judiciary Committee is debating legislation that could force survivors of sexual violence to tell their horrifying stories to...wait for it...Internal Revenue Service agents.

That's because the bill sponsored by Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ) requires women who needed abortion care and are also survivors of sexual violence to prove to IRS auditors that the assault occurred. What?!

If we act now and collect enough signatures to show House leadership that this is not only offensive but also a huge waste of time, we can stop the legislation in its tracks--just like a grassroots outcry stopped efforts to redefine rape in 2011. If we speak out loudly now, we can send a message to politicians that bills like this won't win over women voters, and we can stop this outrageous law in its tracks.

Sign the petition

From NOW:
All women have the right to have the children they want, raise the children they have, and plan their families through safe, legal abortion, and access to contraception, and pre and post-natal care. For those rights to become a reality, women in all communities need to have the resources and the economic, social and political power to make health decisions about their bodies, their sexuality and their reproduction.

Sign the NOW Pledge to protect reproductive rights

From PP:
Birth control is basic, preventive health care that millions of women rely on every day. Over 99 percent of sexually active women use birth control at some point in their lives, for a wide variety of reasons. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies are now required to cover contraception with no out-of-pocket cost, a landmark step for women's health that gives many women access to affordable birth control for the first time.

Now a handful of out-of-touch, mostly male employers want to take that coverage away — and force their own beliefs onto tens of thousands of employees. They think they should have the power to withhold coverage they don't agree with. They want the right to interfere with their employees' personal, private medical decisions — and the Supreme Court could give it to them.

Those private medical decisions go far beyond access to birth control. If the Court rules in favor of these employers, it could pave the way for employers to deny coverage of other basic health care, like vaccines and mental health treatment, based solely on their personal beliefs. Birth control access shouldn't be up to your boss. Add your name to our letter today.

The battleground over abortion is shifting to Tennessee, where campaigns are heating up on a referendum that is a year away.

The referendum, pushed by anti-abortion groups for years, would add an amendment to the state constitution stating, "Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion." The amendment would apply to all abortions, including those stemming from "circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother."

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Please let this referendum fail next year

Abortion providers in Ohio would have to inform pregnant women in writing about the presence of a fetal heartbeat before the procedure under a last-minute change slipped into the state budget.

The amendment which also requires providers to say, to the best of their knowledge, the statistical probability of bringing the fetus to term was added Tuesday night by a Republican-dominated, six-member legislative committee.

It would also ban doctors from purposefully performing or inducing an abortion on a pregnant woman before determining the presence of a detectable fetal heartbeat unless there is a medical emergency. They could face criminal penalties for violating the "informed consent" rules.

The abortion regulations were among dozens of revisions to the budget the conference committee passed Tuesday night, as a deadline drew closer to finish the $61.7 billion, two-year spending plan.

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*There is more to the article than what is in the cut. If you want to read the rest of the article (the non-abortion part), I will be posting it on my other community we_r_the_middle

You can say this is a sequel entry to the last entry

Texas' lieutenant governor late Tuesday suspended a senator's filibuster against wide-ranging abortion restrictions, but Democrats moved quickly to appeal the decision and set off a parliamentary fight over the rules.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst halted the filibuster after determining Democratic Sen. Wendy Davis had strayed off the topic when she talked about a sonogram bill passed in 2011 and how the new abortion restrictions only compounded the anti-abortion laws in Texas.

Democrats immediately appealed the decision and set off a heated debate over rules. Austin Democratic Sen. Kirk Watson appeared to be positioning himself to launch a new filibuster on Dewhurst's decision.

Wearing pink tennis shoes to prepare for nearly 13 consecutive hours of standing, Davis began the day with a one-woman filibuster to block a GOP-led effort to impose stringent new abortion restrictions across the nation's second-most populous state.

The filibuster began at 11:18 a.m. CDT Tuesday and continued until 10:03 p.m., less than two hours before the midnight deadline marking the end of the 30-day special session.

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Senator Davis is fucking awesome. Btw, the last line of the article made me facepalm myself very hard. You'll see why when you read it.

House Republicans on Tuesday make their most concerted effort of the year to change federal abortion law with legislation that would ban almost all abortions after a fetus reaches the age of 20 weeks.

The "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act," expected to pass by a comfortable margin late Tuesday, would be a direct challenge to the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortions up to the time a fetus becomes viable. Fetal viability is generally considered to be at least 24 weeks into the pregnancy.

The measure will be ignored by the Democratic-led Senate and the White House, saying the bill is "an assault on a woman's right to choose," has issued a veto threat.

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If you guys didn't see it, there's a petition to tell your representives to vote against this bill in the last entry I made. Sign it even if the senate won't pass it, Obama will veto it, and your representive is pro-choice.