RH Reality Check

Women living in rural Minnesota face poor health outcomes according to a report released by Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota on Wednesday. A lack of health insurance and clinics, along with factors like poverty, geographic isolation and even Minnesota’s extreme winters all impact the ability of rural women to access health care. The organization says that as Congress debates health care reform, the needs of rural women must be addressed.

With more than a year to go until the general election, abortion is already becoming an issue in the 6th Congressional District race. An analysis of anti-abortion campaign donations finds that Rep. Michele Bachmann is one of the country’s top earners — and she’s delivered for her contributors on that issue. At the same time, local anti-abortion forces are already tarring DFL candidate Rep. Tarryl Clark just a day after she announced her candidacy.

Health reform could be hijacked by anti-abortion politics despite efforts at compromise — and some of Minnesota’s Congress members are in the thick of the debate. Reps. James Oberstar, Collin Peterson and Michele Bachmann have all been working to gut reproductive health funding from the health reform package moving through the House.

Just as Sen. Al Franken began his opening statements during the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, a woman shouted “wrong about abortion!” and ran out of the hearing.
That woman was Norma McCorvey of Texas, otherwise known as “Jane Roe,” the central figure of the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade.

Reps. Jim Oberstar and Collin Peterson joined 17 other Democrats in threatening to vote against health care reform if a government plan covers abortion. In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi late last week, the coalition said, “[W]e cannot support any health care reform proposal unless it explicitly excludes abortion from the scope of [...]

The number of abortions performed in Minnesota declined in 2008 for the second straight year and marked the lowest number in more than 30 years. Reproductive health advocates said the decline is due to access to birth control and education, while the state’s largest anti-abortion group says programs to persuade pregnant woman from having an [...]

Rep. Michele Bachmann and her colleagues in the House Pro-Life Women’s Caucus railed against a proposal by President Obama to loosen restrictions put in place by the Dornan Amendment, which prevents women on public assistance in the nation’s capital from undergoing abortion procedures. Bachmann was joined by anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List at a [...]

Weeks after Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed in his Kansas church, the U.S. Senate is debating a resolution condemning violence against abortion providers. But abortion politics has made even the simple task of passing a resolution denouncing violence into a contentious battle. The words “reproductive health care” could be a deal breaker with [...]

A bill authored by Rep. Betty McCollum passed the U.S. House on Wednesday after being included in the Foreign Relations Authorization Act. It’d work to end child marriage by increasing State Department staffing on the issue and direct the federal government to create a strategy to work with other countries to decrease the incidence of [...]

Coleen Rowley, Minnesotan and former FBI whistleblower, told Talking Points Memo on Thursday that the FBI missed an opportunity to intervene before Scott Roeder murdered Kansas physician George Tiller.