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MEMORANDUM

TO:          Faith Activists
FROM:    Reverend Carlton Veazey, CEO and President, RCRC
RE:         Comprehensive Initiative for Insurance Coverage of Abortion Services

While 2010 brought much-needed reforms in health care coverage, it also brought one of the most serious threats ever to reproductive rights: another campaign, spearheaded by the Religious Right, this time to further restrict or even eliminate public and private insurance coverage of abortion and other reproductive health services. RCRC's bold new initiative - Insure Women, Ensure Our Future - is meeting the challenge head-on, in the states and nationally.

We have an enormous fight on our hands. These extremists are set on enacting abortion bans through the state insurance exchanges - the insurance marketplaces that are being formed under the new health care act. Although the exchanges will not begin operating until 2014, restrictions are already being put in place now. Five states (Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee) have already passed a law to ban abortion coverage in their state exchange. (In addition, Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, North Dakota,and Oklahoma ban abortion coverage in all private insurance sold in their states.)

In short, we’re up against a comprehensive assault on reproductive freedom at the state and national level - and we have a comprehensive program to counter the anti-abortion extremists head on in the most effective way we can – by:

• Bringing the voices of America’s mainstream religious communities and people of faith like you and me to support critical policy decisions that will impact reproductive choice and justice.
• Advocating for comprehensive reproductive health care coverage – including abortion – in the new state insurance exchanges by reaching out to state insurance commissioners, legislators, and governors.
• Mobilizing our grassroots activists and building support for our pro-faith, pro-choice advocacy agenda at the state level.
• Activating our clergy/religious leader network for a high-visibility role in state capitals, including testimony, meetings with key legislators, and media events.  

At this moment, organizers in six key states - Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, and South Carolina - are scheduling strategic meetings with state representatives, planning vigils, and contacting clergy and the interfaith community to turn out for advocacy days and other events.

We also face a wave of state laws that will steadily undermine the promise of Roe v. Wade: more mandatory counseling laws, mandatory ultrasound laws, deceptive "fetal pain" laws, and TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws.

But this isn’t all. The House of Representatives gained at least 43 anti-choice members, and anti-choice candidates won 6 seats in the Senate. Expect measures to be introduced as soon as the 112th Congress opens in January to:

• confer legal rights on fertilized eggs,
• further slash access to affordable contraception,
• revive the harmful global gag rule, and
• strengthen abstinence-only requirements in U.S. global AIDS funding.

The health and autonomy of women depends on our immediate actions in the states and in Congress. Check back here frequently for updates on Insure Women, Ensure Our Future.

December 23,2010