Birth Control Watch - Two-Minute Activist

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	TWO-MINUTE ACTIVIST Take two minutes out of your day to make a difference.
		Help beat back Bush's 11th hour anti-choice attack! Support the Restoration of US Funding to UNFPA We Need You to Save Title X! Anti-choice doctors push ACOG to adopt religious extremist's policy--Help ACOG stand strong Take part in Choice USA's campaign for affordable birth control on campus Take part in the petition drive for EC Access before March 7th! Join Clergy in Calling for Affordable Birth Control Join Feminist Majority to Help Restore Affordable Birth Control for Students and Low Income Women Oppose the Appointment of Susan Orr with Planned Parenthood Help ACLU save kids from ineffective abstinence-only programs Help Reduce Unintended Pregnancies with NARAL Join Planned Parenthood's Pill Patrol Take Action with Advocates for Youth Get Involved with NFPRHA Contact Congress with NARAL
		Help beat back Bush's 11th hour anti-choice attack! Yesterday, the Bush administration took the first step in pushing through its new anti-choice regulation. Here's the deal—the regulation left out the most egregious anti-birth control provision that was present in the first version. Thanks to opposition expressed by nearly 30,000 NARAL Pro-Choice America activists, more than 120 House members and 28 senators (pro-choice and pro-life alike), governors, state attorneys general, state legislators, members of the choice community, medical and public-health organizations, and the faith community, it is clear that the Bush administration is running scared. Now the bad news—we're not out of the woods yet. This new version fails to give assurances that current laws about abortion will not be stretched to cover birth control, too. We have 30 days to tell Bush's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to include explicit language in the regulation to ensure that birth control is not at risk. Please send a message to HHS right now. Support the Restoration of US Funding to UNFPA This week, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on state, foreign operations moved toward restoring U.S. leadership to international women's issues when it voted to increase U.S. funding for UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, to $60 million for FY 2009, a $20 million increase over last year's allocation. The Senate Appropriations Committee also passed a foreign operations bill with a $45 million allocation to UNFPA, a more modest increase but a sign that members of Congress are serious about the importance of U.S. involvement with UNFPA. UNFPA provides women's health care and promotes the rights of women in 150 countries around the world. It is the largest international source of such assistance. UNFPA's work has significantly reduced maternal mortality in countries such as Bolivia, Egypt and Zimbabwe, provides 500 million women with modern contraceptive methods annually and works to combat gender-based violence around the world. For the last seven years, the U.S. has been the only country in the world that did not contribute to UNFPA for reasons that are political and not financial. Americans for UNFPA will help you urge your congressmember to do the right thing and restore US funding for family planning throughout the world. We Need You to Save Title X! Help the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association fight back against conservative groups who are pressuring the presidential administration to make Title X rules more restrictive. Take action now and send a letter to Secretary Leavitt of Health and Human Services and tell him to use his authority to keep the rules as they are and ensure that families continue to act responsibly, stay healthy and plan for strong families. Anti-choice doctors push ACOG to adopt religious extremist's policy--Help ACOG stand strong A group of anti-choice doctors are pushing ACOG to weaken their position on conscientious refusals and the ACOG Executive Committee is instructing the Committee on Ethics to reevaluate their position! Tell ACOG, don't back down! Don't let a loud minority undermine ACOG's position on conscientious refusals in reproductive healthcare. Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health is leading a campaign to urge ACOG to reject efforts by extremists to influence their policy in an effort to strip women of the right to fill their prescriptions for contraception. Click here to get involved. Take part in Choice USA's campaign for affordable birth control on campus Birth control prices have risen as high as 900% over last year's prices thanks to Bush's Federal Deficit Reduction Act which removed college health centers from discount drug purchasing programs. Choice USA has a solution: Prevention Through Affordable Access Act. You can help protect women on campus by calling and getting your representative to sign on. More info about the campaign here. Take part in the petition drive for EC Access before March 7th! We are at a pivotal point in the fight to win full access to emergency contraception (EC) for all women, and we need your help! Today, Advocates for Youth and Choice USA are asking you to help gather signatures from your peers on a petition to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Here's why: The Center for Reproductive Rights -- a nonprofit, legal advocacy organization that promotes and defends the reproductive rights of women worldwide, currently has a lawsuit to force the FDA to reverse its decision that restricts young women's access to Plan B without a prescription. There's evidence confirmed by FDA officials that key decisions were based on politics, not science, and the New York federal Court found a "strong showing of bad faith" on the part of the FDA. The FDA is under pressure to reverse its decision and CHOICE USA and Advocates for Youth want to show them young people want CHANGE! Act now! 1) Sign the online petition and forward it to your friends, encouraging them to also sign the petition and pass it on to their friends! 2) Collect signatures on your campus and in your community and send them to their offices by March 7th via fax or mail. Our goal is to obtain 10,000 hard copy signatures by March 7th! Join Clergy in Calling for Affordable Birth Control The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice is asking for your help to urge Congressmembers to co-sponsor the Prevention Through Affordable Access Act (H.R. 4054/S. 2347), legislation that would address the looming birth control pricing crisis. Due to a provision in the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA), as of January 1, 2007, every college and university health center and hundreds of safety-net providers were unintentionally cut off from accessing low-cost birth control. Skyrocketing prices are putting birth control out of reach of more than 3 million college students and hundreds of thousands of low-income women. This legislation would have no cost to either the federal government or state Medicaid agencies. It would merely restore the ability of pharmaceutical companies to resume the decades-old practice of offering nominally-price birth control to college health centers and safety-net providers, who in turn provide affordable birth control to college and low-income women. Join Feminist Majority to Help Restore Affordable Birth Control for Students and Low Income Women Birth control prices are now 2, 3, and even 5 times higher at college campus health centers and clinics serving low-income women across the country, going from $10 to up to $53 a month because of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, passed by the old Republican Congress. Take action today: tell Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and all of Congress to restore affordable birth control for students and low income women! Oppose Susan Orr as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs The Bush administration has announced the appointment of staunchly anti-birth control Susan Orr to a leadership role in the Office of Population Affairs. Take the time to tell President Bush to put women's health before politics! Support ACLU's Take Issue/Take Charge campaign to save kids from ineffective abstinence-only programs We need to ensure that teens have the education they need to make responsible choices when it comes to sex. We can teach them about the benefits of abstinence while making sure that they have the information and tools they need to prevent unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Together we can Take Issue, Take Charge! Reduce Unintended Pregnancies with NARAL Building on the spirit of these pro-choice values, NARAL Pro-Choice America launched the Prevention First initiative in 2005 to advance commonsense policy solutions to prevent unintended pregnancies and therefore reduce the need for abortion. Get involved to support Prevention First Tell President Bush to Increase International Family Planning Funding on January 22, 2001, on his first business day in office, President Bush reinstated the ban for all USAID population programs. Moreover, with the urging of conservative members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Bush administration recently announced that it would no longer provide funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)—the only multilateral agency specifically devoted to providing adults and adolescents with family planning and reproductive health care services. Join other youth activists in the Rights. Respect. Responsibility.® Campaign, as they raise their voices about the need to increase funding for international family planning and to abolish the global gag rule. Enlist in Planned Parenthood’s Pill Patrol You’re only safe if protection is there when you need it. Your neighborhood police and firefighters don’t offer protection based on their questionable religious beliefs and nor should your neighborhood pharmacist. Join Planned Parenthood’s Pill Patrol to find out if your local pharmacist will give you a sermon-at-the-counter before denying you birth control or will provide you protection when you need it. Time is of the Essence: Support the $28 million Title X Increase The Title X program provides valuable family planning services ad contraceptive to the nation's poor. A $28 million increase to the Title X family planning program was included in the LHHS bill that Congress passed and the President vetoed earlier this month. Members of Congress, eager to pass the appropriations bill, may consider decreasing the increase to Title X. It is critical that Title X receives the funding increase it so desperately deserves. Take a moment and act now! Chaste Waste Over the last decade, our nation has spent a neat one billion dollars on ineffective abstinence-until-marriage-programs. Why the religious right is not scandalized by the mounting evidence that chastity programs are a complete bust may have much to do with the pro-life movement getting one in four federal dollars earmarked for abstinence only education. That kids in virginity pledge programs are as likely to have an STD as kids who are not in the programs (just less likely to be treated for them) may be lamentable for the “purity” patrol—but it hasn’t slowed the check cashing one bit. NARAL Pro-Choice America is asking for your help to pass The Responsible Education About Life (REAL) Act that would establish the first federal sex-education program that teaches young people about abstinence and contraception, and is proven to reduce unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases among teens. Click here to urge your Congressmember to stop the chaste waste (post haste!)