Protest Attacks on Women's Health Care Thursday

Philadelphia Feminists:

Stand up for Women!! Join us to protest the attacks against women's health care at both the state and the federal level this Thursday, 11:30AM, at Thomas Paine Plaza, outside the Municipal Services Building, across the street from the north side of City Hall.

Call your US Congressmember TODAY to make sure he/she is Pro-Choice, or at least knows you are, and ask him/her to vote NO, against eliminating funding for family planning and Planned Parenthood. This debate began yesterday and could come up for a vote either today or tomorrow in the US House. Click here to find your legislator.

The US House, led by Speaker John Boehner, has taken up a crusade against women's health care and reproductive rights, fast-tracking such bills as the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortions" (even though taxpayer funds have not paid for abortion care in 35 years), the "Protect Life Act", which makes it optional for medical professionals to save a woman's life if it might endanger her pregnancy, and today's effort to defund family planning in the country. Republican-controlled legislators around the country are coming up with similar legislation. In Pennsylvania, Senate Bill 3 would ban abortion coverage from the state exchanges, despite the fact that women would already be obliged to write their own, separate check to insurers for such coverage.

Also on the chopping block:

* eliminating $1.1 billion from Head Start
* $758 million from Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), a program that provides food to infants and health care education to new moms
* reducing Maternal and Child Health Block Grants by $210 million, a program that supports special needs children, provides newborn screening and funds lead poisoning and injury prevention

* cut $1.3 billion from Community Health Centers that provide affordable health care to low income women, men and children.

WE NEED YOU TO JOIN OUR VOICES IN PROTEST ON THURSDAY!