ALERT!!!! WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT

Rep Frank Trent re-introduce Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011, which is a slick attempt to end abortion rights for women of color. We need your support in telling Congress that this is not OK, and women of color’s health and well-being should not be used as a political tool. We need you to send letters, call your Representatives and make sure women of color reproductive rights don’t get thrown under the bus!

Dear Members of the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution:

The undersigned organizations stand together committed to ending discrimination.  We have a long history of addressing the many forms of discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of race and sex, and look forward to continuing to work with you to respond to these pernicious problems.

Accordingly, we are very concerned to see the fight against discrimination being misappropriated to push a bill that does nothing to combat sex and race discrimination, but instead imposes additional barriers on women in the United States. If passed, this bill would exacerbate health disparities.  We feel strongly that the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011(H.R. 3541) is not the way to address discrimination and therefore we must strongly oppose it.

The problem of racial disparities in health care is real. African American women are 3 to 4 times more likely to die from pregnancy related causes than white women and the unintended pregnancy rate is 67% compared to 40% for white women.  Instead of addressing these critical issues, this bill exacerbates the disparities by further restricting certain women’s access to comprehensive reproductive health care services, scrutinizing the health care decisions of women of color, and penalizing health care providers who serve communities of color.  Instead of empowering women of color to make sound, personal health care decisions, this bill prevents them from doing so.

Similarly, there are numerous examples of on-going legal and constitutional sex discrimination, such as pay equity or gender-based violence.  Yet this bill does nothing to address gender discrimination.  Instead, this bill places additional barriers between women and their health care.

We believe there are effective ways to take on the complex problems of racial and sex discrimination and we would welcome the opportunity to work with members of the subcommittee to advance legislation that would end discrimination in the United States.  However, we must strongly oppose this bill, which does nothing to address ongoing discrimination.

Sincerely,