Nice to see the Guv take a strong stand on choice. It would be so easy to run away from emotionally charged issues like this- but here she is, out in front, fighting to protect women's rights.
Michigan residents need to work together to reduce abortions rather than battling over whether to outlaw them, Gov. Jennifer Granholm told abortion-rights supporters and anti-abortion protesters at a Capitol rally Tuesday.
Granholm said the ideal number of abortions is zero and that education and access to birth control can help. But she said she'll continue to support women's decisions to make choices for themselves.
"We want to be the state where the battle is won to reduce unintended pregnancies," Granholm told cheering supporters.
"We want to be the state where the battle is won for policies that make abortion safe, legal and rare."
About 250 people gathered at the Capitol for the Michigan March for Choice. Perhaps 50 in the crowd were opponents of abortion, many of them members of a Students for Life group.
Granholm's speech was her first to an abortion-rights rally since she became governor in 2003, although she has attended events by the abortion-rights fundraising group EMILY's List.
Spokeswoman Liz Boyd said the governor hasn't been invited to many such events, but she said the issue has become elevated with recent appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court that have fueled speculation that the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion might be overturned.
The state recently received a federal waiver to use Medicaid money to provide family planning services for about 200,000 women without insurance. The state also has a "Talk Early, Talk Often" program designed to help parents teach their children about sex and pregnancy prevention.
Granholm also called for passage of so-called contraception legislation equity.
"Insurance companies should not cover Viagra if they don't cover the Pill, too," she said.
The Lansing State Journal also provided this fact- More than 26,000 induced abortions were reported in Michigan in 2004, the most recently available statistics. That's down 11 percent from 2003 and 46 percent since the peak year of 1987.
Good to see the numbers dropping- and the common sense answer to keep those numbers dropping is access to (cheap) contraception and education.
One disturbing sidenote: In the Detroit News story on this rally, the very last sentence of the article contained this-
The state House on Wednesday could vote on separate legislation that would let insurers and HMOs refuse to provide a health care benefit based on ethical, moral or religious grounds.
I had heard about this before, but didn't realize that the legislation was up for a vote here.
Do we really want to give insurance companies, who already fight claims tooth and nail, more power to deny services?
More to come later on this, I'm sure.