“Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal
Nondiscrimination Act of 2011” (H.R. 3541)
Testimony submitted by
Debra Ness, President
Andrea D. Friedman, Director of Reproductive Health Programs
U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on the Judiciary
Subcommittee on the Constitution
December 6, 2011
1875 connecticut avenue, nw ~ suite 650 ~ washington, dc 20009 ~ phone: 202.986.2600 ~ fax: 202.986.2539
email: [email protected] ~ web: www.nationalpartnership.org
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Members of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution: we are honored to submit this
testimony on behalf of the National Partnership for Women & Families and the women and families
we represent.
The National Partnership is dedicated to promoting public policies and business practices that
expand opportunities for women and improve the well-being of our nation’s families. Through
education, outreach, and legislative action, the National Partnership is an effective advocate for
millions of women and families.
We believe that actions speak louder than words, and for 40 years we have played a critical role in
enacting landmark policy from prohibiting pregnancy discrimination to giving more than 100 million
Americans family and medical leave. Today, we promote fairness in the workplace, reproductive
health and rights, access to quality and affordable health care, and policies that help women and men
meet the dual demands of work and family.
Founded in 1971, the National Partnership for Women & Families is a nonprofit, nonpartisan
501(c)3 organization located in Washington, D.C.
Undermining Access to Abortion is Not the Way to Address Discrimination
This bill is a thinly veiled attempt to undermine women’s constitutional right to abortion. At a time
when a record number of women are living in extreme povertyi and the need to expand access to
health care is more critical than ever, Congress is once again using its limited time and resources to
discuss yet another bill to undermine women’s comprehensive reproductive health services.
Far from addressing the real problems of race and sex discrimination, this bill would exacerbate
already existing health disparities in communities of color and penalize health providers that offer
services in those communities. This legislation undermines the rights of individual women to make
their own personal and private health decisions, in particular whether and when to bear a child.
Even worse, it particularly harms women in those communities the bill is purportedly aimed at
helping. Congress can play an important role in addressing health disparities and discrimination and
a number of bills have been introduced that would do so. Unfortunately, this bill does not support
those efforts and instead is another attempt undermine women’s access to reproductive health care.
Addressing Health Disparities
There are significant and serious disparities in health care. According to a 2009 report by the Kaiser
Family Foundation, 17% of black women, 27% of Latinas, and 22% of Native American women are
in fair or poor health, compared to 9.5% of white women. More than 22% of black women have no
health coverage,ii which means less access to contraception, prenatal care and other critical
reproductive health services.
There are significant disparities in reproductive health. African American women are three to four
times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women.iii The unintended
pregnancy rate for African American women is 67% and for Latinas it is 53%, compared to 44% for
white women.iv In 2007, African Americans represented 48% of HIV/AIDS cases despite the fact
that they are only 13% of the U.S. population. African Americans are nine times more likely to be
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diagnosed with HIV than whites, and African American women are 20 times more likely than white
women to die from the disease.v In 2008, African American teens were more than twice as likely as
their white or Mexican-American counterparts to have chlamydia, trichomoniasis, genital herpes, or
human papillomavirus. Latinos have three times the syphilis cases of whites. Latinas are more than
twice as likely as white women to be diagnosed with cervical cancer. And while African American
women are less likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer than white women, they are 30% more
likely to die from it.vi These disparities are a result of pervasive sex and race discrimination in
American society – discrimination that Congress can and should address. But H.R. 3541, rather than
addressing these persistent and widespread problems, exacerbates them by singling out women of
color and further restricting their access to comprehensive reproductive health services.
H.R. 3541 is Another Attack on Women’s Reproductive Health
Unfortunately, H.R. 3541 is one more in a long line of attempts by this body to take away women’s
access to basic health services. In the 112th Congress, the House of Representatives has already
voted more than six times to restrict women’s access to abortion and family planning services,
including:
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The Full Year Continuing Appropriations Act (H.R. 1), which would eliminate funding for the
Title X Family Planning Program, Planned Parenthood, and the Teen Pregnancy Prevention
Initiative, reinstate the Global Gag Rule, and cut funding for the Title V Maternal and Child
Health Program.
•
The Pence Amendment (H. AMDT. 95 to H.R. 1), which would eliminate all federal funds for
Planned Parenthood.
•
The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (H.R. 3), which would take away women’s right to
use their own funds for abortion care or insurance plans that provide abortion coverage.
•
The Protect Life Act (H.R. 358), which would limit women’s access to private insurance that
covers abortion as well as allow hospitals to deny women abortion services even in emergency
situations.
•
The Foxx Amendment (H. AMDT.298 to H.R. 1216), which would undermine medical schools’
ability to train their students in abortion care.
•
The King Telemedicine Amendment (H. AMDT. 463 to H.R 2112), which would potentially
limit access to telemedicine for women in rural and other underserved communities.
These cuts and restrictions would disproportionately negatively impact women and children of color,
the communities this bill’s supporters claim to want to help, by limiting access to comprehensive
health care. Instead of empowering women of color to make informed personal health care
decisions, H.R. 3541 and all the similar efforts that preceded it would prevent them from doing so.
Congress Needs to Advance Real Solutions to Discrimination and Health Disparities
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Despite their claims of concern about race and sex discrimination, supporters of this bill have not
supported measures in Congress that address ongoing legal and constitutional discrimination and
related health disparities. For example, the vast majority of the sponsors of this bill who were
members in the last Congress voted against the passage in the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, signed
into law January 2009, which will help to ensure that women are paid the same as their male
counterparts. In addition, as part of H.R. 1, the Full Year Continuing Appropriations Act mentioned
above, supporters of this bill voted to eliminate funding for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative
and to cut funding for the Title V Maternal and Child Health Program, programs that help to address
underlying health disparities in low-income communities.
We welcome this opportunity to highlight some of the important legislation proposed in this
Congress that would take concrete steps to address real discrimination and health disparities. We
urge the members of this committee who are concerned about the impact of discrimination to cosponsor and support passage of these bills:
•
The Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 1519), which would address the persistent pay gap between
men and women.
•
The Healthy Families Act (H.R. 1876), which would allow workers to take time off to care for
themselves or their families and would allow individuals who are victims of domestic violence,
stalking or sexual assault to take time off to recover and seek assistance.
•
The Health Equity and Accountability Act (H.R. 2954), which aims to eliminate racial and ethnic
health disparities by calling for culturally and linguistically appropriate health care; health
workforce diversity; and improvement of health outcomes for women, children and families;
among other things.
•
The Real Education for Healthy Youth Act (H.R. 3324), which would provide funding for
comprehensive sex education programs in a variety of communities throughout the United
States.
•
Arbitration Fairness Act (H.R.1873), which would limit corporations’ ability to deny individual
rights and allow victims to have their day in court when they are injured by employment
discrimination or other unlawful conduct.
Congress also has a critical role to play in responding to an extremely serious and pervasive form of
discrimination purportedly addressed in this bill, violence against women. We welcome this
opportunity to highlight some of the important legislation that would provide needed resources and
support for victims of sexual and other types of violence and we urge the members of this committee
to use their valuable and limited time to pass this legislation.
•
Violence Against Women Health Initiative Act (H.R.1578), which would ensure that victims
of gender-based violence have access to important health services.
•
Compassionate Assistance for Rape Emergencies Act of 2011 (H.R.1724), which would
ensure that rape survivors have access to Emergency Contraception at any hospital.
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•
MARCH for Military Women – Military Access to Reproductive Care and Health for Military
Women (H.R. 2085), which would ensure that members of military and their dependents who
become pregnant as the result of rape or incest would have access to safe abortion services
through their federal health insurance.
Conclusion
The National Partnership urges Congress to reject the “Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass
Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA) of 2011” (H.R. 3541). Instead of focusing on yet
another bill to undermine women’s comprehensive reproductive health services, Congress should be
advancing bills that truly address discrimination. This piece of legislation is a thinly veiled attempt
to undermine women’s constitutional rights and eliminate women’s access to abortion and only
serves to deny women adequate and comprehensive health care and exacerbate health disparities.
The National Partnership would welcome the opportunity to work with Congress to advance
measures that truly address the pernicious issues of race and sex-based discrimination and expand,
not restrict, women’s access to reproductive health and we look forward to the opportunity to do so.
i
National Women’s Law Center, Poverty Among Women and Families, 2000-2010, September 2011
“The rate of extreme poverty among women rose from 5.9 percent in 2009 to 6.3 percent in 2010, the highest rate since
the Census Bureau began recording this figure 22 years ago. Black and Hispanic women experienced even greater
increases in poverty between 2009 and 2010 than women overall, as did single mothers. Poverty rates for all groups of
women in 2010 were substantially higher than poverty rates for their male counterparts.” Available at
http://www.nwlc.org/sites/default/files/povertyamongwomenandfamilies2010final.pdf
ii
Kaiser Family Foundation, Putting Women’s Health Care Disparities on the Map: Examining Racial and Ethnic
Disparities at the State Level (June 2009), available at http://www.statehealthfacts.org/downloads/womens-healthdisparities/Putting%20Womens%20Healthcare%20Disparities%20On%20the%20Map.pdf.
iii
Amnesty International, U.S. Maternal Health Crisis,
http://www.amnestyusa.org/about-us/amnesty-50-years/50-years-of-human-rights/us-maternal-health-crisis-facts
iv
Guttmacher Institute, Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States (August 2011), available at
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html.
v
United States Department of Health and Human Service.s Office of Minority Health, HIV/AIDS and African
Americans, available at http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/templates/content.aspx?lvl=2&lvlID=51&ID=3019
vi
Susan A. Cohen, Abortion and Women of Color: The Bigger Picture, Guttmacher Policy Review
(Summer 2008), available at http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/11/3/gpr110302.html.