Actions

CBS Protest

When CBS abandoned its long-held policy and decided to run a Focus on the Family’s anti-choice Super Bowl ad, our Phoenix-Scottsdale chapter members responded assertively. We gathered February 5 and 6, 2010, with supporters outside the Phoenix CBS affiliate headquarters and peacefully protested CBS’s unconscionable and harmful decision.

“The National Organization for Women strongly objects to CBS’s move to give a platform to one side of the reproductive rights issue, bought and paid for by the anti-choice, anti-woman Focus in the Family.” Olga Vives, spokeswoman for the Phoenix-Scottsdale NOW Chapter.

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Pro-Choice Demonstration Sunday January 24, 2010

Phoenix-Scottsdale NOW chapter members and supporters demonstrated along the parade route of Az Right To Life’s 37th Annual March and Rally for Life.  Our protest was peaceful and respectful and generated positive responses from passing motorists on Central Avenue.  Our presence at the anti-choice parade demonstrated to the community NOW’s commitment to a woman’s fundamental right to reproductive health for themselves and their families.

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Health Care Reform Bill Must Eliminate Gender Discriminationand Remove Restrictions on
Abortion Care

Call AND send an email message as soon as possible!
Tell members of your congressional delegation that throwing women under the bus in health care reform legislation is not acceptable. Contrary to what women's advocates have repeatedly been told, it now appears health care legislation allows gender rating after all. This, coupled with the anti-abortion rights language and other problems, renders the bill not worth passing unless these harmful provisions are removed.

President Obama stated in his major health policy address that reform legislation would prohibit gender rating, a practice that results in charging women up to 48 percent higher premiums. The Senate bill would allow gender discrimination for employees of companies with more than 100 employees, affecting tens of millions of women. This is unacceptable.

Action Needed:

Tell your senators and representatives that you will seek out progressive, feminist candidates who support women's equal and affordable health care, including coverage of abortion care, to replace them -- if they support extreme restrictions on insurance coverage of abortion care and fail to eliminate gender rating in the final bill.

Take action NOW!

Background:

Women Charged More for Being Women - One of the major selling points to women for supporting reform was that gender rating would be prohibited, but now under pressure from profit-driven insurance companies, this harmful practice will be permitted if the Senate version becomes the final bill. Discussions about resolving differences between Senate and House versions of health care reform legislation are concluding soon. General consensus indicates that provisions of the more conservative Senate bill.