Anti-abortion radicals in the Pennsylvania Legislature have proposed legislation to back-door defund Planned Parenthood by depriving low-income women of access to preventative healthcare like STI screenings and affordable contraception.
Senate Bill 300 was introduced last week by Sen. John Eichelberger (R- Blair/Cumberland/Franklin/Fulton and Huntingdon), a politician you may recall from his vocal support of SB3, a severe abortion restriction currently under consideration in Pennsylvania that threatens doctors with a third-degree felony for providing their patients with standard care. (Read more about SB3 here. It passed the Senate and is currently sitting in the Pennsylvania House Health Committee.)
Specifically, SB300 seeks to amend the Pennsylvania fiscal code so that federal and state family planning funds are prohibited from reimbursing healthcare facilities that also provide safe, legal abortion care. In other words, it is a crafty way to attack Planned Parenthood, an organization that serves 90,000 women in Pennsylvania every year.
Numerous studies have shown that there are not enough federally qualified health facilities providing family planning services to absorb Planned Parenthood’s patients. In three Pennsylvania counties, Planned Parenthood is the only subsidized family planning provider, so the idea that the patients can be sent somewhere else is both ludicrous and dangerous. But in the right-wing war on Planned Parenthood, the tens of thousands of patients who rely on Planned Parenthood for affordable family planning and reproductive healthcare are just collateral damage.
 

TAKE ACTION ONE STEP AT A TIME

FIND OUT who your state senator is here.
CALL your state senator and urge him or her to OPPOSE SB300.
SAMPLE SCRIPT I am your constituent, and I am contacting you to urge you to oppose SB300. Senate Bill 300 is an attack on the health and dignity of low-income women in Pennsylvania. With nearly half of Planned Parenthood’s medical centers in rural and underserved communities, passing SB300 would be crippling to the patients that need care the most.
FOLLOW UP your phone call with an email, if possible. If you are on social media, tweet and post to their Facebook page.
If you learn that your senator is already opposing SB300, please take a moment to THANK them for standing up for women of Pennsylvania.

BONUS ACTIONS

CONTACT members of the Senate Finance Committee, and urge them to oppose SB300.
SHARE this alert with your networks.
Thank you for supporting equality in Pennsylvania.
The Women’s Law Project is the only public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing the rights of women and girls.
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