Planned Parenthood Action Fund Kicks Off Battleground State Women are Watching Bus Tour
For Immediate Release: Jan. 27, 2013
Manchester, NH — Planned Parenthood Action Fund will tomorrow launch the Women are Watching bus tour, which will travel to 11 battleground states, including Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, making sure voters know exactly what’s at stake for women’s health in the November election. The Action Fund is the advocacy and political arm of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
“Politicians who would defund Planned Parenthood — as Mitt Romney has pledged to do — would deny millions of women access to birth control and cancer screenings,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “These are basic economic issues for women and families, and supporting family planning is smart fiscal policy for the country. On this tour, we’re going to hear from women and families that have been or will be directly hurt by the policies that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan support.”
The Action Fund is holding a rally in Concord tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. to highlight the critical health issues facing women and families in New Hampshire and across the country. Sandra Fluke, Georgetown Law Center Graduate and Women's Health activist; U.S. Senator and former Governor Jeanne Shaheen; and Colin Van Ostern, candidate for Executive Council, are all expected to attend.
Both Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, have pursued policies that would take away critical preventive health care from women — and insert the government into decisions that should be between a woman and her doctor. Notably, the Romney/Ryan administration would end funding for Planned Parenthood, cutting women off from the cancer screenings, birth control, STD testing and treatment, and other preventive care that nearly three million Americans rely on each year. Romney and Ryan have also both advocated shutting down the nation’s family planning program, which provides care for more than five million people, overturning Roe v. Wade and ending safe and legal abortion, and enacting so-called “personhood” measures that would give full constitutional rights to fertilized eggs and could ban some forms of birth control and fertility treatment.
“The more that swing women voters learn about Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s positions, the more alarmed they are,” said Richards. “Most Americans recognize that the family planning services that Planned Parenthood provides are commonsense, and help prevent the need for abortion by reducing the number of unintended pregnancies.”
Efforts to eliminate access to birth control, cancer screenings and other basic preventive health services started in Congress 18 months ago, and we’re seeing more of them in states like Arizona, Texas, New Jersey, Mississippi, and many others.
Women in America trust Planned Parenthood Action Fund to give them accurate information about where candidates stand in protecting women’s health — that’s why the Action Fund is launching its largest effort ever to educate voters on these issues this year.