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The Quickie: New Tool Helps Employers Improve Reproductive and Maternal Health Benefits

For Immediate Release: Feb. 1, 2024


Welcome to “The Quickie”

Welcome to “The Quickie” — Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s daily tipsheet on the top health care & reproductive rights stories of the day. You can read “The Quickie'' online here.

In today’s Quickie: Pennsylvania SC ruling a rebuke of Dobbs, new tool helps employers improve reproductive and maternal health benefits

PENNSYLVANIA COURT VICTORY IS A “DEVASTATING REBUKE” OF DOBBS: Earlier this week, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided that abortion restrictions discriminate on the basis of sex, allowing challenges to a ban on Medicaid coverage to move forward and delivering a major victory for reproductive freedom in the state. In an essay for Slate, legal analysts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern call the decision “the most devastating rebuke of Dobbs yet.” The majority opinion didn’t just reject Dobbs author Justice Samuel Alito’s assertion that abortion bans cannot possibly be discriminatory — it called the underpinnings of his analysis discriminatory as well. As Lithwick and Stern summarize, the Pennsylvania opinion explains that “​​rooting women’s rights in the past is, itself, a form of sex discrimination, perpetuating misogynistic beliefs about gender inequality by judicial decree.” 

“The lesson to be gleaned… is not merely that state constitutions will be more essential than ever to protect against the misogynistic and revanchist efforts to restore women to subordinate and indeed powerless vessels,” Lithwick and Stern write. “The lesson is also that the conservative project of gluing a misshapen cutout of the past onto a blank canvas of the present is itself an exercise in perpetuating inequality. This is as it was expressly designed to be.” 

Read the full analysis at Slate. 

 

NEW TOOL HELPS EMPLOYERS IMPROVE REPRODUCTIVE AND MATERNAL HEALTH BENEFITS: This week, the Reproductive & Maternal Health (RMH) Compass launched a new benefits framework for employers that includes performance standards, a diagnostic survey, benchmark reports, and a resource hub for businesses to improve their reproductive and maternal health care benefits. By setting best-in-class reproductive and maternal health benefits, the RMH Compass drives transparency that will lead to better health outcomes for all. Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) was a member of the RMH Compass working group alongside the National Network of Abortion Funds, Rhia Ventures, Human Rights Campaign, Center for Parental Leave Leadership, Fertility Matters at Work, Birnbaum Women's Leadership Center at NYU Law, and AFL-CIO. Sunita Thakkar Mahtani, Vice President of Corporate Engagement at PPFA celebrated the news, saying:

“On behalf of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, I am proud to be a part of the working group that helped to create the new Reproductive and Maternal Health Compass. Through the Compass’ standards, we are supporting the U.S. private sector workforce by encouraging companies to assess, better protect, and expand access to reproductive health care for the benefit of their people and their businesses."

Learn more here.

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