House to vote tomorrow on discriminatory PRENDA bill

As Shark likes to say, “Nothing says JOBS like a race-baiting woman hating fetal sovereignty bill!”

Tomorrow, the House of Representatives will vote on the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA), legislation that would ban abortion performed based on the fetus’ sex. The law would require doctors to report any person seeking an abortion to the authorities if there’s any suspicion the abortion is sex-selective — and if they don’t report them, the doctors themselves could face jail time. The race-baiting here is more than evident. Heads of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and the Black Women’s Health Imperative have a joint op-ed at HuffPo on the legislation:

This bill means that all women — and to be clear, particularly Asian American women — who seek an abortion could face new, intense scrutiny. In particular, given the issue of sex selection in Asian countries, any woman who appears to be Asian American risks intense questioning about the decision she has made to seek an abortion. The bill also targets providers and makes it more difficult to provide reproductive health care including abortion.

As organizations representing thousands of women of color, and as women of color ourselves, we work every day to fight sex discrimination and racial stereotyping in all its forms. We fight for policies shown to be effective in improving the lives of women and girls, like improving education, better health care, equal employment opportunities and pay equity.

The supporters of this bill are not our friends on these issues. They are hypocrites: opponents of reproductive decision-making who don’t care about sex discrimination. Their agenda is banning all abortions and punishing those who provide them.

Sex selection is a very legitimate and serious problem, there is no doubt about that, but using this issue to push yet another anti-choice tactic is abhorrent. All this bill would do is encourage discrimination and further remove health care access that is already so hard to come by for so many women of color in the U.S.

However, there’s a decent chance the bill will not pass the House as it’s being considering under a suspension of House rules, which requires a two-thirds majority vote for passage. (In short, about half of Democrats would need to support the bill for it to pass the House.)

Nonetheless, we shouldn’t take any chances. You can find your House rep to contact here, and we’ll make sure to keep you posted on the results.