Monday, July 20, 2009

Lifting the D.C. Abortion Ban

Poverty is the worst form of violence” - Mohandas K. Gandhi

Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union » Lifting the D.C. Abortion Ban
Last Thursday, the House of Representatives approved the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act and finally lifted a 20-year ban that barred Washington, D.C., from using local funds to pay for abortions for low-income women.

Since 1980, Congress has prohibited the use of federal funds appropriated for the District of Columbia to pay for abortion services except in cases where the woman’s life is endangered or she is a victim of rape. Beginning in 1988, Congress went one step further by also preventing the District of Columbia from using its own locally raised, nonfederal revenues to provide abortion care to its low-income residents. This violation of the District’s autonomy was relieved for only two years, in 1993 and 1994, when Congress voted to lift the ban. A year later, an anti-choice majority in Congress restored the ban, and it has remained in effect since that time....


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