ELECTIONS

OHIO RELIGIOUS COALITION FOR REPRODUCTIVE CHOICE
Election Questions for State and National Candidates

As a religious pro-choice person, what can you do during this election campaign? You can ask the candidates questions!

You can help defend reproductive choice in this crucial election year by asking the following questions at forums, debates and fundraisers.

A “yes” answer shows a commitment to pro-choice values.

Be sure to ask the last question of all candidates.

For candidates to the U.S. Congress:

1. Will you support “Prevention First” legislation to help reduce unintended pregnancies by improving access to family planning?
2. Will you support funding for medically accurate, age-appropriate sexuality education programs?
3. Will you support legislation to provide funds to educate the public about the value of emergency contraception (the morning-after pill) in preventing unintended pregnancies?  (Candidates may want to know that emergency contraception does not affect an existing pregnancy.)
4. Will you support legislation requiring hospitals that receive taxpayer funding to provide emergency contraception to victims of rape and sexual assault?
5. Will you support payment of the Unites Staes’ fair share of funding for the United Nations Population Fund, which provides family planning to the world’s poorest people?
6. Will you support the Access to Legal Pharmaceuticals Act, which requires pharmacists and pharmacies to fill prescriptions for oral contraceptives, including emergency contraception, without delay, and without subjecting customer to humiliation or harassment?
7. Will you support overturning the law that prohibits military women from obtaining an abortion in military hospitals, even if they pay for it themselves?

For Senate candidates only

1. Will you oppose nominees for the federal courts whose records show that they are hostile to reproductive rights and women’s rights?

For candidates to the Ohio Legislature:

1. Will you oppose H.B. 239 (or its Senate equivalent) which would prevent the use of state funds, state facilities, and state employees for abortions (except to save the life of a woman), and would eliminate insurance coverage for abortions for state employees in the case of rape and incest?
2. Will you oppose H.B. 228 (or its Senate equivalent) which bans abortion without any exception for the life or health of a woman, and which makes second degree felons of anyone who commits an abortion (including a woman who self-aborts) and anyone who transports a woman, or causes her to be transported across state or counties lines?  (This may include clergy and counselors, as well as family and friends.)
3. Will you support Prevention First Ohio, a bill that would reduce unintended pregnancies by increasing funds for family planning and improving access to medically accurate sex education, contraception and emergency contraception, as well as lifting current restrictions on abortion, which primarily impact the poor?

For all candidates:

Do you think that restrictions on contraception and abortion, including a ban on abortion, interfere with the religious liberty of Ohioans?

For example, some religions and many religious people do not believe that life, or personhood, begins at conception. And many religious people place a high value on women and believe they should control their reproductive health.

Ohio Prevention First Act.

What the Ohio Prevention First Act will do:

1. Forbid a health insurance company from limiting or excluding coverage for FDA-approved prescription contraception if the policy covers other prescription drugs or devices.
2. Institute a Pharmacists’ Duty to Dispense all lawful prescriptions unless prior arrangements are made by the pharmacy to fill all lawful prescriptions without delay to the consumer.
3. Establish an emergency contraception education program through the Ohio Department of Health to educate medical professionals and the general public about emergency contraception.
4. Allow pharmacists to dispense emergency contraception (EC) to anyone without a prescription, after completing a short training program in its use.
5. Require sex education classes to provide students with medically accurate information about abstinence, contraception, and condom programs as ways to prevent unintended pregnancies and STDs including HIV/AIDS.  Sex education program that do not follow these guidelines are not eligible for state grant funding.
6. Launch a Teen Pregnancy prevention grant program through the Ohio Department of Health to award grants to public and private entities to establish or expand programs geared towards at-risk youth.

Why “Prevention First”?

• Nearly 50% of all pregnancies in the United States each year are unintended, one of the highest unintended pregnancy rates among industrialized nations. We need common sense solutions to this problem.

• Reducing the unintended pregnancy rate will reduce the number of abortions.  Half of all unintended pregnancies end in abortion; by reducing the number of unintended pregnancies we can safely reduce the number of abortions.

• Increased access to emergency contraception (EC) is an effective way to reduce unintended pregnancy and the number of abortions. A 2002 study revealed that EC use was likely responsible for up to 43% of the decline in the number of abortions in the United States between 1994 and 2000.

Last year, 13% of the female students at Timken Senior High School in Canton, Ohio were pregnant—that’s 64 women facing unintended pregnancies.  Ohio has the 28th highest teen pregnancy rate in the U.S.  Students deserve honest scientifically proven methods of sexuality education so that they have the life skills to prevent pregnancy when they decide to be sexually active.