by Louise Melling: Director, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project

It's time to get serious: only 13 days left to let the Bush Administration know precisely what you think of its proposed health care denial regulations (PDF). Believe you me, the staff here at the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project have spent hours pouring over these regs, and I'm here to tell you that they could seriously undermine access to important reproductive health services, including birth control and abortion.

There's just too much at stake to sit this one out. Go to the ACLU's Action Alert now and tell the Bush Administration it can't mess with women's health, not this time, not now.

The deadline is September 25th and volume counts, so act quickly and ask your friends to join in this effort.


For years, federal law has carefully balanced protections for individual religious liberty and patients' access to reproductive health care. The proposed rule, however, appears to take patients' needs completely out of this equation. It goes so far as to permit individual health care providers—and even entire institutions—to refuse to provide patients basic information and counseling. If the rule is allowed to go into effect, patients may never be able to access the refused health care—or even know about their right or option to do so.

Don't let this happen. Remember, the more people the federal government hears from the better. So click through to our alert and get busy.

To learn more about these regulations you can read my initial post on the ACLU Daily Kos Diary. And if you're one of those people who can simply never get enough of lawyers talking about the law, here's a podcast of me talking about the regs with Dino Corvino of Below the Waist.