What a difference an election
makes. In just over two months in office, President Obama is making
good on his promise to change the failed reproductive health care policies
of the Bush administration: overturning the global gag rule; helping
ensure access to affordable contraception for millions of women, and
taking action to rescind the Bush administration’s midnight HHS regulation,
which was aimed at limiting the rights of patients to receive complete
and accurate health care. 

With a new tone in Washington,
we can finally begin addressing the health care crisis in this country,
and take the politics out of women’s health.  

In these difficult economic
times and with more than 45 million Americans currently uninsured, it
is critical that we work to increase, not limit, access to health care.
When a patient walks into a hospital, pharmacy, or any health care center,
she should be confident she will receive complete and accurate health
care information and services.

Under the current rule, issued
at the last minute by then-President Bush, that is not the case. Insurance
companies, hospitals, and pharmacies, as well as doctors, nurses, and
other medical personnel, are allowed to simply withhold services and
information about, for example, contraception and HIV testing and treatment. 
The rule allows health care providers to deny any basic health care
service based on their personal biases.   

In order to overturn the Bush
administration rule, President Obama issued a new proposal in March
that has to undergo a period of public review. Tens of thousands
of Planned Parenthood supporters
have already submitted comments in favor of President Obama’s commonsense
fix to this unnecessary midnight regulation that jeopardizes patients’
access to complete and accurate health care information and services.  

But the opportunity to add
your voice and speak out in support of President Obama’s reversal
of the current dangerous policy ends on Thursday. 

With more and more families
losing their health insurance and having difficulty accessing health
care at all, and with at least one in four teenage girls having a sexually
transmitted infection, Bush’s HHS rule that limits access to health
services is unconscionable. We must all speak up for patients’ rights.  

Click HERE to add your name to the list of people
across America who support reversing Bush’s midnight HHS rule.