Nancy Northup's blog

Emergency contraception is still difficult to access for many groups of women, including the more than 200,000 women serving in the Armed Services.

The FDA, under Dr. Margaret Hamburg's leadership, should take a fresh look at the agency's over-the-counter policy on Plan B to ensure that the policy is based on medical evidence, not ideology. Update 3/24/09: Court rules in favor of evidence!

Our country's new vision for reproductive health needs to go beyond undoing the policies of the previous administration. Obama must work toward a world in which all women can participate with full dignity as equal members of society.

Even with victories on anti-choice initiatives, and even with this election, individual state legislatures remain dangerous arenas in which we struggle to preserve every woman's rights.

It's human nature to want everyone to agree with one's religion or personal moral code. But I also accept that there will always be vast differences among religious and secular perspectives on life. And I believe that government should not help me or anyone else spread our religious beliefs.

Nancy Northup is the President of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

We have been down this road before. And we really shouldn't be going down this road again. Let me start with this term, "Partial-Birth Abortion." There is no such medical procedure as "Partial-Birth Abortion." It is a political soundbite.

The Center for Reproductive Rights brings casesSpecial Series both in the United States and around the world and works with women's health advocates to strengthen laws protecting women's reproductive health. And we don't deal with this issue of "Partial-Birth abortion" anywhere else in the world. And that is because it was created as a political soundbite here, for American politics.

This case is about second-trimester abortions. That is all that this case is about. Second-trimester abortions. Babies are not born in the second trimester. Third trimester abortions are outlawed in most states around the United States, as long as there is a constitutional protection for women's life and health. So this is not about babies about to be born.