Anti-choice forces have continued efforts to systematically erode reproductive rights, through legislation designed to undermine and weaken constitutional protections and to restrict access to abortion services. Fear of intimidation and violence has further limited availability of health care practitioners willing to provide confidential services, and abortion is now unavailable in 84 percent of U.S. counties. Once again, in the 105th Congress, anti-choice forces introduced a so-called "partial birth" abortion bill, which in fact would ban common abortion procedures used throughout pregnancy, and which the President has vetoed twice. Although Congress failed twice to override the President's veto, another attempt to enact the bill is expected in the 106th Congress. Further efforts will also be made to restrict access to abortion by minors, expand informed consent regulations, restrict sex education and limit access to contraceptives. It is expected that efforts will also continue to place limitations and restrictions on funding for international family planning groups. The JCPA will work in coalitions to oppose these and all efforts to limit access to the full range of health services for women.

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Finally, campaigns of harassment against clinics and physicians providing abortion services, threats of violence, actual violence, and murder, have made access to this constitutionally protected right, in some cases, no longer safe. In the last five years, seven people have been murdered by anti-abortion extremists, including most recently Dr. Barnett Slepian, a gynecologist/ obstetrician in upstate New York. The JCPA condemns this violence as an assault on the rights and liberties of all people, which must be prosecuted, to the fullest extent of the law. Further, the JCPA believes medical education, affected by controversy around this issue, is failing to provide adequate opportunity for doctors to obtain the skills needed to perform this legal medical procedure. Residency curricula in obstetrics/gynecology should make available instruction in all procedures relating to reproductive functions, whether or not the resident-in-training incorporates these procedures into the future practice of medicine.

DISSENT

The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (UOJCA) does not, as a matter of longstanding policy, join the Jewish Public Affairs Agenda discussion of "reproductive choice." We cannot endorse a public policy that does not reflect the complex response of halacha (Jewish law) to the abortion issue. In most circumstances the halacha proscribes abortion but there are cases in which halacha permits and indeed mandates abortion. The question is a sensitive one and personal decisions in this area should be made in consultation with recognized halachic authorities.

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