by James Wagoner, President, Advocates for Youth

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote next week on a new GOP budget proposal that would eliminate all funding for Title X family planning programs in the United States — a move that would undermine low income people's access to health care and (conveniently for GOP ideologues) cripple Planned Parenthood clinics throughout the country.

With current funding for the federal government set to expire on March 4, we are fast approaching a showdown over the terms of passing a budget extension to keep the federal government from suddenly shutting down. By inserting this cut into a must-pass continuing resolution — rather than including it the regular budget process or as a stand alone bill, where it would almost certainly fail — Republicans are setting up a scenario where Congress may be forced to choose between eliminating family planning services for 5,000,000 Americans and shutting down the federal government.

We need your help NOW! Keep radical conservatives from gutting reproductive health care in the United States. Click here to take action!

by Emily Bridges, Director, Public Information Services

There's a lot of handwringing going on out there about the  Lila Rose/LiveAction supposed expose videos of Planned Parenthood clinic workers, committing the shocking act of providing medical care.

Sure, these journalists activists far right publicity junkies with a stated agenda of going to any lengths to close down Planned Parenthood caught one woman committing the awful crime of saying some things. She's been fired.

But now they continue to issue breathless press releases about videos which, frankly, are boring.  Like, hey, did you ever want to see a person's routine medical consultation about birth control and STI prevention options?  Did you want to see some ladies in scrubs matter-of-factly  and with professional reserve stating the law, including  declining some requests because the law bans them?  How about some mentions of pamphlets, and the reading of same?   Then by all means, watch these videos.  

Watch them: and know that these workers walked right out of that room into a supervisor's office to tell that supervisor that a weird shady pimp was just here asking questions about minors, and that those supervisors reported it up the ladder, and that Planned Parenthood reported it to the attorney general. No one here took child prostitution lightly - except Lila Rose and LiveAction, of course. 

Advocates' President James Wagoner, via The Huffington Post

Well, that didn't take long.

Just 18 days into the new Congressional session, Republicans held a major press conference to introduce the so-called "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act." Never mind that there is already no public funding for abortion in this country — an act of manifest discrimination against poor women in America — the House leadership has just declared its clear intent to further diminish access to legal abortion care in this country.

But, wait a minute! Didn't the new House Republican majority run a campaign based on the economy, jobs, and the deficit? Haven't we heard their promises to "listen to the American people" and "get down to the business at hand"? I guess the "business at hand" for the new House leadership is a return to the culture wars — an ideological mandate near and dear to the far-right base of the Republican party but completely irrelevant to the majority of the electorate and, incidentally, equally abhorrent to a number of key Tea Party activists who returned Republicans to power. (In fact, these Tea Party leaders have publicly urged the GOP to avoid going down social issue "rabbit holes.")

Yet, less than two weeks after the November elections, Speaker Boehner met with Randall Terry, an activist on the anti-abortion fringe who has spoken often about the need for a "culture war" in America and the "beauty of intolerance" when it comes to social values issues.

by Julia Reticker-Flynn, Manager, Youth Activist Network

January 22 marks the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that protected a woman's right to legal abortion care in the United States. 

Generations of women and men have worked tirelessly to ensure that women in America have access to the safe, legal medical care they need to make responsible decisions about their health and lives. This week on Amplify, we're launching a blogathon in honor of Roe v. Wade — and we hope you'll join us. Whether you decide to write a blog post, publish a video, or stop by to read others' thoughts on the need to preserve reproductive freedom in the 21st Century, we hope you'll join us.