The Quickie: Innovation in Reproductive Health Care Faces Systemic Barriers

Welcome to “The Quickie” — Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s daily tipsheet on the top health care & reproductive rights stories of the day. You can read “The Quickie'' online here.

In today’s Quickie: Innovation in repro health care faces systemic barriers and House Republicans are at it again.

INNOVATION IN REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH CARE FACES SYSTEMIC BARRIERS: Multipurpose prevention technologies (MPTs) are products that are designed to prevent more than one sexual and reproductive health concern at once, typically focused on preventing unintended pregnancy, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STI). 

According to The Fuller Project, nearly half of all new HIV diagnoses globally each year are women. There’s a steady uptick in STIs like syphilis and gonorrhea, and nearly half of all pregnancies globally are unintended. Innovative solutions — like those MPTs can offer — that simultaneously address multiple concerns seem like a no-brainer, but their development comes with unique challenges. Systemic barriers include financing, reimbursement, and a complex regulatory landscape. 

Dr. Diana Contreras, chief health care officer at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, notes similar challenges in the development of contraceptives, “If you really want to dig into why anything is held up, it’s financing,” she says. “Why hasn’t anybody paid attention to women’s health? Why aren’t there more contraceptives out there? It has to do with financing.”

Read more here.  

HOUSE REPUBLICANS ARE AT IT (TRYING TO TAKE AWAY PEOPLE'S SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM) AGAIN: House Republicans have been sneaking poison pills attacking sexual and reproductive health care into must-pass spending bills for months. Here are just some of the latest attacks on our bodies, lives and futures Republicans are pushing forward in House funding bills: 

• The Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (LHHS) funding bill passed out of committee this week includes measures designed to 1) “defund” Planned Parenthood, blocking some people from accessing sexual and reproductive health care, 2) eliminate funding for Title X and the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program — but funding abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, 3) restrict gender affirming care, and 4) interfere with postgraduate training in abortion care and more. 

“House Republicans opposed to abortion are up to their same old playbook of trying to restrict access to reproductive health care for millions of people across the country,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO, Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “By pushing through this LHHS bill, anti-abortion rights politicians are acting in defiance of the vast majority of their constituents who believe that the government has no right to control people’s personal health care decisions.”

The Committee also advanced the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) appropriations bill with multiple attacks on reproductive freedom this week.

• Also expected on the House floor this month, The Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) funding bill includes a range of attacks on reproductive freedom, including a provision to overturn a DC law protecting employees from being fired for their personal reproductive health care decisions. Karen Stone, PPAF’s vice president of public policy and government relations, spoke to The Hill about that danger this week: 

“Specifically about the Reproductive Health Nondiscrimination Act rider in the FSGG bill, that’s an effort to prevent enforcement of a law passed by the Washington D.C. council…That’s explicitly anti-local rights and taking away the rights of the people who live in a jurisdiction from making the decisions that impact them,” said Stone. 

Read more about the LHHS bill here (and in Spanish here), the FSGG bill here and our roundup of appropriations attacks on sexual and reproductive health care here.