Kate Sheppard

With Election Day now upon us, it's worth weighing the impacts of a Mitt Romney win on reproductive rights and health care. In general, Romney seems likely to cater to the extreme anti-choice faction of his party. Here's a sneak preview of possible scenarios:

1. The Supreme Court gets more anti-choice. All of the abortion-related decisions on the court in recent history have been a 5-4 (or 4-5) split, with Justice Anthony Kennedy as the swing vote. The court has four justices in their 70s right now, which means that the next president could have one or more opportunities to appoint new members. Romney has made it clear that he would like to see Roe v. Wade overturned, and would appoint federal judges and Supreme Court justices that feel that way, too. Even if those appointees don't get to throw out Roe (at least, not right away), they could still make important decisions on state laws currently caught up in the court system, like laws requiring a sonogram before an abortion and other laws that ban abortions after 20 weeks. A Supreme Court ruling upholding those laws could set new precedents for the burdens states are allowed to impose on women seeking an abortion.

• On the Environment
• On Reproductive Rights
• On National Security
• On Food and Agriculture
• On Civil Liberties

3. Health care reform gets overturned. Romney says he wants to toss out "Obamacare"—except for the parts that people like, such as making it illegal to deny coverage to someone because of a preexisting condition. The problem is, the parts Romney doesn't like are required to make the other parts work. There are a lot of provisions in health care reform that are particularly helpful for women. For one, I've known women who were told that heavy periods or cramps qualified as a "pre-existing condition," which the reform bill would outlaw. More broadly, under Obamacare, insurance companies can no longer charge you more just because you're a woman—a practice known as "gender rating." Birth control and other preventative care are now available without a co-payment. You can stay on your parents' health care until you're 26, which is particularly useful for women, who go to the doctor more often than men.

4. There's no more co-pay-free birth control. Even if Romney doesn't succeed in overturning health care reform, he has singled out the requirement that insurers cover contraception as an "assault on religion" that "will end" if he becomes president. Paul Ryan has promised that the birth control mandate "will be gone" on "day one" of their administration.

5. There are stricter limits on federal funding for abortions. Last year, GOP House members—including Paul Ryan—tried to pass a law that would have redefined rape as only including "forcible rape"—which would likely exclude statutory rape and possibly date/drugged/drunk rape. This is important, because federal laws dealing with the use of government funds for abortions have typically included exemptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act also includes other new limits, like barring tax credits for employers who choose to offer a health plan that covers abortion and making it illegal to use your own tax-exempt health savings account to pay for an abortion.

6. The Global Gag Rule returns. Romney has said he will reinstate this rule, also known as the "Mexico City Policy," that bars any US-funded organization working abroad not only from providing abortions, but from offering referrals or even discussing abortion as an option.

7. Parental consent laws are federalized. In 2005, 2007, and 2011, Paul Ryan cosponsored the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, a bill that would make it illegal to take a minor to another state to avoid parental notification and consent laws for an abortion in her home state. Under the bill, a minor's parents must be notified in writing at least 24 hours before she can have an abortion.

8. Hospitals are allowed to deny women access to abortion, even if their lives are in danger. Under current law, any hospital accepting Medicare or Medicaid and affiliated with a religious institution that refuses to provide abortion care under any circumstance is legally required to transfer a woman who needs a live-saving abortion to a hospital that will. But last year, the House passed another bill that Ryan cosponsored, the Protect Life Act, which, if passed, would allow hospitals to refuse to "participate in" or "provide referrals" for abortions.

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New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg endorsed Barack Obama for president on Thursday. Bloomberg, whose city is still dealing with the disaster left in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, cited the president's position on climate change in a column posted on Bloomberg View:

Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it might be -- given this week’s devastation -- should compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.

He continued:

We need leadership from the White House -- and over the past four years, President Barack Obama has taken major steps to reduce our carbon consumption, including setting higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks. His administration also has adopted tighter controls on mercury emissions, which will help to close the dirtiest coal power plants (an effort I have supported through my philanthropy), which are estimated to kill 13,000 Americans a year.

Mitt Romney, too, has a history of tackling climate change. As governor of Massachusetts, he signed on to a regional cap- and-trade plan designed to reduce carbon emissions 10 percent below 1990 levels. “The benefits (of that plan) will be long- lasting and enormous -- benefits to our health, our economy, our quality of life, our very landscape. These are actions we can and must take now, if we are to have ‘no regrets’ when we transfer our temporary stewardship of this Earth to the next generation,” he wrote at the time.

He couldn’t have been more right. But since then, he has reversed course, abandoning the very cap-and-trade program he once supported. This issue is too important. We need determined leadership at the national level to move the nation and the world forward.

Who knows how much sway Bloomberg, an independent, holds with the general public. But it certainly highlights how ridiculous it is that climate change never came up in any of the presidential or vice-presidential debates.

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