From Duke Aiona, Hawai’i Family Advocates, January 31, 2017
Aloha!
This week a couple of "Bully Bills" popped for hearing: HB 663 and SB 501 requires all limited service pregnancy centers to disclose the availability of and enrollment information for reproductive health services. These bills establish privacy and disclosure requirements for individual records and information and authorizes civil penalties and civil actions for enforcement and remedy.
Why are these bills problematic? Basically, not only will the government tell faith-based pregnancy centers what they CANNOT say, they will now also tell them what they HAVE to say - providing abortion and contraceptive information even if it goes against their belief system.
So which legislators thought this was the right thing to do?
Representative(s): BELATTI, EVANS, ICHIYAMA, LOPRESTI, LOWEN, LUKE, MCKELVEY, MIZUNO, MORIKAWA, NAKAMURA, NISHIMOTO, OSHIRO, SAN BUENAVENTURA, THIELEN, TODD, DeCoite
and
Senator(s): INOUYE, BAKER, GREEN, KIDANI, K. RHOADS, SHIMABUKURO, TOKUDA, S. Chang, English, Espero, Ihara, Keith-Agaran, Kim, Kouchi, L. Thielen
(aka: the Women's Legislative Caucus).
Want to testify against these bad bills? Click here for the Senate CPH/JDL hearing notice. Click here for the House HLT hearing notice. Instructions for submitting testimony is on the hearing notices.
Keep in mind that AB775 in California (upon which this bill is based) is on appeal to the United States Supreme Court. Maybe Hawaii legislators missed that memo!
We will keep you posted on the progress of these (and other) bills.
Mahalo!
Duke
HB663: Text, Status
SB501: Text, Status