EMERGENCY!!! We need your phone call right now!

What follows is an urgent message from Cecile Richards, CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Please, please, please pick up your phone right now and call your representative. A handful of bishops should not determine the fate of women in the US. Let your representatives know that we elected them, they answer to us! Let us know if you make the call! I know its Saturday morning and as alarmist and extreme as this is going to sound, its true...THE FATE OF WOMEN'S ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE RESTS IN YOUR HANDS!!! Pick up the phone.

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I’m writing to you with an urgent request.

Late yesterday, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops met with leaders in the House of Representatives in their bid to eliminate women’s access to abortion care under health care reform.

We have just received news that their efforts are working, and Representative Bart Stupak has introduced an amendment to the health care reform bill that will result in women losing health care coverage for abortion. We urgently need you, and your friends and family, to do two things:

Call your representative at 202-730-9001 and ask (him or her) to reject the Stupak amendment that will remove abortion coverage from health care reform.

If the bishops and their anti-choice partners in the House succeed, they’ll permanently alter health care in America, even taking away benefits from women that they have today. The bishops want to effectively eliminate abortion coverage in both private plans and the public option. We simply cannot stand for such a discriminatory, mean-spirited attack on women.

It’s a chilling ultimatum: eliminate choice for millions of women, or the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops will do all they can to kill health care reform. This is a true crisis for American women, and we need you to act now.

Call your representative at 202-730-9001 and tell him or her to reject this attack on women’s health — and then forward this message to your friends, your family, everyone you know and ask them to do the same (and don’t forget to post the news to Facebook, Twitter — everywhere).

We need you now, more than ever. Thank you for standing strong with us in the face of this vicious last-minute attack on women. We will keep you posted on what’s next.

Sincerely,

Cecile