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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Sounding the Alarm Over Zika Funding Fight

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Wednesday, July 13, 2016   

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Reproductive-health groups are sounding the alarm as a measure to combat the Zika virus moves closer to a vote in the U.S. Senate.

A full committee markup is scheduled today on a bill that includes more than $1 billion to prevent, prepare for and respond to the Zika virus. The measure restricts funding for Planned Parenthood, which Gabriel Mann, communications manager for NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, said is counterproductive.

Zika is transmitted through mosquito bites or sexual intercourse with a person who is infected, and Mann said reproductive health-care services such as contraception are an important part of prevention.

"We don't want to see the negative health implications of a new virus strain," he said, "but these politicians are complicating the situation even further by using an ideological agenda to go after reproductive health-care providers at the time when we need a real solution."

Senate Republicans say women can obtain similar services at other health-care centers, but some Democrats argue that Planned Parenthood sometimes is their only option. There have been more than 15 confirmed cases of Zika in Ohio, with the first sexually-transmitted case reported in late June.

Ohio already passed a law aimed at defunding Planned Parenthood by redirecting funds from organizations that promote elective abortions. Under the measure, Mann said, doctor-patient conversations about birth defects related to Zika would be limited.

"If that conversation included questions and answers about abortion options," he said, "that would trigger the defunding that would cost a county HIV-testing funding or breast-cancer funding."

In May, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order halting the defunding of Planned Parenthood in Ohio. That order recently was extended to Aug. 5.

Information about the bill is online at appropriations.house.gov.


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