Issue Position: Women's Health

Issue Position

Noel believes strongly in a woman's right to choose, and will prioritize the restoration of cuts to the family planning safety net and ensure that important programs, like medically accurate sex education, are funded fully.

Family Planning: Adequately funding family planning not only makes good sense for women's health, but it also makes good fiscal sense for the state. For every dollar we spend on family planning, we save four dollars in unintended pregnancy care costs. We must work to maintain funding for these critical programs, which have seen unfortunate cuts over the past years.

Health Care Reform: Women pay up to 39% more in healthcare-related costs than men, and critical benefits such as maternity and birth control coverage are often excluded. With President Obama's health care reform, these disparities were addressed. It is critical that Washington State move health care reform forward and that we seek to even further address the disparity and ensure women get the healthcare coverage they need and deserve.

Limited Service Pregnancy Centers: The recent legislative battle over Limited Service Pregnancy Centers has brought to light how these organizations use manipulation to discourage women from having abortions. We need to regulate these centers to ensure they do not use false information to delay women from making critical healthcare decisions and that these centers protect the private health information of the women they serve.

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