This shift in language appears to be both an attempt at influencing public opinion and a means of asserting that these bans fall outside the scope of Roe and do not restrict abortion at all. Parental involvement laws are attractive to antiabortion policymakers and activists as a means of tapping support for the rights of parents and the sanctity of the family. Antiabortion forces used similar tactics to promote other abortion restrictions. Opponents maintain that the real intent and effect of such legislation is to force the temporary or permanent closing of clinics because of the cost of the new standards. Family Planning Reproductive rights advocates in 1999 saw their most substantial victories in the burgeoning movement to require contraceptive coverage in private-sector insurance plans.
Most proposals tie contraceptive coverage to other prescription drug benefits.
Advocates have also used the quick decision by most insurance plans to cover the impotence drug Viagra as another example of inequity. Although this movement has slowed since the prior two years, Ohio and Wisconsin enacted laws last year allowing women to obtain services from obstetricians and gynecologists without prior referral or authorization, bringing to 40 the number of states that mandate some form of direct access. In addition, Florida, Nevada and Oregon expanded existing direct access statutes. On the negative side, however, officials in Colorado and Missouri stepped up efforts to defund family planning agencies because of their putative association with abortion-related activities. After repeated court decisions striking down the attempts of Missouri legislators to prevent the state's Planned Parenthood affiliates from receiving funds for family planning, a federal appellate court ruled in February 1999 that the state could require groups receiving state family planning funds to be separately incorporated and to have separate facilities and financial records from any affiliated group that performs abortion services.