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TechnoratiAbortion Rights Groups Now Oppose House Health Care Bill
The inclusion of Rep. Bart Stupak's restrictive abortion amendment in the bill has prompted well-established abortion-rights groups to oppose the entire House bill, and it is drawing the ire of feminist bloggers and activists. Pro-abortion rights members of Congress are also attempting to derail the final passage of any bill that includes the Stupak amendment. Yet as the Democrats' reform package teeters between success and failure -- with just a few more votes needed to kill the bill -- it remains to be seen whether leaders will risk stripping out the amendment, which was added to win over conservative Democrats.
The Stupak amendment passed on the House floor Saturday with the support of 64 Democrats -- of whom 62 were men, liberal bloggers have been quick to point out.
The provision would prevent women who receive subsidies to purchase insurance that covers abortion -- inside or outside of the proposed national health insurance exchange. It would also explicitly ban abortion coverage from the government-run plan, or "public option." While it does not explicitly prohibit private plans on the exchange from offering abortion coverage, insurers would have little incentive to offer abortion coverage, since most customers on the exchange would pay with subsidies.
"Abortion is a matter of conscience on both sides of the debate," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.). "This amendment takes away that same freedom of conscience from America's women. It prohibits them from access to an abortion even if they pay for it with their own money. It invades women's personal decisions."
Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and Louise M. Slaughter (D-N.Y.) released the text of a letter today to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that says, "We will not vote for a conference report that contains language that restricts women's right to choose any further than current law."
The congresswomen claim to have more than 40 signatures collected for the letter so far, though the signatures have not yet been released.
Meanwhile, abortion-rights groups are stepping up to pressure President Obama and the Senate to keep the measure out of the final health care bill. The National Organization for Women held a rally at the Capitol today in opposition to the amendment and is fundraising to lobby on the issue. The group opposes the entire House health care bill because of the amendment.
"We cannot and will not support a health care bill that strips millions of women of their existing access to abortion," NOW President Terry O'Neill said in a statement. "NOW calls on the Senate to pass a health care bill that respects women's constitutionally protected right to abortion and calls on President Obama to refuse to sign any health care bill that restricts women's access to affordable, quality reproductive health care."
Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards also said in a statement that, "On behalf of the millions of women Planned Parenthood health centers serve, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America has no choice but to oppose HR 3962."
The organization sent out an e-mail to its supporters on Monday, asking them to send President Obama a message to "to live up to his campaign commitment and stand with us to protect women's health care."
Yet while Planned Parenthood now opposes the House bill, the organization must tread carefully to promote reproductive rights without sabotaging a health care bill they would otherwise find generally beneficial. In addition to lobbying for reproductive rights with its political action committee, Planned Parenthood runs health care clinics throughout the country. This puts the organization in a tight spot, much like the supporters of abortion rights who voted against the Stupak amendment but for the passage of the bill.
Laurie Rubiner, Planned Parenthood's vice president of public policy, declined to say whether her organization would consider a vote in favor of the bill as an vote against abortion rights on its congressional scorecard.
"We've got a long way to go before we get there," Rubiner told the Hotsheet. "Planned Parenthood is a provider of health care services to 3 million women, and we're focused on getting the Stupak amendment out so we can deliver affordable, quality care."
Rubiner said Planned Parenthood thinks the chances are very good that the Senate will include more favorable abortion language in its bill, which could prevail over the House language in conference committee.
"The Senate has always been a cooling off place," Rubiner said. "I don't see in any reason to engage in brinksmanship at this point. This is about getting the best bill we can and making sure women aren't left worse off than they were before."
Similarly, NARAL Pro-Choice America says it is now focusing on defeating any attempt to add the Stupak amendment to the Senate bill. The organization will at least attempt to hold lawmakers accountable for the Stupak amendment with its congressional scorecard, which will take into account who voted in favor of the amendment.
"We opposed the Stupak-Pitts amendment and scored that vote, which means we will hold those lawmakers who voted for this measure accountable for abandoning women and capitulating to extreme factions of the anti-choice movement," Ted Miller, communications director for NARAL, told the Hotsheet.
Some advocates are suggesting a more hardline approach with the Democratic caucus.
A blogger on the liberal grassroots site FireDogLake wrote an article headlined, "Stupak Amendment Passes; 64 Dems Ask for Primary Opponents."
"It's a fundamental part of our belief system in the Democratic Party, that women have a right to privacy in their reproductive health care decisions," Rayne wrote.
Similarly, radio host Allison Kilkenny noted on Huffington Post that some of the same Democrats who favored the Stupak amendment also voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq, making them prime targets for primary challenges.
"If it goes to war like a Republican, and votes against women's rights like a Republican... I can't wait for the primaries," she wrote.
Ann Friedman, deputy editor of The American Prospect, suggested on the blog Feministing.com ways feminists could push back. For instance, she suggested making a donation to an abortion rights group rather than President Obama.
The amendment, she wrote, "sets apart women's rights from the Democratic/progressive/whatever agenda. As something expendable. But fundamental rights for women are not peripheral... Seeing as how the Democratic party relies on women voters to win elections, you would think they would have come around to this no-brainer by now."
Some more squarely pinned the blame on the president.
"Let's be honest. It was Pres. Obama who opened the door to sell us out when he decided to put the Hyde Amendment in the budget, something Bill Clinton never did," political analyst Taylor Marsh wrote at the Huffington Post. "Right now every woman who values her civil rights should understand how the gay community feels. Democrats just sold us out too."
29 Comments so far
Show AllAs I understand it, contrary to what Perry logan (November 10th, 2009 5:48 am) implies, the Stupak Amendment makes it more likely for a bill to reach Obama's desk.
Of course there's a long way to go and anything could happen; but assume the amendment stays in. I and others think that's a ridiculous concession to religious fundamentalism (or worse), but it doesn't really reverse Roe v. Wade, because women could still obtain abortions if they had the money.
Ann Friedman, as quoted in the article, suggests donating to an abortion rights group rather Obama. Abortion rights groups could use such donations to vindicate women's right to choose by providing money to women who need it to exercise their right. The country needs that already, come to think of it.
Once the president signs a bill including the Stupak language, it would no doubt be challenged legally and in reasonably short order could be ruled unconstitutional without overturning desirable parts of the reform law. Meanwhile, once the beneficial parts of the law kick in, public support might be such that jettisoning the Stupak Amendment would be politically popular. I.e., Obama might support it.
These circumstances suggest to me a baby/bathwater argument: why throw out mostly beneficial legislation just to thwart an attempt to temporarily circumvent the right to choose?
This is a logical outcome of ceaseless rightward drift.
Are you listening, enablers?
Christian theocracy marches on, just as I explained Sunday in my blog ("Loren Bliss: Outside Agitator's Notebook"). The Stupak Amendment -- with its de facto nullification of Roe v. Wade -- is the fanatics' newest triumph in their march toward the goal of transforming Moron Nation from a dysfunctional constitutional democracy to a Bible-based dictatorship.
When O when will the U.S. Left wake up?
Religion has consequences -- and Christian zealotry is a primary weapon of the ruling class in its ongoing and ever-more-successful effort to reduce us all to slavery on the New Plantation of Big Business. Which is precisely why the religious affiliations of elected and appointed officials are even more important than their party labels.
So far Obama and the Dems have made deals with the insurance companies, big pharma, Republicans, and rightwing fundamentalist Democrats. Who's left? Oh yes, HOW ABOUT THE PEOPLE!
Could someone please explain this? DeLauro, DeGette and Slaughter are complaining about the Stupak amendment, but they all voted FOR a health care bill that includes it.
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2009/roll887.xml
Nobody November 10th, 2009 10:22 am -- I just now in this thread suggested a theory that could explain, or at least justify, their vote.
A compromised health 'reform' bill that is being hijacked by a small group of idiots who insist that God (male) is on their side when it comes to ordering women around. I say, no to the reform bill, no to the anti reproductive rights amendment, no to the whole fucking thing! We decry the muslim fundamentalists with their crazy ideas---well, it's about time we did something with our own crazies, instead of letting them wag the dog. As for health reform, this administration has already let the health insurance and pharm companies ruin any chance for true health reform (single payer), so why should we care?
Message to the poor:
You WILL provide for the Fodderland.
We need to say reproductive rights not abortion rights. Thats what this is about, women's ability to own their own bodies and make the reproductive choices they need. The state has a very poor record of protecting life since it is usually engaged in war for "national interests" which now include oil rights on others lands. Women are not the property of men or the state or religion, though men and the state and religion keep trying to make it so. All fundamentalist religions, including Catholicism the one I was raised in, are oppressive to women. The Catholic bishops should spend more time ending child rape by their clergy members.
And women and supporters should organize to overturn the Hyde amendment which victimizes poor women since the rich can always fly somewhere to get a procedure.
The bill is lousy anyway propping up the insurance companies with a weak public option. We need single payer. Obama is another man who will let women's rights wither to get his win.
These congressmen don't want women to speak, don't want to pay for maternity costs. They forget how they got here.
Imagine if men bore the children, they'd be paid for it, it would be a valuable national service. And as for the bishops as the late, great Flo Kennedy said; "If men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."
Women need to once again have a broad and active women's movement or we will lose all our rights.
As an added irony, the anti-abortion amendment won't induce a single pro-lifer to vote for the health-care bill. So they basically screwed up the bill for no reason.
Obama uses the same technique of "preemptive capitulation," which serves to weaken the bills, alienate the base--and empower the opposition.
We can't blame Obama, but the democrats who kissed the feet of the republicans, and cowed under the dictator pope. Knowing if this first passed, and womens rights would be set back 36 years, would upset many as not to let it pass the senate, and the GOP would get what they wanted, no reform. Blame the dems who followed the pack, or were blackmailed to.
Nader had warned you Obamabots and Lesser Evilists. You paid no heed and made fun of him instead. Now choke on your blindness and stupidity.
All you feminist Obama supporters who excoriated me as a traitor when I pointed out that he had abandoned even single payer welcome to the reality of Obama.
Now that he's elected we're just "bloggers in pajamas" to him.
Ladies (& gentlemen) we've been conned.
YES WE CON!
It's been said before but, if men were the ones that got pregnant, abortion on demand would be the law of the land.
We would also have accepted "... abortion would be a sacrament".
· Yr Obd't Servant
So until abortion coverage was excluded, they supported mandatory care. Now they're crying foul but still no mentioning support for single payer. How wondafull !
When will our Senatorial Misogynists simply forbid healthcare for women?
Manning 120 is correct. The 'life begins at conception' phrase is utterly wrong on several counts. First, the use of the present tense is unjustified; life began a very long time ago, and nothing can begin more than once, and the general concept 'life' does not refer to an existential reality.
An individual life is another matter. Common sense says it begins at birth or viability. The most practical views uses birth as the moment; prior to that the fetus is part of the woman's body, and she has every right to control that, surely.
Sloppy 'thinking' does not solve problems of any kind.
Gorsegrower November 9th, 2009 8:00 pm -- The readers of this thread need to understand that you're referring to a comment I made in another thread, in which your comment also appeared, and not to the suggestion I've made in this thread for not throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
I don't think an infant's existence can be considered an existential reality. They exit the womb and their brain is flooded with sensory data which it is unable to immediately group together into concepts. They are probably not all that aware of their own limbs or the existential existence of things not in their view. I doubt they recognize themselves in a mirror. Depending on what exactly you mean by existential reality, your argument, if you truly believe it, may justify the murder of infants as well.
In the second paragraph it sounds like you advocate arbitrarily late term abortions. My common sense tells me that this is not much different that murdering(or rather terminating) the life of a newborn baby. If a woman is having second thoughts about being a mother weeks before she is due, does she have the right to hire an expert to terminate the 'fetus'?
I share your sentiment in your third paragraph.
Fetuses can be viable for early as the 24 week point. So restricting abortion at 24 weeks or after seems reasonable to me. This is the approach in most Canadian province's healthcare systems.
But more on-topic, this abortion issues is starting to smell like a big red herring to me. It is an awful health care bill, and should no be allowed to go any further even if it did have abortion coverage for it provisions.
Another slight against the Poor, the young and the uneducated. This demographic is most likely to seek an abortion, and the most likely to receive a government subsidy. Of course that will provide more fodder for the military, and the prison system; both very profitable if there are plenty of warm bodies. The time has come to stop placing the bottom line on the shoulders of the poor, who are becoming a much larger class in Amerika than ever before. If there isn't some kind of revolt by the "masses" in the next 20 years, I will be surprised.
I want to know if the "anti-choice" people are anti-VIAGRA.
Now, wait a minute! You're comparing cantaloupes and bananas here!
Or pomegranates. Mmmm... pomegranates.
· Yr Obd't Servant
To the NRA lovin' right, life in the womb is sacred...but once you pop out its open season.
Reps. DeGette and Slaughter should ask proponents of the amendment why they believe "life begins at conception." There's no rational explanation for the claim that fertilized human eggs are as deserving of protection as born human beings.
The "life begins at conception" idea is purely religious and as such should never be a governing principle in any law, including this one.
The toxic effect of the doctrine on those indoctrinated in it is seldom mentioned. It has the insidious effect of forcing believers to choose between violence to defend fetuses against "murder," and tolerating their "murder." There's no happiness in being forced into that choice; sometimes it results in actual murder of born humans like Dr. George Tiller. The purpose of religion lies in bringing consolation and peace to the soul. "Life begins at conception" does the opposite.
Expect more of the same as long as Obama continues to pander to people who would never vote for him in a million years, while ignoring the people who voted for him.