A reporter asked me today if I was surprised that the issue of abortion has become, yet again, the midnight issue in health care reform bills. Once again, at the final hour, women's rights and access have been traded away in the new Senate health care bill. Rights and access that we may not get back anytime soon, if ever.
It's hard not to be discouraged when health care access for millions of women is traded away for one vote -- but that's exactly what happened. Senator Ben Nelson put his colleagues in the Senate in an impossible position, forcing them to agree to an illogical provision in order to move the health care reform process forward.
The new Nelson abortion provision is definitely not the status quo, as it doesn't reflect current law. But not only that, it doesn't even make sense. The purported reason to add additional language to the Senate bill was to insure that federal funds aren't used to pay for abortions -- but the Nelson amendment does absolutely nothing about that. All the Nelson amendment does is impose new, additional obstacles for women to get coverage -- even for medically necessary abortions. This goes way beyond any legislation that currently exists, and no matter how you look at it, it's a huge step backward for women's health.
Under this new language, anyone -- men and women of all ages -- who participates in an insurance plan that includes abortion coverage is required to write two separate premium checks each month: one for abortion care and one for everything else. I'm just trying to picture my son writing out his health insurance payment, and then writing another check for his part of the "abortion coverage." Is this really happening?
This new "extra" payment for abortion coverage is akin to an abortion rider -- as if women would take these extra steps to pay for insurance, with a separate check, that included abortion coverage. Women don't plan an unplanned or problem pregnancy any more than they plan for a heart attack. But they expect that they have coverage nonetheless.
Requiring people to write two separate checks for their health coverage doesn't accomplish anything other than the real goal -- making the system unworkable -- which is exactly what health care reform opponents want. Like the Stupak abortion ban, the Nelson abortion provision creates such complicated administrative burdens for health plans that it's highly unlikely insurers will offer abortion coverage at all.
The inanity of the Nelson provision is dawning on folks everywhere -- it doesn't make good health care sense, and it won't work. In fact, I'm not even sure I can explain it to my husband. He's pro-choice, but I'm not sure he's going to get why he's supposed to write a check each month to pay for abortion coverage.
This process isn't over. There are two very different bills to be reconciled, and lots of new information coming out every day about exactly what this amendment would do to women's health care. So let's focus on what's important: This is a health care bill, and the purpose of this health care bill is to increase health care coverage, not take it away. We need a health care bill that treats women and women's health just like everyone else -- that's all we're asking for.
Follow Cecile Richards on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cecilerichards
"As anti-abortionist conservatives, you don't represent my constituents, nor do you respect current law. Abortion is a legal medical procedure, and will be treated as such in this health care bill. As elected officials committed to upholding and enforcing the law, I refuse to create restrictions which can be challenged as unconstitutional or illegal, or both. If you oppose the idea of abortion, then I suggest you work through legitimate channels, not backdoor channels, and open a debate on Roe v Wade. I then suggest you attempt to reverse the Roe vs Wade ruling, and pass a federal law making abortion illegal. Good luck with that. Now get out of my office."
J
J
That being what it is, political ideology and money are what are driving the current process of addressing the crisis. There are 17 women in the sitting US Senate, four of whom are Republicans. The four Republicans voted against the Senate bill, as they would against any Senate bill, for political reason. The thirteen Democratic Senators who are women voted for the bill for political reasons (and in some cases for monetary reasons as well). I strongly doubt that the abortion issue as framed by Nelson played much of a roll.
You ladies already have Roe, so leave the rest of us who are NOT responsible for your unplanned pregnancies alone.
i believe you have proven Ms. Richards' point. And emphatically at that.
Cause aside, a medical procedure is a medical procedure. Shall we return to the days of my pre-Roe-v-Wade youth when a pregnant teen's best friend was a wire coat hanger and college health clinics handed out pitocin syringes on a take-home and bleed to death basis? When men stop impregnating women against their will and take responsibility for the outcome, none of this will be necessary, will it?
Do you know what this is like? This is like Blacks being given the right to vote, but not letting them vote. Can you imagine NOT having the Voting Rights Act? It was the only thing that allowed African-Americans to actually use their right to vote.
All this crap is Jim Crow for women's rights. The abortion rider, along with dozens and dozens of other laws, is preventing free, fair and safe access to abortion the same way Jim Crow laws prevented voting.
While this should ideally be administered under medical supervision, the need of medical supervision would be obvious after the fact but not the same thing as giving an abortion. There are herbs, vitamins and chemicals that function as abortifacients and medically knowledgeable people can probably prepare them outside of the medical profession.
This may seem distasteful, but women not choosing to carry a baby to term have resorted to desperate expedients. There is a vast mythology over this field, but suicidal procedures have been practiced. It was because such abortions were a veritable plague among American women that the Supreme Court decided Roe as it did. Say, we got serious, and published best methods -- the internet must be worth something -- the whole issue of abortions must pass out of the possibility of legal restriction.
Frankly, in view of this, I don't feel the movement in support of choice is about abortions as such, but it is about dignifying the choice to have an abortion. This is not the same thing as picking a pointless fight, but it is close.
But I agree wholeheartedly with the rest of what you said.
American abortions were often herbal. One relevant herb having the popular names, "devil's spit" and "nectar of the gods." My book of wild foods lists it as poisonous and particularly to be avoided by pregnant women.
Before Roe, girls would do things like roll down a flight of stairs to induce a miscarriage. A man I knew had his mother in law stay with his wife while he worked just to protect their infant child. I do not doubt these are serious matters.
"Women don't plan an unplanned or problem pregnancy any more than they plan for a heart attack. But they expect that they have coverage nonetheless. "
Do on having your house consumed by a wildfire? What about a flood, or hurricane, or accidental death and dismemberment? Do you know that life and disability insurance have riders specifically called "accidental death and dismemberment"? I'd even be willing to bet that the author of this article has this rider. Is she planning on being decapitated? Of course not. But each of these things are separately administered and accounted for riders on life, property, and casualty insurance policies. They are not ever part of the core protection.
So...does the author prefer the Stupak language so that she can be prevented the horror of having to write two checks? Next thing you know, we'll be discussing why having Botox treatments covered is necessary because nobody plans on getting wrinkly.
Personally, I think paying a nominal amount to cover the termination of an unwanted pregnancy is far preferable than my taxes being used to support a whole child until he or she reaches adulthood, or bearing a desperate woman's (albeit, much-proxied and -diluted) blood on my hands. But perhaps that is just my financial frugality talking.
I find it difficult to believe that you have some to understand abused women when the attitude you put forth is "I pay for and learn from my mistakes I don't whine about them, that gets you nowhere fast. Anyone that doesn't do that deserves what they get."
"Birth control and the morning-after pills are different. One is used before conception, the other after conception may have occurred."
Yes, they are different pills with different purposes; my reference to the morning after pill had to do with pharmacists and doctors who refuse these pills to young women based on personal beliefs, to which I say, if you cannot do your job without your beliefs interfering, you should find a new line of work that is more consistent with your beliefs.
"Also, anyone who advocates limiting birth control is irresponsible, regardless of their stance on abortion."
It is incredibly irresponsible but religious groups across the country- the same ones fighting against a woman's right to an abortion- are advocating against birth control as well, creating a fail/fail situation.
"Birth control for minors, without parental knowledge, is another issue entirely, right?"
Though I would hope that my daughter will come to me when she is thinking about starting birth control, the children of those mentioned above will not feel that they have that choice. Therefore, no, I do not believe birth control for minors is a separate issue, though I hope one day, with the spread of education, that it can be.
Sadly enough, her opinion is not unique amongst the medical professionals I know; and having both parents as medical doctors, I know quite a few. Perhaps many of them need to be reminded of the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm, and that refusal to assist can be just as harmful, if not more so, than direct, active interference in a person's decision.
5:45 PM CST
Quote :
"...Women don't plan an unplanned or problem pregnancy any more than they plan for a heart attack..."
...Sorry Cecile, I take strong exception to your red herring article here and your equating (and trivializing) a "heart attack" to "unplanned pregnancy".
Part of a humane society's obligations in "health care" is to educate it's population to a level that there are fewer "unplanned pregnancies". A woman (not the "man") owes it to herself to determine whether she wants to procreate; if not, then it's time for one or the other partner to decide who's tubes gets cut/tied first. It's that simple.
In human dimensions, especially within the obsessive, commercially warped sexuality of our dysfunctional culture, I know you're gong to say I'm not being practical; or that my "social vision" neglects the shallowness of the American sexual template. I am aware of these realities, and to that I say America needs a huge dose of aversion therapy.
As to "problem pregnancies", yes of course this should be included coverage, and it is outrageous that anyone could think otherwise.
But the bottom line here is the congressional failure to radically reform health in not a gender issue.
...(continued)...
We should stay focused on the issue :
47, 000, 000 Americans continue to be denied what should be a basic human right to health care, as it is a right in all other civilized, industrial countries. Millions of other uncounted Americans are inadequately insured and even if insured, are still being denied for frivolous reasons borne out of pure greed, practiced by out of control parasitic insurance companies.
That is the issue. Divisive gender issues have no place in this discussion.
J.B.
12/22/09
your suggestion that we all get ourselves "cut/tied" to avoid pregnancy is offensive in the extreme. the fact that one does not want to have a child at 14, or when struggling to make ends meet without a job, or at any other time of our choosing, does not mean we should be relegated to such extremes.
the bottom line, in my view, is that EVERY CHILD SHOULD BE A WANTED CHILD. not forced to be born into a home situation where it can never thrive ~ and maybe worse.
while it is true that better information and education owuld prevent some unwanted pregnancies, it will not prevent all ~ there's a reason that NO method of birth contrl professes 100% effectiveness.
and what of women who learn well into their pregnancy that their health is at stake or the fetus is not viable? what is your solution to that?
never mind. based on your expressions above, i don't really want to know ~
Time for democracy is over. Time for action though is right now.
“A woman’s body belongs to herself alone. It is her body. It does not belong to the church. It does not belong to the United States of America or to any other Government on the face of the earth. The first step toward getting life, liberty and happiness for any woman is her decision whether or not she shall become a mother. Enforced motherhood is the most complete denial of a woman’s right to life and liberty.”
Margaret Sanger
"The Woman Rebel"
March 1914
quoted in
"Margaret Sanger, Her Life in Her Words"
by Miriam Reed, Ph.D.
Foreword by Margaret Sanger Lampe
2003 First printing
p. 46
Wikipedia has this:
"Sanger believed the responsibility for birth control should remain in the hands of able-minded individual parents rather than the state, and that self-determining motherhood was the only unshakable foundation for racial betterment."
After 30 years of legal abortion, are we seeing any improvement in our society?
Technology has improved our standard of living, but has Sanger's type of eugenics helped create racial betterment?
Or is it that there are not enough abortions being performed?
Maybe not enough people have been "enlightened" about the benefits of abortion.
Maybe as a society, we have not targeted the right adolescent girls or women and convinced them of the benefits of abortion to our society as a whole.
For me, the fact that the Wikipedia articles need to differentiate between Sanger's eugenics and that of the Nazis, is a strong sign that holding up abortion rights is a move in the wrong direction.
2. Sanger comments, atrocious as they may be, need to be taken in historical context. In 1914, her work and attitude was considered to be not only progressive, but extremely liberal. Pre-life groups often try to use her words against the pro-choice movement by insipidly removing them from context and ignoring what society was like when her writings were published.
are you suggesting ms sanger was a racist??? to the contrary, she supported rights for ALL women, but her special concern was for POOR women ~ regardless of their color. and in her day, in ny, the majority of poor women were poor immigrants ~ from europe ~ thus white.