Democrats in Congress have just proudly signed a deal with the Catholic bishops which allows a bunch of old men who have spent the better part of the last century avoiding their own sexual issues to dictate access to abortion services in the House health care bill.
No tax dollars were going to go to pay for abortions, mind you, but now insurance companies that participate in the exchange can't even cover them, thanks to Democrat Bart Stupak. FDL's Jon Walker explains how it works:
If the insurance companies offering plans on the exchange are not allowed to turn down any customers, it means no basic insurance plan on the exchange could cover abortion. There would be no way to prevent that at least one of the plan’s customer would be be using affordability tax credits to help purchase the plan. So the effect is no plan sold on the exchange could offer abortion coverage as part of its basic package.
But this isn't news. On July 1, Stupak wrote a letter signed by 19 Democrats saying they would do just what they're doing right now -- holding the bill hostage. And what did NARAL and Planned Parenthood do? Well, they released a lot of statements echoing the President's contention that the bill contained no abortion funding. But that was never Stupak's objection.
The floor of the House is now filled with ostensibly pro-choice Democrats like Rosa DeLauro and Anna Eshoo who don't seem to have noticed there's a problem here (Eshoo was probably too busy selling breast cancer survivors out to PhRMA). Honorary veal pen President Jan Schakowsky says, and I kid you not, "this is a great day for women."
Really? Here's Ezra Klein in the Washington Post:
If this amendment passes, it will mean that virtually all women with insurance through the exchange who find themselves in the unwanted and unexpected position of needing to terminate a pregnancy will not have coverage for the procedure.
Yet these women use their gender to give glowing testament to just how great this bill is for women across America. And they'll pay no price.
Why? Because helping the Democrats stay in power by giving them the Official Good Gyno Seal of Approval is what NARAL and Planned Parenthood do -- even when those Democrats do things like voting for Samuel Alito and tell rape victims to take a cab to another hospital if they want to get Plan B contraception.
Could they whip the pro-choice women to block the rule if they want to? Of course they could. Yank their endorsements and they could cause havoc within the Democratic Party. But they won’t, because Nancy Keenan and Cecile Richards value their own personal position in the veal pen pecking order WAY too much to take that risk. For them, what's good for the Democratic Party is good for choice, even when the party abandons them.
One of the things that made a fight for a public option possible was because there were no “veal pen” validators occupying the health care space. Nobody knows who HCAN is. The White House tried to press the unions and other veal pen groups into service weakening the health care bill to get Republican support, but progressives standing there ready to shoot on sight made othersback away for fear of losing their own progressive credibility.
People think the “veal pen” phenomenon is insignificant, but it’s not. The abortion fight — like the environmental fight — is extremely difficult to wage online, because you can’t activate those who care about the issue if the “brand names,” the issue validators, are telling them everything is fine either by action or inaction. And that’s exactly what the Democrats — from the White House on down to Nancy Pelosi and the House leadership — want right now.
But let’s be clear about this. The only reason that we are in the position where the price of passing health care reform is allowing even liberal Marcy Kaptur to sneeringly dismiss choice activists as narrow class warriors who don’t care about working women is because Planned Parenthood and NARAL have allowed it to happen. They collect millions of dollars in revenue each year. They’ve exacted no price from the Marcy Kapturs of the world, who actually have to care what liberals think of them, and focused instead on anti-choice Republicans who are only empowered by their ire. They have no scalps. There is no price for crossing Planned Parenthood and NARAL. It isn’t a fight that the Democrats want to spend “political capital” on, and these groups insure that they don’t have to.
Forget about the fact that more Americans are now anti-choice than pro-choice for the first time since Gallup has been polling the issue. More and more Democrats in Congress each year are anti-choice. It’s acceptable now. These groups have the lobbyists, the money, the access, and their leadership uses it for their own personal advancement while the cause they purport to defend withers on the vine.
The national Planned Parenthood organization listed $126 million in assets in 2007. Cecile Richards made $385,163 (PDF). The state chapters whose employees put their lives on the line so women can have the right to choose deserve support and protection within the Democratic party that she is not providing.
NARAL paid Nancy Keenan $145,538 from the Foundation (PDF) in 2007, which listed total assets of $4,119,329.
If they really cared about going after Stupak or Kaptur as a lesson to the rest, they most certainly have the resources to do it. Stupak's donors include a lot of PACS that have a heavy investment in consumer branding that appeals to women, companies like Amazon and Ford and Herbalife and Siemens, Sprint and T-Mobile and UPS and Verizon who don't want to be known for financing Stupak's anti-abortion activism.
One can only imagine what would happen if pro-choice supporters started calling them. In short, Stupak and his fellow anti-abortion demagogues within the Democratic Party only get away with this because NARAL and Planned Parenthood let them.
Follow Jane Hamsher on Twitter: www.twitter.com/janehamsher
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thank you jan for giving it to the old in age/ heart or both. I am in my sixty but I am really feed up of the grip of a world rolled by AARP members and their proteges .
1. Nobody is naturally a good parent and the abused, neglected and murdered children in our nation are proof of this. Being a parent is a lifetime responsibility as well as learned behavior. Having sex is no way to determine parenthood.
2. No one in our country is forced to get an abortion but you seem to think parenthood should forced on anyone with biology to be one. The only out you'll consider is rape and incest? That's generous. There's also the fact that some people -despite having the biological ability to have children- simply are not cut out to be parents and no shame should go with that realization.
3. The orphanage option is a sad joke. The social and biological bonding between a woman and her child, temporary as it might be, makes giving the child up for adoption problematic at best. And if given up for adoption being brown skinned, underweight, overweight, not cute enough, etc, means those children can look forward to life in an orphanage.
So, until kids have love and a minimally good quality of life (just one loving and responsible parent for a start) abortion is a fact of life and limiting or denying women access is a control issue and not a moral one.
Prejudging the possible future quality of life a person might have is understandable, but then to use that information to determine their right to life is to say that not all human life is of value.
Now this same class of religious hypocrites want to ban abortions and make it the central point of their pro-life campaign. Pro-choice is all about choices, but those choices need to be based on knowledge and education, which these clowns have also managed to block. It used to be that teenage pregnancies were dropping because they learned about birth control and the results of unprotected sex (and not just pregnancy), but from the last figures I saw, teenage pregnancy is now once again on the rise. It is time to be reasonable, accept that education and prevention are necessary, and that is only done when those who are pro-life stop focusing on abortion, and start acting responsibly about women's rights, not male egos or religious doctrine.
I'd venture to put good money on this statement. If men carried the fetus, we would not be having any sort of discussion on birth control or choice. So I make this suggestion to eliminate the need for any abortions. All males undergo vasectomies, reversable of course, until such time when they are mature enough to parent and support any and all their prodigy. And then, it must be with an educated and willing partner.
I'm an old man, but I've been fortunate to have done a bit of world travelling,and I have seen the abortion issue from the standpoint of other nations' and cultures' views. And I find myself in lock-step with your position. It wouldn't be a bad idea to develop a reversible, minimally invasive vasectomy for teenage males, and let them as you suggest, decide when they reach that maturity needed for starting a family.
I know, for example, two situations where the guys have fathered five children each, and are not supporting any of them. We the taxpayers are. So one can see a real need for your suggestion.
This stance to the political world of today would be a particular calling. And it would require the clearest vision imaginable. I wish we had bloggers and opinion makers that took us there - up on a higher road. That kind of visionary voice would keep "us" and our lawmakers in power much longer, I believe.
There is a Buddhist saying – “It is equally wrong to take offence as it is to give offence.”
We are very pleased that the House leadership has agreed to allow the essential Stupak-Pit
THIS IS MORALLY WRONG AND HAS TO BE STOPPED !!!!!! Phone, vote and $$ a ttack their supporters
2. We can concede to the pro-lifers IF each one of them agrees to adopt 10 unwanted babies -- of all colors.
I think anyone who needs to have an abortion because they chose to have sex, but didn't want to go along with the consequences (except in cases of rape and incest), could still have an abortion covered by insurance, but the two involved in the pregnancy should also be fined if it was found that they were not using protection. After all, it takes a man and a woman for a pregnancy to occur. If they cannot afford the fine, then it can be treated like any other unpaid fine in the court system.
With this bill, however, there needs to be more aggressive attempts at collecting child support. If the father cannot afford child support, then there needs to be more aggressive means of making sure he's doing everything he can to make money. That way, we don't have any more of these deadbeats shoplifting, drinking alcohol, and smoking weed, while the children they helped bring into the world go hungry.
This is, in fact, untrue.
I am Pro-choice b/c I am pro-life. I know that if abortion becomes illegal - more women will die. if you think abortion is a death. then with abortion illegal, there will be 2 deaths.
my ob/gyn professor told me: nothing will come between a woman and a wanted or unwanted pregnancy - meaning. if a woman wants to get pregnant, she will find a way. and if she wants to terminate, she will find a way. If you make it illegal, then women will die.
Having said that, I did not call my Congressman to insist that abortions be covered by insurance in the new health insurance proposals. That had no chance of passing the House. I am not happy about the situation and hope that some time in the future it can be corrected. For now, I thought it more important to get health insurance reform. It was a necessary compromise.
Those of us who are pro-choice need to financially help those in need of an abortion. We also need to do a better PR job in helping people understand why abortion needs to be available. We seem to be on the losing side of the discussion with too many Americans.