Many bloggers have explained what the Stupak-Pitts amendment to the House health reform bill could mean for abortion rights in this country. Women in Congress are assuring us that this amendment will not survive the Senate bill, and we trust that they are correct. But as a mother and grandmother of a daughter, daughter in law and a granddaughter, this means more to me than just statistics. This takes me back to the days when abortion was not legal and the shame of an abortion was very much like wearing a big red letter A on your forehead.
It is bad enough that poor women in this country cannot get federal funding for the choices they must make when they become pregnant and cannot sustain the pregnancy. The cost of an abortion can range from $300 to $900 in the first trimester and up to $18.000 in the second trimester. Even middle class women would find this overwhelming. It's not just the cost of abortions that is at issue, however.
The stupid Stupak amendment would do more than reinforce the current prohibitions under the Hyde Amendment -- it could make the Hyde Amendment permanent without any opportunity to ever offer abortion coverage to poor women in this country. But it would do more than just embed abortion prohibitions more strongly in future law -- it would extend its tentacles into the lives of women who do not rely on public funding now or in the future.
Jessica Arons explains the details of this amendment well in her Huffington Post piece today. But what has not been made very clear is how such an amendment would actually work in a newly reformed health system.
There is a lot of dispute about how the Stupak prohibitions would be implemented within the Exchange. Health plans -- private OR public -- that receive federal subsidy money (and the money does go to the plan not the individual) would not be able to offer abortion coverage. How that would be sorted out is where the big A comes in -- The most likely and practical outcome would be for all plans to simply drop abortion coverage, which would force women to buy some sort of "abortion rider" to get the coverage they expect or even used to have. That is highly impractical as well. Who plans on having an abortion when they sign up for insurance coverage? And what is the stigma attached to someone who does decide they want the coverage? Are you in Plan A (for abortion) or not? (See this article in Kaiser Health News for some good Q and A on how this might actually work in practice.)
For purely economic reasons, the cost to the health plan of an abortion rider would be close to zero, since the cost of most abortions is much cheaper than a pregnancy. However, the administrative costs of offering riders is not zero. That is one of the reasons why most insurance plans in America currently offer abortion coverage, even if they don't advertise it. It just makes economic sense to include both contraceptive coverage and abortion coverage for women of childbearing age. In those states that do offer abortion riders, insurance companies do not seem to want to offer them, so they are a phantom alternative.
But this segregation of women -- into those seeking abortion coverage and those who do not -- is akin to nothing else I can think of. Do we have any other legal medical condition that would require that? Would men who might get prostate cancer have to buy a prostate cancer rider or be told their legal condition is not accessible to them?I realize pregnancy is a unique condition, but abortion is still legal, so making it even more difficult to get seems punitive, at best. And it will be very hard to administer this amendment.
It's pretty clear that the Catholic bishops and those C street guys who wrote and sponsored this amendment didn't really talk to the insurance industry, because I'm quite sure they would have been told how difficult this would be to implement.
It will not be simple to figure out how to separate out federal money in an Exchange. But if we don't want to take that step backward of wearing the new scarlet letter, we had better get busy. We need to make our voices heard to those in the Senate who are going to have to figure this out.
Here's one very postive way we can make our voices heard. Support the Congress members who voted no on Stupak. Check out this website: http://www.actblue.com/page/wevegotyourback
Mike Lux: Getting Higher on the Page
The cool thing about elections is that you can pick a side, and then you have one goal that is simple and clear-cut. Legislative fights, especially on the complicated, messy issues like health care, are not like that at all.
Obviously everthing is not going to be covered by the Healthcare Reform. Drop abortion coverage and get the Bill passed.
Women will still be able to get aborions they'll just have to pay for it. No one guarenteed a free ride for all outpatient elective procedures.
But here's my point...read the article! The Stupak Amnd. goes further than the status quo. It actually takes away rights and access to abortion care as it exists today. This repugnant amnd. would/could restrict ANY insurance policy in the exchange from offering abortion services and care. Currently, a majority of policies offer this coverage.
Pro-choicers are not fooled by this power-grab and attempt to backdoor Roe...it's long been a tactic of the anti-choicers that if they can't force a reversal of Roe through legit means (ie, the courts) they will try to restrict abortion so severely that it practically nullifies the right altogether.
I didn't understand what all the concern was over the stupak amendment until your post.
Fanned
Also I quote you - "Who plans on having an abortion when they sign up for insurance coverage?"
By it's very definition, insurance is for the unplanned event. Who plans to break a leg? Who plans to have brain tumor? Insurance is for the unexpected.
Bunch of hypocrites.
In pregnancy a female assumes 100% of the physical risk (up to death) and must thus control 100% of the decision. Just as a woman has no legal right to decide men's medical care (even if she has had sex with the male) women enjoy the same control and will fight to keep it.
As for the two sides ever meeting...I agree. So, it would seem that the best course all of us could take then would be to do all we could to reduce the need for abortions..through education, availability of contraceptives and in keeping women's health care needs a priority.
I think as a man you have a right to voice your opinion and I understand how difficult it must be when a father doesn't want the mother to abort. However, ultimately it is the woman's body and I don't think any man has the right to tell here what she can do with it.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/118399/more-americans-pro-life-than-pro-choice-first-time.aspx
Maybe it would prefer not manifesting in physicality in this spacetime . . .
There are women who are impregnated by rape, there are women who use protection and still become pregnant, and is it too much to ask that MEN bear some of what they refer to as personal responsiblity?
Abortion is legal in this country, a right guaranteed by the Constitution and having an Amendment which FORBIDS insurance companies from paying for it, or the public option from paying for it, should be UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
Under what circumstances would that come up in conversation?
Bob: Hey Sally, did you get the abortion rider on the company health insurance?
Sally: That's none of your business, Bob. Now get out of my office or I'll report you to HR for creating a hostile work environment.
I don't really see that conversation happening...
Maybe they are supposed to be discreet, but some of the HR people I've known are the worst gossips.
Why do people hate women and girls so much? Why? What have we done to deserve this?
As if we aren't ALL born from a woman......