This is going to be a short -- but not too sweet -- message to the President.
Mr. President, in your speech to a joint session of Congress, you managed once again to gratuitously use women's rights to placate the right, assuring the nation that no public funds will be used to cover abortion in the new health care overhaul.
Dammit President Obama -- we support you. Women put you in office, and stuck with you when the crazies were beating you up with "death panels" and "socialized medicine."
We still support you, but like millions of women who were watching, we wonder why you have to always use our most intimate health issues as a bargaining chip to give away, when you're not going to get anything back. You did it at Notre Dame, and now you've done it again.
In defending your health care plan you stood up for the public option, and we applaud you for that. You stood up for Medicaid -- the health care of last resort for millions of poor women and their children. We applaud you for that. You stood up for Medicare -- the safety net for many more older women than men, because we live longer and have fewer private policies following us from our careers. We applaud that too.
But what about our daughters and granddaughters? What about those poor women who face life-threatening situations when they must continue a dangerous pregnancy? You let us down once again by not calling for repeal of the restrictions on our reproductive health care that are already in place in Medicaid coverage.
And worse, you opened the door for private policies to cancel abortion coverage if their clients are using any government subsidy money to pay the premiums.
To put reproductive health care on par with "death panels" and scare tactics about illegal immigrants being covered is an insult to women. We are now the majority of American citizens, the majority of voters, and the majority that continues to support you. Stand up for us.
As the debate heats up in the coming days, we must paraphrase the question from our foremothers -- Mr. President, how long must women wait for equality?
Bill Cunningham: He Roped the Dopes
Tonight, we saw a leader, unafraid to stand and deliver...not a political document, but a platform that all who care about real reform, can support and amend and work for.
Tom Morris: Twisdom: Twitter Wisdom
Wisdom crops up in a surprising way on Twitter. I call the phenomenon, "Twisdom."
James S. Gordon: Obama: Addressing the Healing Crisis
If every older person were guaranteed a physician with time to talk about life and ways to live it more fully, as well as to discuss the best ways to deal with the inevitability of death, debates about "death panels" would wither.
For me, this isn’t an issue of expecting Obama to take on abortion funding all rolled up into federal health care. That’s politically untenable and I wouldn’t mind if he had just not fought for it. But, I do resent his “throwing us under the bus”, by entirely conceding the issue…
…As if abortion was not a fundamental feature of women’s HEALTH CARE and as if federal funding for abortion wasn’t necessary to make the legal right to an abortion more than just a BS-on-paper-only right for many women. You can’t dodge this by saying that a funding issue is not a rights issue- is that were the case, poll taxes would be legit… Rights can’t only exist on paper and be rights.
BTW--- Many posters here have asserted that medically necessary abortion (and in many states, abortion due to rape/incest) is covered by Medicaid. On paper, that may be true. The notion that the exceptions in Hyde are reality is simply FALSE in many cases. In reality, you can’t get Medicaid money to pay for any abortion in many states (like Texas), even if it is medically necessary or if you are a victim of rape/incest. Ockraz can copy the TEXT all he or she wants--- that doesn’t change the REALITY that this is not the case. Ask any social worker…
REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE NOW!!!
In the meantime…
Texas Equal Access Fund
http://www.teafund.org/
SisterSong
http://www.sistersong.net/reproductive_justice.html
If it's ok to spend our tax dollars to kill people in wars, why is it not ok to spend a fraction of our tax bill on a legal medical procedure?
Also, why is it ok that men have a disproportinate say in a matter that affects only women?
You and Mr Wonderful did that to yourselves not society.
You break it, you bought it certainly applies.
And Obama doesn't want to change that.
We are still second class citizens in our own country. Politicians use our reproductive power as a political football to be kicked back and forth at election time.
Sure, they will pay to have our soldiers kill millions of poor people, but God forbid a poor woman get a federally funded abortion to save her life.
As a young woman in my 20's, they were happy to save money on my lack of heart attacks or cancer, (or the reckless accidents that affect young men far more often) but could legally deny coverage for the only thing I needed. Yet, they charged me the same as my husband. Pro-life advocates and women's groups have both been pretty silent about this. If you plan to have children, or plan to avoid having them while in a relationship, I guess you're out of luck.
So men's hard ons hold more value than a woman's reproductive health and life basically.
It's truly sad that many will just accept anything passed for a political victory rather than what is simply right for our nation.
I actually laughed when Ms. magazine had Obama on the cover saying "This is what a feminist looks like." There is very little that we know of in his backround and history that indicates how he has stood up for women.
Getting health care for all women, no matter what their life circumstances -- including prenatal care for women who choose to have children -- will be a huge step forward, and should not be sacrificed for improvements in abortion rights alone, as it surely would be if Obama pressed that point now.
If we didn't expect anything but a perfect bill then nothing major would ever get passed.
True reform is needed now. Not a watered down bill. The dems control all branches of the government. The time is NOW!
It may not be what many Obama voters had in mind when he began talking about it, but perhaps "common ground on abortion" can mean no funding for abortion so that the larger goal of health care reform can be achieved. I'm actually one of the people we keep hearing about who has no health insurance, so I'm especially eager to put aside the issue of abortion on this and be able to support a health care initiative which I not only believe in, but which would very much serve my best interests.
If we could somehow get across to men what it's like to be pregnant for 9 months, and then to deliver, nurse, and raise a child, and then to be forced against your will into all that when you didn't choose it at all. And then to feel guilty, because of course you love the child once it's born. Maybe it' all just a case of lack of empathy.
What would a good analogy be, one that men could understand?