House Healthcare Bill Effectively Prohibits Abortion

I took a lot of flak yesterday from commenters for celebrating the passage of the House healthcare reform bill.  Like many feminists (and unlike many others), I celebrated some of the specific advances towards equalizing healthcare coverage for women and men.  And like most feminists, I am floored, sickened, and outraged that House Democrats have passed the most restrictive policy on abortion since it was legalized in 1973.

I'm trying to get how the Stupak-Pitts Amendment works correct here, so bear with me.  This bill creates insurance exchanges for "individuals and small employers to comparison shop among private and public insurers, including new health insurance co-ops."  Included here are federal subsidies "to help low- and middle-income individuals and families purchase insurance."  The Stupak Amendment prohibits any insurance companies that enroll these subsidized individuals and families from covering elective abortions.   It is anticipated that eventually the majority of all companies and individuals in the US will be covered through these exchanges. FDL leads us to the Amendment's inexorable conclusion:

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 using [subsidies] 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.

One possible "solution" would be to allow some insurers to continue to cover abortion, thus prohibiting subsidized - i.e., low-income Americans - from purchasing that policy, leading to a two-tiered insurance system in which lower-income groups, who have worse health that incur higher medical costs, are "ghettoized" into a different insurance pool.

Currently, 87% of insurers cover abortion. Abortion is a legal medical procedure. You may personally disagree with it, never plan to have one (as far as you know), wish your partner will never have one (as far as you know), but it is currently LEGAL.

What we can do: Shakesville's got the sum up on the fight within the Democratic Party on ensuring this Amendment is stripped from any final bill. At least 40 House Democrats have pledged to vote against a bill that contains this restriction. Sign our Petition now asking your representative to sign this pledge.

In particular, here are the 21 Democrats who voted FOR the Amendment and then AGAINST healthcare reform. They should probably be our first collective of elected officials to strip of their offices. You can also make a donation to the National Network of Abortion Funds.  Finally, sign our Petition to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which has prohibited federal funds for women on Medicaid for decades - what Obama off-handedly and dismissively described as our nation's "tradition" of denying government funds for abortion. As Frances Kissling, former President of Catholics for a Free Choice writes,

We must convince enough people that the only immorality is using poor women as a way of expressing one’s moral outrage. Either we all have the right to choose or none of us has it.

(Photo by Alexandra Lee)