Women’s Reproductive Rights Should Not Be the Price to Pay for Health Care Reform

Is passage of the House of Representatives health care reform bill a step forward or backward towards real health reform? On the one hand I am encouraged that something passed (albeit by a tiny margin), on the other I am dismayed about the right-wing compromises that were made to to buy passage. Not surprisingly, women’s rights are thrown away as cheap bargaining chips. Health insurance companies and religious conservatives are the winners, while all sorts of people are left out in the cold.

According to the editorial “The Ban on Abortion Coverage” (The New York Times 11/9/2009),

When the House narrowly passed the health care reform bill on Saturday night, it came with a steep price for women’s reproductive rights. Under pressure from anti-abortion Democrats and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, lawmakers added language that would prevent millions of Americans from buying insurance that covers abortions — even if they use their own money.

The restrictions would fall on women eligible to buy coverage on new health insurance exchanges. They are a sharp departure from current practice, an infringement of a woman’s right to get a legal medical procedure and an unjustified intrusion by Congress into decisions best made by patients and doctors.

The anti-abortion Democrats behind this coup insisted that they were simply adhering to the so-called Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of federal dollars to pay for almost all abortions in a number of government programs. In fact, they reached far beyond Hyde and made it largely impossible to use a policyholder’s own dollars to pay for abortion coverage. […]

And women’s rights are not the only thing that got lost along the road to passage. Here is a handy little list “Six Smart Progressive Complaints About House Health Bill” from John Nichols’ The Beat blog ( The Nation, 11/09/2009).

The Affordable Health Care for America Act was approved by the U.S. House Saturday night with overwhelming support from progressive Democrats who serve in the chamber and from a president who was nominated and elected with the enthusiastic support of progressive voters. But that does not mean that informed and engaged progressives are entirely enthusiastic about the measure. In fact, some are openly and explicitly opposed to it […]

Key interest groups […] argue that the bill is not the cure for what ails the U.S. health care system. Indeed, they suggest, the bill as it is currently constructed could make a bad situation worse. Many sincere progressives in the House, and outside of it, chose to back the bill as the best that could be gotten. Others supported it on the theory that flaws could be fixed in the Senate and in the reconciliation of the House and Senate bills. But those repairs will only be made if activists are conscious of what ails this bill.

For that reason, even supporters of the House legislation would be wise to consider the criticisms of it by groups that advocate for the rights of women, patient advocates, unions and some of the most progressive members of the House. Here are six smart progressive complaints about the House bill:

1. FROM THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR WOMEN: “This Bill Obliterates Women’s Fundamental Right to Choose” […]

2. FROM THE CALIFORNIA NURSES ASSOCIATION: This Bill Fails to Control Costs […]

3. FROM CONGRESSMAN ERIC MASSA: “This Bill Will Enshrine in Law the Monopolistic Powers of the Private Health Insurance Industry” […]

4. FROM PLANNED PARENTHOOD’S CECILE RICHARDS: This Bill Embraces Religious-Right Extremes […]

5. FROM CONGRESSMAN DENNIS KUCINICH,: This Bill Worries About the Health of Wall Street, Not America […]

6. FROM “SICKO’S” DONNA SMITH: The Bill Does Not Cure What Ails Us […]

And for those of you who favor the multimedia approach, check out GRITtv: American Sickos: Will The Current Bills Help?