The Senate Must Reject the Anti-Choice Amendment to the House Health Care Reform Bill
by Jennifer on 11.10.2009
Cross-posted on DailyKos
I am Ohio Secretary of State and a candidate for the United State Senate. I have been an outspoken proponent of health care reform with a strong public option. However, the last-minute Stupak-Pitts anti-choice amendment to the House health care reform bill, adopted late Saturday by a vote of 240-194, is an insult to women and an assault on the right to privacy. While passage of the health care reform bill is on balance a positive step, it is critically important that America not allow the anti-choice forces to achieve through Congressional legislation what the courts have repeatedly refused - the practical elimination of a woman's right to choose a legal medical procedure.
The right to choose is not negotiable. I strongly urge the Senate to protect a woman's right to choose by rejecting this unacceptable change to health care reform.
The Stupak-Pitts amendment makes it virtually impossible for private insurance companies that participate in the new system to offer abortion coverage to women, even if they pay for such coverage with their own funds. The amendment disallows any coverage of abortion in the public option and disallows anyone receiving a federal subsidy from purchasing a health insurance plan that includes abortion. Under the amendment, private health insurance plans are forbidden from offering through the planned insurance exchange a plan that includes abortion coverage to both subsidized and unsubsidized individuals purchasing through the exchange.
The Stupak-Pitts amendment would leave women worse off than they are today in obtaining reproductive health services by denying them the right to use their own money to purchase an insurance plan with abortion coverage. This restriction is far more onerous than the Hyde Amendment, which has prohibited public funding of abortions since 1977. Presently, more than 85 percent of private-insurance plans cover abortion services.
By voting late Saturday to block women from essential reproductive health care services, the anti-choice obstructionists in Congress have abandoned women and would render a woman's constitutional right to choose ineffective at best. The final health care bill must not only guarantee each American woman’s right to the health care she needs when she needs it, it also must also provide access to reproductive health services for all, regardless of income level and regardless of whether or not they receive government subsidized care.
Universal health care is based on the principle that health care should be equally accessible to all citizens. Universal health care does not allow income to determine who gets care and services, and who does not. The Stupak-Pitts amendment violates this basic tenet. The health care reform legislation is intended to cover 96% of Americans, yet, coverage for essential services now enjoyed by women would be cut off by this amendment as passed by the House. Millions of women would lose private coverage for abortion services and millions more would be prohibited from buying it even with their own money.
Make no mistake, the beneficial impact of the overall bill for my state is undeniable. The House bill provides employer-based coverage for more Ohio families, provides coverage to hundreds of thousands of Ohioans who are currently without any coverage, eliminates pre-existing conditions and caps imposed on families by insurance companies, reduces the cost of uncompensated care for thousands of Ohio doctors and hospitals, closes the prescription donut hole for tens of thousands of Ohio seniors, and, most importantly, reduces premiums for millions of hard working Ohioans. It is otherwise a good bill, but its passage hinged on denying women services for health care that only women may choose.
This is unconscionable. The Senate must remedy the untenable and inequitable sacrifice that this bill would require of women and children in the United States.