Reproductive Wrongs

So the DBK didn't feel like printing my article, which sucks, but here it is- a couple of weeks old, but not something to be forgotten. The article wasn't printed in part because I said the amendment takes away "access" to abortion services and not "insurance coverage" of abortion services, but if you can't afford to pay for an abortion because your insurance no longer covers it (or god forbid you receive insurance through a public option or Medicaid), you sure as hell won't be able to access it. Touchy journalists, what can you do.

There is more hope now because Stupak-like language is apparently not in the Senate bill, but that doesn't mean the Stupak-Pitts amendment can't find its way into the final health care bill that comes out of Congress.

On November 7, reproductive rights and women’s health care in America took a saddening and devastating hit with the passing of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment to the House's health care reform bill, sponsored by Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI) and co-sponsored by Representative Joe Pitts (R-PA). This amendment ensures that women who receive health insurance coverage in the new health insurance exchange system would not have insurance coverage of abortion services if they receive any affordability tax credits, or government subsidies to fund their insurance plan. This legislation also effectively imposes a ban on abortion coverage within private insurance companies that enter the exchange, potentially taking away existing coverage from women who have plans already covering the procedure, as 85% of private insurance plans do. The House’s health care reform bill passed through as an almost entirely Democratic effort, with 39 Democrats and every Republican except 1 voting against it, demonstrating that most Democrats supported some effort to provide quality, comprehensive, and affordable health care to many Americans. In the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, however, 64 Democrats, 62 of which were men, sided with every Republican except 1 (who voted Present) to single out women's health care and reproductive health as different and less valid than other aspects of heath care.

In addition to devaluing women's health, this amendment is an overtly classist attempt to make abortion a luxury available only to wealthier women who are able to fund the procedure out of pocket and without insurance coverage. This is nothing new- access to reproductive health services has been varied depending on one’s socio-economic status for numerous years, due to the Hyde Amendment of 1976 that bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s life. But the Stupak-Pitts Amendment goes even farther; it not only bars coverage of abortion services for women receiving insurance coverage through the public option, but also for anyone who has even a portion of their health insurance plan funded through affordability tax credits. In an attempt to lure in the millions of formerly uinsured Americans that will be able to afford private health insurance through affordability tax credits, private insurers will be disuaded from offering coverage of abortion.

Although abortion is a contested issue and something many individuals oppose on moral and religious grounds, it remains a legal procedure and the most common minor surgical procedure in the U.S. As Lois Capps (D-CA) pointed out, the Stupak-Pitts Amendment is the only language in the House's health care reform bill that imposes restrictions on coverage of a procedure and rations care. So what is the Republican and “Conservadem” solution for women who want coverage of reproductive health? An “abortion rider,” which equates to asking women to invest in the likelihood of having an unintended and unwanted pregnancy. Anti-choice members of Congress know that few women will buy this coverage, and that it would be too expensive for many low and middle-to-low income women, and thus abortion riders will become less and less available within the health insurance exchange.

While abortion remains legal, we are now one step closer to women’s reproductive rights and health care being restored to its pre Roe v. Wade days, where exercising agency over one’s body and reproduction meant risking social stigma, disease, infection, and death. By passing the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, we as a country do shame to the nearly 70,000 women that die every year from illegal, botched abortions because they are not fortunate enough to live in a county that values them as human beings.