nandssmith posted the following in Turkana's diary below and asked someone to make it into a diary because they had already posted a diary today.
So I am just trying to be useful here.
PS: Go read Turkana's diary. It's better than this and he spent a lot more effort than I did.
This is just news.
NOW President Condems Compromised Health Care Bill;
Women’s Access to Abortion Care Traded Away
Statement of Terry O’Neill, NOW President
December 19, 2009
The so-called health care reform bill now before the Senate, with the addition of Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Manager’s Amendment, amounts to a health insurance bill for half the population and a sweeping anti-abortion law for the rest of us. And by the way, it’s the rest of us who voted the current leadership into both houses of Congress.
The National Organization for Women is outraged that Senate leadership would cave in to Sen. Ben Nelson, offering a compromise that amounts to a Stupak-like ban on insurance coverage for abortion care. Right-wing ideologues like Nelson and the Catholic Bishops may not understand this, but abortion is health care. And health care reform is not true reform if it denies women coverage for the full range of reproductive health services.
We call on all senators who consider themselves friends of women’s rights to reject the Manager’s Amendment, and if it remains, to defeat this cruelly over-compromised legislation.
Personally, as a former co-president of the Faulkner County, AR chapter of NOW, from back in the 90s, I can't say I disagree with this stance.