I made a quick check today of the amendments proposed by Rockefeller with respect to the creation of a public option. Lo and behold, there was actually one medical procedure singled out as not being covered by the public option. Perhaps it is actually something that is actually illegal to perform in the United States, you would think. Well, you would think wrong: the one medical procedure that is prohibited to be performed using the public option is not human cloning; rather it is something that is guaranteed to be legal by the law of the land that procedure is abortion.
This diary is not formally about the right to obtain an abortion and I will not be discussing whether this is morally good or bad. I would ask that you respect what the diary is addressing.
For clarities sake, I will state that I am a woman, I support the right of obtaining an abortion, and that I believe it is a discussion between women and their health providers and no one else. Moreover, I do believe that women’s reproductive choices and their rights should not be abridged due to income, marital status, ethnic or racial origin or sexual preference.
This diary is raising the question as to why one specific procedure is being singled out in these amendments and asking is this the payment for a national public option and whether we are willing to make this payment? If not, then we need to stand up and fight before they use the desperation of Americans for health care to abrogate women’s reproductive rights.
From the Rockefeller Coverage Amendment #6 to America’s Healthy Future Act, Rockefeller Amendment #C6 to Title I, Subtitle C (Making Coverage Affordable) , p. 12. From http://finance.senate.gov/...
The CCHP shall not include abortion, except in cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother. It also prohibits the expenditure of Federal funding for abortion and it requires the segregation of funds to ensure that no Federal dollars pay for abortions. original emphasis
To be precise, it actually prohibits the performance of said medical procedure except in the case of rape, incest or the life of the mother. As far as I know, abortion is legal in the US and has not been limited to these three conditions. This leads me to question whether the abrogation of the right to abortion through the back-door is the payment for a public option. If this is the payment, may I say that this is a payment I am not willing to make?
There are several distinct things that need to be discussed here and I will try and separate these points:
- The provision of medical procedures must be based upon the decisions of doctors and patients. There are no other medical procedures that have been over-ruled ab initio in legislation on health care. Given the guarantee under the right of privacy to obtain an abortion, why does this right (both privacy and abortion for that matter) actually fall under legislative consideration for special treatment? Certainly rights have been curtailed due to a threat to the common good or national security, this cannot be argued to be the case here. When has access to abortion become limited to these three specific conditions, btw?
- The only formal limit to the provision of medical procedure basically derives from the law of the land. Hence, human cloning is formally illegal, that procedure cannot be conducted unless legalised. Until abortion is either declared illegal or limited to the three conditions specified in the bill, it can not be legal or legitimate for them to prescribe said treatment. Hence, we must ensure that this clause or paragraph is struck from the legislation. Will we now need letters from our doctors to obtain access to the procedure or will they rule it out completely (based upon some bizarre convoluted reasoning that has made it not possible under this specific health care package)?
- The attempt to legislate on abortion and reproductive rights in the context of the debate on health care reform and the creation of a public option is an attempt to further undermine access to abortion through the back-door using an exclusionary clause on the procedure.
The provision of a national public insurance option cannot be used as an excuse for a back-door attack on the right of abortion. Reproductive rights cannot be subsumed to the desperate need for health care reform in the US. How can a procedure that has a specific audience (women of child-bearing age who want to obtain an abortion) be prevented from being obtained without the legislation being declared discriminatory?
People may argue that there is a guaranteed right to obtain the procedure, but there is no guaranteed right to have others (i.e., the taxpayer) pay for it. What’s wrong with that statement?
The first objection, which I expect will not go over well, is the fact that access to safe and legal abortions should not be contingent on your income or wealth or it is not really a legal right for all women as only some people can afford to buy the right. A similar parallel would be granting all people the right to vote, but only allowing those who can afford to pay for voting papers (priced at a level beyond ordinary means) to actually exercise the right. The struggle for abortion was not only the struggle for wealthy women to get legal and safe abortions it was a struggle for all women to be able to make their own reproductive choices irrespective of income, ethnicity, race, culture and sexual preference.
Second, there are some states which do allow for Medicaid funded abortions, so the taxpayers are already paying for it in those states. Will they (the Senate) now deem Medicaid funded abortions illegal in these states under these new regulations?
Third, since this proposal by Rockefeller is meant to be self sustaining (in that after an initial start-up allowance, the public option will be sustained by subscribers, see pages 11 and 13 above), then in actuality the taxpayer is actually not paying for abortions; individuals or families that are subscribing to the national insurance are theoretically paying for this procedure, not the general taxpayer.
I have repeatedly on this site opposed the idea that the public option be self-sustaining, but have argued that it rather be funded through tax-payer money and I am not going to address this question here; but, if the bill as proposed is self-sustaining then the public insurance is not formally provided by tax-payers, but rather subscribers ... in this case, the exclusion is even more gratuitous.
Please, we must stop and think and be prepared to fight. Do not let them take away our reproductive rights in this manner. Lousy health care in the US has taken enough lives and destroyed too many, must the fight throw women’s reproductive rights onto the pyre?