Hyde in Plain Sight
The shit is hitting the fan.
President Biden submitted a budget in May that has been criticized for many things that are included in it. But the attention shifted this week to something that is not in it, as the House Appropriations subcommittee on health and labor passed the HHS budget without the Hyde Amendment for the first time since 1976. The Hyde Amendment, which forbids federal funds to be used for abortions, was first passed that year, and has been renewed every year.
(The ACLU article quoted below seems to be from the 1990’s and so does not take into account the recent spate of abortion restrictions in the states, more recent policy changes to Hyde, and the past decade of radicalization of the Republican party.)
The inequity caused by funding restrictions is almost as old as the constitutional right to abortion itself. Three years after Roe v. Wade was decided, Congress passed the first "Hyde Amendment" to the fiscal 1977 Medicaid appropriation. Introduced by anti-choice Congressman Henry J. Hyde, the Hyde Amendment barred the use of federal Medicaid funds for abortion except when the life of the woman would be endangered by carrying the pregnancy to term.
. . .
Federal restrictions on public funding for abortion affect women other than those who receive Medicaid. By the early 1980s, Congress had added restrictions similar to the Hyde Amendment to other federal programs on which an estimated 50 million people rely for their health care or insurance. In addition to low-income women on Medicaid, Native American women, federal employees and their dependents, Peace Corps volunteers, low-income residents of Washington, D.C., military personnel and their dependents, and federal prisoners have all been denied abortion coverage in their health care. Only in the legislation for fiscal 1994 and 1995 was there some easing of these restrictions. In the last two fiscal years, Congress has restored abortion funding for federal employees and federal prisoners and permitted the District of Columbia to use local revenues to fund abortions for poor women.
www.aclu.org/…
What We Are Going to Hear
The Hyde amendment has always had bipartisan support, including the support of Sen. and Vice President Joe Biden. It has been a way for polticians to be generally pro-choice, but to give something to their individual feelings, religious or otherwise, and to constituents with anti-abortion leanings who agree with them on many or most other issues. (Once upon a time there used to be Republicans who were pro-choice, too.) And some Republicans are already framing their arguments in these terms, as if they cared about bipartisanship:
On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, the top Republican on the House panel, warned that overturning the Hyde Amendment would "destroy decades of bipartisan work" on the committee and called it "out of step with the view of most Americans."
"Biden-Pelosi Democrats are scrapping decades of bipartisan consensus to force taxpayers to fund abortion, doubling down on extremism to appease an increasingly radical base," said Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement. "This bill is too extreme to pass the Senate and is a major political liability for pro-abortion Democrats."
abcnews.go.com/...
Republicans are also likely to bring out the shibboleth that racism is inherent in the pro-choice movement. This is an argument that goes back as far as Margaret Sanger and birth control, and exemplified in this famous exchange between Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, and Faye Wattleton, president of Planned Parenthood, on the Phil Donahue show in 1991:
"I got to say this, hold on," Terry said. "Faye Wattleton, I'm saying this to you, you have betrayed your race. When you think - absolutely, absolutely, that's right. Faye, listen to me, let me finish. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was an avowed racist. She wanted to eliminate the black community."
Wattleton fired back: "Mr. Terry, I think that it is outrageous that you have chosen to use my race to exploit your . . ." (The rest of her remarks were inaudible because the audience drowned her out.) "I do not need you to tell me what my choices are about my life and my body because I am a black person. I can make that choice for myself, just as every black woman can make that choice for herself."
www.orlandosentinel.com/…
Here’s the modern version, which didn’t take long to come out:
58.9% were nonwhite, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. So yes, the Hyde Amendment disproportionately blocks access to taxpayer-funded abortions to nonwhite people.
However, what actually seems to be racist here is repealing the Hyde Amendment — because eliminating it will disproportionately end black and brown lives.
There is already a disproportionate number of minorities killed via abortion in the U.S. each year. In all, 61% of abortions happen to nonwhite babies,
according to the Guttmacher Institute. Race shouldn’t necessarily matter here because abortion is wrong no matter what color the baby is. However, abortion in the U.S. disproportionately denies the right to life for nonwhites.
Do they also feel that way about police violence, I wonder?
However there are facts behind this argument, though the conclusions are disingenuous to say the least.
This post from the Guttmacher Institute is from 2008, so it does not include effects of the ACA or more recent statistics.
This much is true: In the United States, the abortion rate for black women is almost five times that for white women. Antiabortion activists, including some African-American pastors, have been waging a campaign around this fact, falsely asserting that the disparity is the result of aggressive marketing by abortion providers to minority communities.
. . .
This much is true: In the United States, the abortion rate for black women is almost five times that for white women. Antiabortion activists, including some African-American pastors, have been waging a campaign around this fact, falsely asserting that the disparity is the result of aggressive marketing by abortion providers to minority communities.
. . .
Perhaps it is because they are more acutely aware of the larger societal issues surrounding health disparities, members of the Black, Hispanic and Asian Pacific American caucuses in Congress, overwhelmingly, are strong and reliable advocates of reproductive heath and rights, including abortion rights. So, too, is an array of organizations representing women of color, including African American Women Evolving (AAWE), the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and Sistersong, among others.
www.guttmacher.org/…
Guttmacher focuses largely on access to appropriate, reliable, contraception. I would add other factors like sexual violence, income/economic disparities, and inaccurate to no sex education to the reasons for unintended pregnancies, and thus for abortions.
What’s Next?
Representative on both sides of the aisle are realistic about the budget bill passing without the Hyde amendment. But merely to have reached this point is important progress, and will bring the discussion of abortion around to a realistic look at the issue combined with the ever-present issues of economic inequality, racism, and sexism. That is, if we don’t let the fanatics distract us.
"These protections need to be reinstated for this bill to move forward," said Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), the subcommittee's top Republican. "Quite frankly, everyone in this room knows this bill will never pass the United States Senate without their inclusion."
thehill.com/…
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the chairwoman of the panel that handles health care spending in the Senate, acknowledged to ABC News the reality that the votes just aren't there for the spending bill to pass the chamber without the Hyde Amendment.
"Well I support it," she said of the amendment's exclusion. "But I have to have the votes and that's what we're looking at."
abcnews.go.com/...
But thank goodness we are talking about this openly now.
Other News
Attempts to normalize paedophilia goes online.
morningstaronline.co.uk/…
The eternal oppression of Trumpsters moves to the problem that educated women don’t want to date them.
wehuntedthemammoth.com/…
Fortune Magazine has two very interesting articles about state abortion bans. First, an interesting analysis of the Texas vigilante law.
fortune.com/…
And here is a look at the ways abortion bans can negatively affect corporations in those states when people won’t want to move where there are strong abortion bans?
fortune.com/...
The FBI received complaints about serial sexual abuser Larry Nassar, and never investigated them.
jezebel.com/…
A federal judge on Monday issued final approval for a $73 million settlement for a lawsuit that alleged around 6,000 women were sexually abused by a former gynecologist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), The Associated Press reports.
www.msn.com/...