Back in December 2021, I published a story titled “Conservatives want to ban abortion, while Build Back Better addresses the reasons people have them.” In September 2021, the House passed the Women’s Health Protection Act which would have enshrined the constitutional protections of Roe v. Wade for reproductive rights into federal law. But the Senate would have to approve a carve-out from the filibuster for it to pass, and as we’ve seen with voting rights legislation, that’s not likely to happen.
Passage would be possible if Democrats held their House majority and won more Senate seats in the 2022 midterms, which at the moment is an uphill battle. But there is a Plan B that could at least provide some immediate help for poor people, including many from communities of color, if as now seems likely the Supreme Court will soon overturn Roe v. Wade given the leaked decision draft by conservative Justice Samuel Alito.
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That plan would be to pass portions of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better legislation relating to reproductive health, and lowering the cost of raising children. These measures could help reduce unwanted pregnancies by expanding health care coverage for poor people, and reduce demand for abortions by expanding the social safety net for families.
As the Center for American Progress noted back in 2006: “Simply put there are two key ways to reduce abortion—by making it less necessary or by making it less available. In our view, only the former approach is humane, effective, and just.”
Democrats want to make abortions less necessary, Republicans want to ban abortions outright with no exceptions even for rape and incest. There are provisions in the Build Back Better act that could be packaged together to help reduce demand for abortions and expand pre-and-post natal coverage to more people.
The Affordable Care Act helped reduce the number of unintended and teenage pregnancies by making contraception available to more people, despite legal challenges from the religious right. But there were gaps in coverage because the Supreme Court allowed states to opt-out of expanding Medicaid coverage. BBB would close those gaps.
The Guttmacher Institute, a think tank advocating reproductive rights, said in a report that “one of the two most common reasons women choose abortion is because they cannot afford a(nother) child.” Back in 2006, the Center for American Progress said a positive way to reduce abortion is to ensure that a parent “has the means to have and raise a child in health and safety should she wish to do so.” The BBB includes numerous provisions to lower the cost of raising a child:
- Provides coverage to several million people, many of them people of color, in the 12 states, including Mississippi and Texas, that have locked them out of Medicaid.
- Lowers the risk to the lives of poor people by ensuring prenatal coverage under Medicaid if they’re forced to carry a pregnancy to term should Roe be overturned. The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries.
- Expands Medicaid coverage to new parents for a full year after giving birth, instead of just two months as in some states like Mississippi, allowing more time to address postpartum medical complications.
- Provides universal pre-K education for three- and four-year-olds. It would set caps to ensure that most families will pay no more than 7% of their income on child care for kids under age six.
- Extends the child tax credit which provides parents with $300 monthly per child under age six and $250 every month per child ages six to 17.
- Establishes a national paid leave program that gives workers four weeks of paid family and medical leave, which can be used for caregiving or personal illness.
- Reduces health care premiums under the Affordable Care Act by several hundred dollars a month, making it easier for some people who are currently uninsured to gain health insurance. It would permanently fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers 10 million low- and middle-income children.
As for paying for these programs, much of the funding could come by raising taxes on billionaires whose fortunes managed to soar in the pandemic economy as the stock market rose to record highs despite the economic distress felt by most Americans.
All of these provisions could be packaged together and passed in the Senate through the reconciliation process, which only requires 50 votes. If Sens. Joe Manchin and/or Kyrsten Sinema continue to balk despite the harm done by SCOTUS overturning Roe, perhaps pressure could be applied on Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to support the legislation. That especially applies to Collins, who naively believed Brett (Beer Boy) Kavanaugh's assurances that he believed in stare decisis and would respect precedent by not voting to overturn Roe.
We should not have to live in a country where people don’t have kids because, like a new car, they can’t afford them, but we also shouldn’t have to live somewhere where people can’t make decisions about what is best for their own body and their own life. Maybe this legislation still would not pass, but at least it would show that Democrats were fighting to counter efforts by SCOTUS’ conservative majority to overturn abortion rights and potentially other constitutional rights.