For the past 30 years, conservatives have tried to eliminate all funding for abortion

[ecstatic]

Poor women and women without insurance have been paying for abortions out of pocket for the past 30 years.

I do not believe that both issues (healthcare and abortion funding) can be tackled in the same round.

The first thing we need to do is get healthcare for everyone, then we need to figure out how to overturn Hyde, Stupak and other conservative amendments that seek to limit funding for abortion.

In the first years of legal abortion, federal Medicaid paid for about one-third of all abortions—294,000 in 1977.<3> However, since 1976 when Congress passed the Hyde Amendment prohibiting the use of Medicaid funds for abortion except in cases where the life of the pregnant woman is at stake, the federal government pays for virtually no abortions—267 in 1992.<4> Thirty three states have also banned the use of state funding for abortions. In those states less than one percent of abortions are paid for with state funds, in contrast to 27 percent of abortions paid for by states without such restrictions.<5>

...

When the conservatives swept into Congress in the 1994 “Gingrich Revolution,” the Republicans stepped up their attacks on abortion funding. They barred abortion coverage from federal employees’ health insurance, outlawed the use of military hospitals for abortion, banned federal prisons from funding abortion and eliminated 35 percent of aid to family planning programs, all in the name of protecting taxpayers and family.<6> This gain was offset by new restrictions added in 1997, which tightened the life exception and an added provision extending the restrictions to other health care benefits packages receiving federal funding.<7>

...

Six million women of childbearing age depend on Medicaid for their healthcare.<9> These are the most economically vulnerable women in our society – the poor, the young and, disproportionately, women of color. They bear the brunt of restrictive legislation such as the Hyde Amendment.

Further, all women who rely on the federal government for their health care are affected. This includes Native American women who use the Indian Health Service, women in the military and Peace Corps and women in federal prisons. For these women, Hyde has been devastating.Many women cannot obtain abortions at all—between 18 and 35 percent of Medicaid-eligible women who would have had abortions carry their pregnancies to term.<10> Even those who succeed ingetting an abortion often do so at great personal cost—borrowing money, postponing bills or using money needed for food and other basic necessities. Women without economic resources also have later abortions as they struggle to find the funding.<11> Young women also tend to have later abortions.<12> In these cases,women end up having to pay more for their abortions.

http://www.cath4choice.org/conscience/current/ConscienceMagazine-TheEconomicsofAbortionAccessintheUS.asp

[liberal N proud]

1. They claimed they wanted to end funding for abortion

They never really wanted anything to change. It was a perennial plank in their platform.

Isn't it ironic that this happens when the Democrats are in power, the republicans managed to sneak this in to a bill in a Democratic controlled Congress where only one republican voted for the bill.

The GOP will be able to turn around and blame the Democrats pulling millions of women from the Democratic ranks simply on the one issue of abortion.



Oh the irony.