The Senate Must Reject the Anti-Choice Amendment to the House Health Care Reform Bill

[kpete]

The Senate Must Reject the Anti-Choice Amendment to the House Health Care Reform Bill
by Jennifer Brunner

Tue Nov 10, 2009 at 05:51:57 AM PST

I am Ohio Secretary of State and a candidate for the United State Senate. I have been an outspoken proponent of health care reform with a strong public option. However, the last-minute Stupak-Pitts anti-choice amendment to the House health care reform bill, adopted late Saturday by a vote of 240-194, is an insult to women and an assault on the right to privacy. While passage of the health care reform bill is on balance a positive step, it is critically important that America not allow the anti-choice forces to achieve through Congressional legislation what the courts have repeatedly refused - the practical elimination of a woman's right to choose a legal medical procedure.

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The Stupak-Pitts amendment makes it virtually impossible for private insurance companies that participate in the new system to offer abortion coverage to women, even if they pay for such coverage with their own funds. The amendment disallows any coverage of abortion in the public option and disallows anyone receiving a federal subsidy from purchasing a health insurance plan that includes abortion. Under the amendment, private health insurance plans are forbidden from offering through the planned insurance exchange a plan that includes abortion coverage to both subsidized and unsubsidized individuals purchasing through the exchange.

The Stupak-Pitts amendment would leave women worse off than they are today in obtaining reproductive health services by denying them the right to use their own money to purchase an insurance plan with abortion coverage. This restriction is far more onerous than the Hyde Amendment, which has prohibited public funding of abortions since 1977. Presently, more than 85 percent of private-insurance plans cover abortion services.

By voting late Saturday to block women from essential reproductive health care services, the anti-choice obstructionists in Congress have abandoned women and would render a woman's constitutional right to choose ineffective at best. The final health care bill must not only guarantee each American woman’s right to the health care she needs when she needs it, it also must also provide access to reproductive health services for all, regardless of income level and regardless of whether or not they receive government subsidized care.

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more:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/10/802861/-The-Senate-Must-Reject-the-Anti-Choice-Amendment-to-the-House-Health-Care-Reform-Bill

[freddie mertz]

1. The president apparently agrees.

Let's hope he twists some arms this time.

[Le Taz Hot]

2. Ben Nelson

has already vowed to introduce the amendment into the Senate version.

link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/09/ben-nelson-wants-anti-abo_n_351340.html

[Cirque du So-What]

3. That's my SOS

but I'm willing to share her with all of you. I believe she would do great things for the entire country, and I certainly agree with her statement concerning the anti-choice amendment.