When Congress sells out women

[sufrommich]

The Democrats' lust to win at any cost stripped abortion from the healthcare bill. Can pro-choicers put it back?

It was just a week ago that I sat in Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s office, along with others in the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, to strategize about getting pro-choice people of faith out to make sure that health insurance reform would include private and public options for women who choose abortion. It was a painful discussion. DeLauro, a pro-choice Catholic, is deeply committed to abortion choice as a matter of social justice, but she understood how important even a flawed reform bill would be to providing healthcare for low-income working people.

At one point I looked at DeLauro and both of us welled up with tears over the dilemma we knew she and others would face. About 20 antiabortion Democrats, mostly Catholics, with the full lobbying power of the Catholic bishops behind them, were very likely to force the inclusion of Rep. Bart Stupak's antiabortion amendment to the Affordable Health Care for America Act, the inaptly named House bill. I did not envy the choice DeLauro and others would have to make. I knew the likeliest, and probably the right choice, would be to vote for passage of the bill.

That is just what happened when Democrats voted Saturday night for the act, which passed with the broadest restrictions on funding for abortion since the Hyde Amendment was enacted in 1976. The Stupak amendment forces insurance companies that currently provide abortion coverage to choose between continuing that coverage, or dropping it for all women if they want to participate in health insurance exchanges, and sell their product to government-subsidized consumers. If Democrats don’t get over their lust for a majority at any cost, this health insurance reform will haunt them the rest of their lives.


* Continue Reading

Because of the limits placed on the exchanges, most of the participants will have some form of premium credit or affordable subsidy. That means most will be ineligible for abortion coverage. The idea that people are going to go out and purchase separate "abortion plans" is both cruel and laughable. If this amendment passes, it will mean that virtually all women with insurance through the exchange who find themselves in the unwanted and unexpected position of needing to terminate a pregnancy will not have coverage for the procedure. Abortion coverage will not be outlawed in this country. It will simply be tiered, reserved for those rich enough to afford insurance themselves or lucky enough to receive it from their employers.


http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/11/09/stupak/index.html

[MNDemNY]

1. But, but, but..we need to pass SOMETHING!!

We need the Rose Garden signing ceremony! We need a "win"!! That stuff(womens rights) are not THAT important!! Why are you being a "hater"?

[sufrommich]

2. The democrats need to remember who they represent.

The saddest part of this whole debacle is that abortion will now be a choice only for women wealthy enough to pay cash or have private health care coverage. Just sad.

[MNDemNY]

4. Unacceptable. Those who claim to be Democrats, but will accept this language are faux Democrats.

They should be run from the party, and banished from this, DEMOCRATIC underground site.

[BonnieJW]

3. Obama said he would not sign a bill

that restricts women's health care rights.

[MNDemNY]

5. Not quite.

He said "no bill should change the status quo".

[sufrommich]

6. When did he say that? Good news if true. nt

[MNDemNY]

7. He did not.

:-(

[chimpymustgo]

8. K & R. Here's something interesting:

I may post this separately.

*************

Why the Stupak Amendment to the Healthcare Reform Bill Is Unconstitutional
By MARCI A. HAMILTON
Thursday, November 12, 2009

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops registered a major victory this week, when it succeeded in pressuring members of the House to include in the healthcare reform bill the so-called "Stupak Amendment." The Amendment is a provision that carves out new territory for those organizations and persons who oppose abortion -- virtually all of whom are religiously-motivated. It does so by forbidding federal funds from being applied to abortions in any instance, including when those funds are being used to subsidize the purchase by low- or middle-income individuals of private insurance on the open market. Under the Stupak Amendment, federal funds cannot be used to pay for "any part" of an insurance plan that would fund abortions.

-edit-

Although many have attacked the Amendment as a policy matter, the constitutional arguments against have been underplayed. That is a shame, because under any reasonable reading of the Constitution, the Stupak Amendment is unconstitutional: Indeed, it violates three different constitutional principles.

How the Stupak Amendment Violates The Establishment Clause

First, the Amendment violates the Constitution's separation of church and state. The anti-abortion movement is plainly religious in motivation, and its lobbyists and spokespersons represent religious groups, as is illustrated by the fact that the most visible lobbyists in the Stupak Amendment's favor have been the Catholic Bishops. This is a brazen and frank attempt to impose a minority's religious worldview on the entirety of American healthcare. (A majority of Americans have favored a woman's right to choose for many years.) There is no secular purpose for the extension of the Hyde Amendment to all private health insurance plans as well. Accordingly, whatever secular purpose might be devised by those trying to defend the Stupak Amendment in court would be a sham purpose, intended to cover the frankly religious pandering the Amendment represents.

One of the clearest Establishment Clause principles is that the government may not impose a certain group's religious beliefs on those with different beliefs. The principle was articulated by the framer of the First Amendment, James Madison, in his important work "Memorial and Remonstrance," and it has been a mainstay of Establishment Clause doctrine. The Stupak Amendment violates this principle by imposing on the entire country a religious worldview that millions of Americans do not share. Moreover, this imposition of religious belief in the private sphere is in the context of healthcare, which every American needs.

How the Stupak Amendment Violates The Equal Protection Clause

The Stupak Amendment also discriminates on the basis of gender. Only women have to deal with the difficult question of abortion. Conspicuously missing are parallel exemptions barring funding for Viagra, or for, say, prostate surgery treatments, which can leave a man sterile and therefore operate as a birth control measure.

In addition, the exemption (the purpose of which is, again, obviously a religious one) does not serve any medical end, when serving medical ends is presumably the overall and most important purpose of the Health Care Reform Act. If health is truly to be served, then refusing to permit women to obtain even private health insurance that covers unplanned pregnancies, or pregnancies involving fetuses with fatal abnormalities, is not just discriminatory, but outright irrational.

How the Stupak Amendment Violates Substantive Due Process and Privacy Rights

Finally, the Stupak Amendment attempts to curtail -- across the board – the privacy rights that Roe v. Wade and its progeny secured for women. While other restrictions on abortion (including the Hyde Amendment) have been upheld by the Supreme Court, this is a far more expansive and repressive move against women, and it surely institutes an undue burden on a woman's right to obtain an abortion in consultation with her doctor. Although it is not clear precisely where the boundary line lies, it is very clear that this move transgresses any reasonable interpretation of the line the Court's cases draw.

The Stupak Amendment is also a harbinger of future constitutional violations, for it erects a slippery slope of top-down control of the spectrum of healthcare options. Abortion is surely just the first foray of the religious lobbyists' battle to take away Americans' right to choose among the full panoply of healthcare options. Attempts to control and halt the funding of both emergency and ordinary contraception surely are not far behind, for such attempts are part of the very same politico-religious platform that includes the Stupak Amendment. There is no more obvious violation of Griswold v. Connecticut – which established that laws prohibiting contraception are unconstitutional under the Court's right-of-privacy doctrine -- than for the federal government to reduce the affordability and, therefore, the availability of contraceptives for all Americans.

-edit-

Marci Hamilton, a FindLaw columnist, is the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and author of Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children (Cambridge 2008). A review of Justice Denied appeared on this site on June 25, 2008. Her previous book is God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law (Cambridge University Press 2005), now available in
paperback. Her email is [e-mail].


http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hamilton/20091112.html

**************

[Le Taz Hot]

12. THough all that you post is true,

I'm afraid I don't trust this corrupt, agenda-filled SC to side with us. This is the same SC (at least the overall make up is) that ruled the non-precedent-setting Bush v. Gore.

[Blue State Blues]

14. The problem is the Roberts Court

The Constitution may be on our side, but the 5-4 Supreme Court is not on the side of the Constitution unless it suits their purposes.

[PDJane]

9. If there are more women like me out there,

And I suspect there are, there will be a backlash. We fought too long and too hard for those rights to turn our backs on this kind of challenge.

[chimpymustgo]

10. That's what KILLS me. That this could even be ON the table. Our FUNDAMENTAL rights as a bargaining

chip.

[MNDemNY]

11. It is proof that all the folks shilling this bill

are simply out for a "win" and a Rose Garden signing ceremony. That is all that matters.

[sufrommich]

13. I fear the backlash won't come

until women who weren't around for the fight for choice are denied that choice. Younger women have never lived through a period where their bodies were property of the "powers that be".