Abortion Rights Activists Mislead about House Healthcare Bill
Unsurprisingly, those who favor abortion rights are not pleased at the passage in the House of Representatives of health care legislation that included the so-called Stupak Amendment. Named for Michigan representative Bart Stupak, the amendment prohibits federal tax dollars from being used to fund abortions. It therefore prohibits women who would receive federal subsidies to purchase health insurance from purchasing abortion coverage. Any coverage under the public option would also exclude reimbursement for abortion services.
Unfortunately, there's a good bit of confusion about what the House bill actually does and doesn't do regarding abortion coverage. Much of that confusion has been sown by pro-choice advocates like Jon Walker at Firedoglake, and Kate Michelman and Frances Kissling, here (New York Times, 11/12/09). In their article, they say,
House Democrats voted to expand the current ban on public financing for abortion and to effectively prohibit women who participate in the proposed health system from obtaining private insurance that covers the full range of reproductive health options.
Simply put, that is not true. Michelman and Kissling want readers to believe that, if the House bill becomes law, all insurance providers and policies will be prohibited from offering coverage for abortion services. That is false, as this article in the same publication clearly states (New York Times, 11/7/09). As I described above, the bill prohibits taxpayer dollars from funding or subsidizing abortion coverage. If a woman wants to pay for abortion coverage, she can do just that, but she'll have to use her own money to pay for it.
The November 7th Times article describes Speaker Pelosi's negotiations to get the bill passed this way:
To save the health care bill she had to give in to abortion opponents in her party and allow them to propose tight restrictions barring any insurance plan that is purchased with government subsidies from covering abortions (emphasis mine).
This unrest in the pro-choice ranks strikes me as a bit odd. After all, since 1977, federal law has prohibited Medicaid funding for abortions for poor women except in cases of life endangerment, rape or incest. NARAL ceased making a stink about that long ago. Democrats like Al Gore voted for that prohibition but were still lauded as "pro-choice" by NOW, NARAL and other abortion rights activists.
I've always found it interesting that those Democrats got a pass from pro-choice forces even though they opposed federal funding for abortions for poor women. It was almost as if Michelman and others cared less about the rights of poor women than they did about their better-heeled sisters. But how could that be?
So why the excitement now? Michelman and Kissling claim that, if the Stupak Amendment becomes law, as most people seem to think it will, there will be an expansion of the prohibition of federal funding for abortion rights. That's true of course, but only because there will be an expansion of federal spending for health care and insurance coverage generally. The simple fact is that if a woman can buy abortion coverage now, she'll be able to in the future. Those who can't now, won't. The only possible expansion will be in the area of the public option, if that becomes law. But again, the only reason the prohibition would expand is if federal spending does too.
But Michelman's and Kissling's purpose is not just to misrepresent the clear terms of the Stupak Amendment; it's to rally the troops with dire threats against Democratic officeholders.
I'll have more to say about that soon.
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