The US Senate and the Scarlet “A”
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By Eric Wooten
One of the biggest battles for reproductive freedom is being waged right now and it’s happening largely behind the scenes of the national healthcare debate.
In return for his one vote, Senator Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) was able to jam new restrictions on abortion coverage into the Senate healthcare bill, stigmatizing women who want their private insurance to cover these medical procedures.
Specifically, Senator Nelson’s amendment will require women who wish to have abortion care as part of their health insurance to cut a separate check for it.
You didn’t drink too much eggnog – you read that correctly. Under the Democratic healthcare plan proposed in the United States Senate, women will have to write a separate check to their private health insurer if they want abortion coverage.
Does she have complete reproductive healthcare coverage? Only her doctor, health insurer, banker, accountant and human resources manager know for sure.
The Senate healthcare plan establishes a national healthcare exchange. Many, most or all private healthcare plans will eventually participate in this exchange and the federal government will help subsidize the private insurance of some individuals.
Senator Nelson insists his amendment is designed to ensure that no federal dollars are used to subsidize abortion coverage.
Why opponents of reproductive choice can keep their tax dollars from going to something they find objectionable while the rest of us are still forced to pay for prisoner executions, CIA interrogations and tobacco subsidies is a matter for another article.
What is clear however is that this amendment is an attempt to shame women who want to have abortion coverage. This conclusion becomes inescapable when you realize that health plans can easily segregate funds without the need for an additional check.
The insurance companies are the penultimate bureaucracies, the very model of a modern major general – they understand equations, both the simple and actuarial. To assume they can’t keep federal and private dollars segregated is like assuming Steven Hawking can’t calculate your dinner tip.
No, this amendment is a clear attempt to shame women into dropping abortion coverage. Can you imagine if men were forced to cut a separate check to cover the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases?
Perhaps more shocking than the actual amendment was who was behind brokering this abortion “compromise” – none other than longtime choice advocate Senator Barbara Boxer.
This is a healthcare bill, not an abortion bill and Democrats should certainly be entrusted to keep it that way. Hopefully Senator Boxer is simply trying to kill the abortion language in conference committee. Choice advocates certainly hope so.
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Eric Wooten runs the democratic consulting firm Capitol Coast and is a former lobbyist for the League of Women Voters of California, where he lobbied on choice issues as a member of the California Coalition for Reproductive Freedom (CCRF).
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Why opponents of reproductive choice can keep their tax dollars from going to something they find objectionable while the rest of us are still forced to pay for prisoner executions, CIA interrogations and tobacco subsidies is a matter for another article.
One of the problems that many of my progressive friends have with the abortion issue is one of stereotyping. They would actually like to believe that everyone who opposes abortion is s knuckle-dragging neanderthal male chauvinist pig - it's so much easier than acknowledging the truth.
The truth is that there are a lot of people who believe - to their very core - that abortion is no different from murder. They have a right to that opinion, but even if they didn't it wouldn't make any difference - they'd hold that opinion regardless.
Now in fairness - I think that's the case too. Where I differ with these people is that I accept that there may be times where murder is justifiable - in cases of rape - incest - the no-shit health of the mother. (By no-shit that excludes the legions of quack-in-the-box physicians that will give you a prescription for marijuana for $100 if you will read any one of the statements on the card they give you as to why you qualify for marijuana treatment. If I'm going to agree to let you murder someone, there ought to be a REAL reason, not just that you're pissed at the sperm donor and want to hurt him. Don't tell me it doesn't happen - I've DONE abortions and I've had would-be patients tell me exactly that.)
People tend to forget that the purpose of the political system is NOT to provide us with 'stuff' like health care or even public colleges. The purpose of the political system is primarily to enable us to live together without violence.
With as fractious a subject as abortion, we would have all done better if the Supreme Court would have just kept out of the issue. Instead they issued Roe vs Wade, which 'settled' the abortion issue exactly as well as the Dred Scott decision 'settled' the slavery issue.
What we needed was to find a middle ground that most of us could be comfortable with. Instead we have the abortion-on-demand and the no-abortion-ever people trying to rally people to their sides. The more divisiveness the higher the tensions grow. If we can't defuse this issue, there will be violence.
Right now the people who feel strongly that abortion is murder don't have the issue thrown in their face very often. Force them to write a check to subsidize it, and you aren't going to like the result. Those 'neanderthals' aren't going to see the light, they will more likely beat you on the head with their clubs - metaphorically at the election box hopefully - but quite possibly physically as well.
The person who you try to compel to be an accessory to what he or she considers to be murder is going to be a whole lot more upset about this issue than you are about that person 'not paying their fair share' to provide abortions to those that want them. You may think you want to push the issue - but I don't think you really do. The slaveholders considered Dred Scott a victory - it wasn't. It convinced the abolitionists that nothing short of open war would stop something they considered unconscionable, and 600,000 Americans died in the subsequent conflict.
Well, I don't think I ever belittled the pro-life position. What I said was that many people find portions of the federal budget objectionable, even reprehensible. That's why I used those examples. Quakers object to violence, in all forms, and thus should be able to ignore half their tax burden.
I'm willing to debate the topic at hand, but not all the topics that I didn't actually write about.