sneaking in restrictions to freedom of choice through the back door

[novapsyche]

Abortion could roil Senate health care debate: Some lawmakers want to prohibit federal dollars from paying for abortions

Even this headline is misleading. The language in the amendment would lead to all insurance companies engaged in the federal health care exchange to drop coverage for abortion (again, a legal medical procedure), even if the funds provided for such originate exclusively from private sources.

Rachael Maddow from MSNBC devoted an hour of excellent reporting and analysis this evening (unlike her colleague Chris Matthews).

I suggest you contact your representative and/or Sen. Harry Reid to urge removal of such language from the ultimate bill.

Comments

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I'm not encouraged by President Obama's non-committal words about this, either. The Democrats are poised and ready to sell out women's reproductive freedom in order to get a notch in their belt. If this amendment is what's happening in the HOUSE, what will they give away to get a bill through the Senate?

[gwendally.livejournal.com]

I urge you to NOT insist on its removal. It's a deal-killer for the entire concept of universal coverage. People absolutely will NOT allow their tax dollars to fund abortion. They can turn a blind eye to it when it's other people and other people's money, but you will open up a can of worms you do NOT want to open.

Much better would be to have people just pay for it out of pocket or through charities. Planned Parenthood could use your contribution. Abortion is fairly inexpensive a procedure and something hardly ANYONE doesn't get because of lack of funds. Lack of accessibility, yes. Lack of funds, no.

Choose your battles. If you insist that anti-abortion people PAY for your abortions you may very well find that abortion gets made illegal. Plus, health care reform is dead on arrival.

I am deadly serious here.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

People absolutely will NOT allow their tax dollars to fund abortion.

This is a misconception. The original language in the House bill already conformed to federal law, which states that federal funds cannot directly pay for abortions except in cases of incest or rape. The language inserted by the Stupak amendment goes further than that; again, it would lead to all insurance companies dropping their coverage for abortion procedures, something that many currently cover. This would be true even if the companies set aside monies provided by private sources specifically for this purpose.

Again, I urge you to read Rachael Maddow's reporting on this subject. Her analysis is clear and cogent.

If you insist that anti-abortion people PAY for your abortions

I've never asked that. I'm asking that anti-choice folks not be able to restrict a legal medical procedure for an entire class of people, a procedure that every year many women need in order to not die.

I chose this battle well before health care reform even peeked its head above the horizon. I've been pro-choice since before I could vote. This is not a fight on which I am willing to compromise.

[gwendally.livejournal.com]

Okay, I watched her 11 minute thing.

It wasn't clear to me that you already realized that public subsidized plans that offer abortion were already off the table. It's such a deal killer that every just realized that universal coverage would die if they didn't remove that. Just so we're clear: people who are receiving subsidized insurance will NOT have abortion coverage as an option.

As most abortions cost on the order of $350 or so, and charitable clinics will give them on a sliding scale, this turns out to not be as big an issue for almost every person in the country as lack of health care and/or the possibility of losing access to legal abortion.

Sometimes I think people misunderstand and think not having it be provided from welfare is the same thing as not being able to get it. You can still get it for free from charity, or you can get it by buying it yourself.

The concept that people would not be able to purchase insurance coverage with their own NON-SUBSIDIZED premium money is pretty wacky, though. That isn't even possible in a free market economy, as ride-on policies would be available pretty much immediately. But it certainly is possible/feasible/worrying that people would not PURCHASE ride-on policies because they never see the need (just as they don't purchase policies with adequate mental health care coverage since they all think it won't happen to THEM.)

But in any case, I see lack of insurance coverage for this one procedure as completely acceptable compromise to make to get universal health care coverage. We always knew - ALWAYS - that it wouldn't allow taxpayer funded abortions. That's relatively okay, though, as free women's clinics have sprung up to carry the need through volunteer donations. I give to Planned Parenthood every single year, specifically BECAUSE I know it won't get funded unless I fund it.

Please understand that I am vehemently pro-choice. I think giving in on this issue is in the best interest of continuing to have legal abortion. It's a complex topic and I can see how you might disagree. But I think I'm right.

[gwendally.livejournal.com]

Also: let me explain why people who receive a subsidized plan may not purchase additional coverage with their own dollars.

It has to do with public policy. If people actually CAN afford more than they ought to pay more towards their basic insurance.

There's a real danger involved with relieving people from the burdens of the human struggle to stay alive: providing their own food, shelter and medical care every day. Some people will just relax and do less. Work is hard. If your basic needs are met why bother? We obviously need a safety net to catch the people who just cannot function at the levels that modern society demands, and so we provide safety nets. Food pantries, homeless shelters, base-level insurance. It's a cruddy existence. But if it were a BETTER existence it would attract people who consider it good enough to just do less. Be on welfare.

It's a cruel balancing act: how to provide humane and respectful care to those who need are care, while giving a kick in the butt to people who need one. Like stopping being co-dependent and letting addicts fail, it's tough love and sometimes backfires and has casualties. But it has casualties if you don't, as well.

A publically funded health insurance plan MUST ration care. It's basic math. We would prefer that it ration the non-lethal things; limit the level of prothestics it covers (more peg legs, less brain-activiated $500,000 limbs) or limits how many hearing aids you get each year or the dental coverage (bad teeth get pulled, not root canals and crowns.)

It's a safety net. Like a homeless shelter: it's not going to be a seaside resort. One hopes for some respect for the basic dignity of human life, but it's not going to replace the struggle to get ahead.

There's a danger that government coverage will displace the three ways people currently cover this:

1.) through their labor in the daily struggle to stay alive that is the burden of all humans. There's dignity in this that we don't want to besmearch.

2.) through ties that people form that create families, the fundamental building block of our society. Is relieving people from the need to get along with others in the best interest of public policy?

3.) through charitable contributions given by people who are concerned about this and CHOOSE to see their money go to this, as opposed to the theft of taxation. There's dignity in charity that is absent in taxation.

You'll probably unfriend me now, as my head is in SUCH a different place than yours. I'm writing this out while feeling good will towards you. I know you're in the safety net. I'm glad the safety net is likely to be expanded. But be careful not to try to make it too comfortable. There is danger in that.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I wish I could have responded to this earlier. As it is, I have limited Internet time these days.

I may come back and rebut your argument point by point, but for the moment, I just want to stress two things.

1) The people this policy change would affect the most would be the people supposedly covered by the health care reform bill: those near the poverty line or below. Those persons in that demographic are precisely the ones least likely to be able to afford an abortion. You say $300 like it's nothing, and to someone in the middle class or higher, it really isn't. It's perhaps half a week's pay, more or less. But for someone who can't scrape together $20 on a moment's notice, getting an amount 15 times that is a monumental task. Add to that the stigma and shame that goes along with the decision to terminate and you get a situation where finding funds is a dismal and dismaying task. The odds of having the pregnancy come to term and the resultant child (perhaps unwanted, in all the worst senses of the word) growing up in poverty are greatly increased.

2) To gain a health reform bill and yet pierce the heart of women's reproductive rights would be a Pyrrhic victory. Just in terms of surface politics, the Democratic party would suffer a backlash of a magnitude it hasn't seen in an era. The pundits are currently scrutinizing the Republican party, trying to see if it splits; I guarantee you that if the freedom to choose is infringed by the very party whose platform supports it, women across the party will revolt, which may well be the genesis of a new party itself.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Again, if I have the time to come back to this, I will. But of course I won't unfriend you, not simply because you have a different point of view than I do. In fact, one of the reasons I friended you in the first place is that we have such divergent views. I appreciate your candor, in any and every case.

[gwendally.livejournal.com]

When I was seventeen I went to a Planned Parenthood clinic to be fitted for a diaphragm. They did it for free.

9 years later, after I'd gotten a bachelor's degree, married the man of my dreams, waited a year, and then had a planned pregnancy, I celebrated my daughter's birth by sending Planned Parenthood a substantial gift.

I give to them every year.

They helped me not have an unplanned pregnancy when I needed help and that remains close to my heart.

I do tax returns for wealthy people and they list out their charitable contributions for me. Pretty much all of us are giving to Planned Parenthood. We WANT abortion to remain accessible to poor women, which included US as teen-agers.

It is perfectly feasible to fund abortion entirely through charitable gifts from people who want this option to be there, without resorting to compelling people to pay it through tax dollars. There is an ENORMOUS difference between what is funded through charity and what is funded through taxation, and abortion lies SQUARELY on the side of what needs to be funded through methods OTHER than taxation.

I agree that it needs to be able to be paid for out of our own funds, but you are just on the losing side if you insist it be paid for via taxation. Not going to happen, and if it did... well... the consequences would be SO MUCH WORSE than you are expecting. I truly believe they'd get abortion overthrown, and it's entirely possible there could be a civil war. A significant portion of the country think that it is MURDER OF A CHILD. I don't agree with them, but it doesn't take much to nudge them into militant action. Far better not to poke that nest of rattlesnakes, in my opinion.

It is a matter of religion at this point. You can make a case that you can each practice your own religion. But you can't make them pay for your abortion any more than you can make them HAVE an abortion that they don't want. It's just not okay.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I've never said that abortions should be paid for by taxes. In a perfect world:

* There would be single-payer health coverage, reducing overhead (e.g., time wasted filling different insurance forms, something my friend the neuropsychologist told me was the sole reason for his seeking early retirement).

* Reproductive health would be supported just as any other preventative health regimen or procedure, so birth control would eliminate many if not most of the incidences (not the prevalence) of abortion.

Of course, in my perfect world, all of the wealth would be consolidated and then meted out equally, giving everyone about $275,000 (everyone would be wealthy, no one would be rich); everyone's debt would be wiped clean every seven years. This cycle would be repeated every fifty years (jubilantly), the same as the model set down in the Old Testament. Such a system would be fair, ensuring that no one who learns their lessons stays poor forever (which, unfortunately, in our current class system it can and does all too often).

Yes, I know we come from two completely different viewpoints when it comes to the philosophy of wealth. We are, as far as I can see, utterly polar opposites. I think capitalism is fundamentally a fraud. However, it's one that works spectacularly well in the short term.

To go back to the abortion debate--from what you have stated so far, I don't believe you are as solidly pro-choice as you think you are. The whole problem with the debate (such as it is) lies in the fact that each side starts from diametrically opposed philosophical viewpoints. This being the case, they can never effectively meet in the middle. On the one hand, you have someone who believes that the rights of the woman (actual life) trumps that of the embryo/zygote/fetus (potential life)--pro-choice; on the other, someone who feels that legal personhood should be granted/recognized at the moment of conception (or, stated differently, that potential life trumps that of the actual life of the woman). You see: two poles that have no common ground, no common thesis (or hypothesis) from which to find a compromise.

Why did this even get put into the health care bill? To get rational people like us to stop talking about health care and instead talk about abortion. Unfortunately, that maneuver has worked. All that has to be done at this point is to go back to the language that the bill had in July, when the House members reached the compromise that the Stupak people claim for themselves while doing much worse.