By Denise Hirao, International Women's Health Coalition
May 10, 2007 - 2:20pm
The Pope's presence in Brazil represents a challenge for politicians in the world's largest Catholic country, due to an already heated debate between public health concerns and church policy.
The Stupak Amendment isn’t only about trampling on women’s rights and lives, as devastating as that is. It’s also about trampling on their faith and conscience.
Why care about women’s health in health care reform? The reasons why were best captured by the 19th century Swiss poet and philosopher Henri Frederic Amiel. He wrote: “In health there is freedom. Health is the first of all liberties.”
In the midst of foaming-at-the-mouth at the political give-and-take in health care reform, many prominent pundits neglected to properly inform the public that Stupak's language allowed for a major incursion into women's rights.
Stupak-Pitts is a slippery slope: For example, every health insurance company in America could now lose some of its tax benefits. And you could just say that anybody that got a federal loan for housing could not get an abortion.
Pro-choice advocates abided by an agreement not to seek changes to the Hyde Amendment in health reform. Anti-choice factions broke their end of the bargain.
What are the real-life effects of the Stupak-Pitts amendment to the House health care bill? An analysis by experts on health law, and reproductive and sexual health issues, shows just how far it goes.
"Irrational." "Hypersensitive." "Hysterical." The tone of comments on Daily Kos around the abomination known as the Stupak-Pitts Amendment is: "Calm down, little lady. Get real. Be adults. Doncha know how politics really works?"
Is a Senator who says she's pro-choice short-circuiting efforts to beat the Stupak Amendment in the Senate by conceding the point less than 48 hours after the disastrous vote in the House on this amendment? Is she signaling for the White House?
The Stupak Amendment potentially goes farther than any other federal law to restrict women’s access to abortion. The claim that it only bars federal funding for abortions is simply false.
By banning private insurers in the public exchange from covering "abortion services," the Stupak Amendment will affect women with incomplete miscarriages. Like the one I faced last month.
The Stupak-Pitts amendment would actually result the loss of abortion coverage many women already have because it prohibits the new private insurance market as well as any possible public option from providing such coverage.
This is only the first salvo in the bishops’ campaign against women’s health. Just imagine for a moment what healthcare will look like when the bishops are finished.
Our biggest defeat since 1973 was enactment of the Hyde Amendment and the lack of an uncompromising commitment to overturning it. If nothing else, we must now make overturning Hyde the single objective of our movement.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops apparently now runs the US government, aided by "faith-based advocacy groups," the House Democratic Leadership, the White House and members of the Senate. If you didn't know before, you know now.
Today, the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals called on Congress to remove the Stupak Amendment from the rinal version of the House health reform bill.
