Hillarysworld

This article was helpful for me to understand why NARAL was so upset about HCR.

NARAL had endorsed candidate Obama as he had campaigned to undo Hyde Act. Instead, the Executive Order he signed at the insistence of Stupak bloc has angered NARAL. NARAL has a valid point in that the combination of the bill and EO could have a real-life impact larger than what Hyde Act had intended. While the HCR has great things positive for all families, the Dems have more to prove on what the theory they propound, that they are pro-choice.  If they are indeed so, they have some more ground to makeup in short order!

With hat tip to RCP and Kate Michelman, President Emerita of NARAL.

Please read this very moving article that touched me at many levels.

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Victory's Cost: Healthcare and Abortion Rights

By Kate Michelman, March 28, 2010
Kate Michelman is President Emerita, NARAL Pro-Choice America and author of "With Liberty and Justice for All: A Life Spent Protecting the Right to Choose."

In 2002, a year after our daughter was paralyzed in a horse-riding accident, my husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Last year, he collapsed getting out of the car at Georgetown Hospital. He suffered a shattered hip, a broken femur and internal bleeding. In an instant, a doctor's appointment became months in the hospital.

My husband is a retired college professor. His generous health insurance covered most costs related to the fall – surgeries, hospitalization, drugs. But "most" is not sufficient in modern health care.

Our savings had been exhausted by our daughter's accident. Her job did not include insurance coverage. She was too old to be on ours. So we had to cash in my IRA to pay for her extensive care.

My husband's fall brought us close to financial ruin. The assisted-living facility cost nearly $9,000 a month. It was not covered by insurance or Medicare. Even the long-term care policy he was smart enough to buy years ago covered only a fraction of the costs. The bills forced me to bring him home against doctors' advice. This was a financial decision, not a medical one. The experience has made me, not surprisingly, a fanatic about the need for comprehensive health insurance reform.

The debate over health care reform also brought a traumatic unity to my life. In 1969, without warning, my husband abandoned my three young girls and me, stranding us without financial support. A few weeks later, I learned I was pregnant. I made the difficult decision to have an abortion. In the pre-Roe world, I was forced to get permission for the abortion from the man who had deserted us (and had now removed us from his health care policy) as well as from an all-male hospital review board. More humiliating were the questions they asked: was I capable of dressing my children or satisfying my husband sexually. The episode propelled me to the front ranks of the pro-choice movement. Never did I imagine I would have to choose between the two social causes.

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Pro-choice activists are torn between celebrating the passage of health care legislation and confusion, if not anger, at the price paid to obtain it. Millions of Americans, including a disproportionate number of women, will have access to health care they desperately need. But this victory was achieved through a fundamental change in the way we treat reproductive rights.

Without this bill, I probably could not avoid personal bankruptcy and still provide for the health care my husband and daughter require. I also have spent much of my adult life defending and protecting reproductive rights.

It is easy to see this only through cynical eyes. In the name of expanding access to health care a Democratic Congress restricted access to abortion even more than the most ambitious anti-choice politicians would have imagined possible. And a pro-choice Democratic President who campaigned against the ban on Medicaid funds for abortion instead extended that discriminatory principle, making it the basis of federal health policy more broadly.

Members of Congress faced a difficult dilemma. But it is important to ask whether this price had to be paid, what this says about the commitment of Democratic leaders to reproductive rights and what the future holds on this issue.

Women will face choices more difficult than those faced by Congress. Many will have no choice at all. Defenders say the Senate "compromise" merely follows an existing prohibition against spending government money for abortion services. In reality, the legislation, executive order and amendments go beyond current law. Add to the list of ironies the fact that as a candidate, the president promised to repeal the ban on abortion funding (Hyde Amendment) he now accepts and extends.

The "compromise" rests on an implausible logic. First, it assumes private insurance companies will offer riders for abortion. If riders are offered, it presumes women will anticipate this need and purchase them (no subsidies here!), that insurance companies will find them profitable and maintain the coverage and that health care providers will honor the coverage. This sketchy policy by one's allies represents a raw political calculation. And it is equally certain that poor women, who benefit from the health care bill, also will be the ones burdened most by the price paid to pass it.

Many pro-choice lawmakers we elected have accepted the longstanding anti-choice fiction that abortion is not health care. They see health care as a mainstream value, while abortion is quarantined as too toxic. Women's ability to control their lives, a petty inconvenience, became road kill in the rush to pass legislation. Apparently, access to comprehensive reproductive health care is no longer essential for women to choose their own destiny.

Democratic leaders, at the first sign of problems amassing votes, tossed reproductive rights overboard to save the sinking ship. It did not need to come to this.

It was no accident Democrats lacked the votes to pass a bill including access to abortion as a necessary part of women's health care. It was a direct result of a calibrated Democratic strategy to recruit anti-choice candidates, a strategy based on a misunderstanding of the 2004 election. Moreover, insufficient votes for a fundamental value should not lead one to quickly surrender that value. (Emphasis added)

Many planks of the bill were controversial from the outset and, in time, the bill itself lacked majority support. But access to abortion was the one plank the leaders tossed aside without a fight. On other issues, arms were twisted, grassroots networks activated, Cornhuskers kicked-back, Louisianans purchased, and student loans made.

While polling shows most Americans support the right to an abortion, Democratic leaders concluded that standing up for reproductive rights would lose votes for the bill. Comprehensive women's health care was abandoned. This shows the leaders' weak commitment to reproductive rights.

The political future offers little hope. Congressional hallways are filled with chatter about "fixing" troublesome provisions in the years ahead. There are open discussions about changing Medicare reimbursement rates or altering the dedicated tax receipts from capital gains. But there is no discussion about righting the wrong on access to abortion. We are told this is "reasonable." It is, one assumes, change we should believe in.

For this, the pro-choice movement must share the blame. We abandoned the debate long before the leadership in Congress did. Time and again we have learned the hard way that we pin too much hope on Washington. The movement should be focused on the American public, the only sure reliable support for reproductive rights. But our movement is in a dangerous state of atrophy and has become particularly vulnerable to the whims of the dealmakers. (Emphasis added)

Pro-choice activists must make a renewed effort to persuade Americans about our issue and mobilize the majority that agrees with us. We must also assess the price we pay when our political allies take us for granted. (Emphasis added)

Democratic leaders think we have no option. In a partisan sense, we don't. On the other hand, a Democratic House of Representatives has become an anti-choice institution and championed a health care bill that weakens abortion rights. If we have learned nothing else, we now know the pro-choice movement must have a powerful political presence independent of the Democratic Party. (Emphasis added)

When Election Day arrives, I almost certainly will be doing what I do every day, providing care for my family. I will be grateful for the health care bill. But the job is not done. Before November, Democrats must prove that supporting their majority status advances the values of pro-choice voters. That proposition will not be fulfilled until they provide all women access to all the medical services women need and deserve. For me, like millions of women, that is a non-negotiable principle. (Emphasis added)

Of course, we as voters do not have much places to go to find pro-choice representatives outside of the Dem party.   So, it is clear that NARAL will be very active with its voice outside of influencing Washington, and will also be very active in preventing more Stupaks getting into Washington.  Both measures will be needed.


The day the platform is no longer required plank is when the plank actually succeeds. I wonder how many in the congress are reliant on the plank being always one they can dance on.  That needs to change.

Like Kate Michelman, I am glad the HCR passed and millions like her will be in a better place with our families, but I am pissed that the EO may in any way make it more expensive for women of childbearing age to have access to comprehensive health care including family planning.

I disagree with Kate on "no subsidies" - the "subsidies" are on the overall insurance cost. Where we need to watch out for is "rider" vs. inclusion in standard coverage. If it is implemented as standard coverage it should not cost. This is where we might be able to make some headway with existing legislation. I intend to contact my reps on this approach.

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ps - I hope this law finally gives grounds for women to challenge the Hyde Act.

-- Edited by Sanders on Tuesday 6th of April 2010 09:46:39 AM