Editor’s Note: This post is by Lauren B. Simonds, M.S.W., Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice Washington.
“Remember the ladies.”
That is what Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John, who was then a delegate to the Continental Congress, on the eve of the American Revolution. Abigail wrote her letter more than 200 years ago, but her words resonate today. Undeniably, we’ve made some great strides for women’s equality since then. Yet as the recent health care reform debate so painfully illustrates, Congress all too often turns a deaf ear to the cry for women’s rights. In the House last month, and last weekend in the Senate, women’s health was jettisoned in acquiescence to a couple of anti-choice hardliners. Watching Congress push women’s rights aside in the name of a larger goal, you would be excused for thinking we were living back in Adams’ era.
If it wasn’t clear before the health care battle of 2009 that women’s reproductive health care is viewed as separate and unequal to other types of basic health care, it is now. No other medical procedure is singled out and stigmatized like abortion. Even a proposed tax on elective cosmetic surgery was eliminated after public outcry.
Unlike cosmetic surgery, however, abortion care is a critical component of women’s reproductive health.
As Publicola’s own Erica C. Barnett has reported, the Nelson “compromise,” brought to us courtesy of anti-choice zealot Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Nebraska, is an all-out assault on women’s rights and health. On paper, the Senate bill is only marginally better than the House bill, which contains a total ban on health insurance coverage (the so-called Stupak-Pitts amendment). The ultimate effect of either measure in practice, however, will likely be the same: the eventual elimination of all abortion coverage.
The kicker, for many in the pro-choice and allied movements, is that the ban on abortion coverage and the Nelson “compromise” came at the behest of Democrats. In the House, 64 Democrats voted for the Stupak-Pitts amendment, which establishes a ban on abortion coverage. In the Senate, Nelson’s amendment seeking an abortion ban was defeated, but after he threatened to withhold his support of the health care bill without additional abortion restrictions, all 60 members of the Democratic caucus voted for a health care bill that contains a “compromise” that jeopardizes women’s access to abortion care. Our own Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, both of whom are strong pro-choice advocates, were put in the unenviable position of voting for a bill with an anti-choice, anti-woman provision.
The takeaway from the health care mess is that elections matter. We need to elect a pro-choice majority to the Senate and the House that will stand up for women’s rights. Until we get there, women’s ability to control what happens to their bodies is subject to the whims of a few anti-choice ideologues.
This is not merely a political battle; unless there are significant positive changes made to the bill in conference committee, the fallout for women’s health will be severe. For the millions of women who will have an abortion in their lifetimes, the elimination of insurance coverage will be one additional hurdle in accessing a legal, safe, and extremely common medical procedure. The women no longer able to access abortion care will bear the burden of the health and financial problems that so often result from being left without a choice. The continued devaluation of women’s reproductive health care, moreover, means that abortion, the women who choose it, and the doctors who provide it will be even more stigmatized.
Is this–the rejection of women’s health and a huge step backward in the fight for reproductive rights–the best that women can hope for with a Democratic majority in both chambers and a Democratic president who ran on a pro-choice platform?
I think we can – and must – demand more. Yes, it will be an uphill battle without a pro-choice majority on Capitol Hill. But it is incumbent upon our elected officials to remember the women, to use the modern parlance. We in the pro-choice community implore Sens. Murray and Cantwell, and the rest of our congressional delegation, to do all that they can to improve the health care legislation in conference committee and pass health care reform that includes women’s health. Please, make Abigail Adams – and the current generation of women – proud.
