Mermaid Musings

In an astounding act of misogyny, the US House of Representatives added the Stupack Amendment to HR 3200, passing the most sweeping health care reform bill while simultaneously stripping women of their human rights and dignity. Once again demonstrating our government’s willingness to play politics with women’s bodies and women’s lives.

I have to agree with Frances Kissling (which I don’t always do) in her call to repeal the Hyde Amendment once and for all. Afterall, these politicians are willing to sell out women, especially low-income women, anyway. It is high time that we demand justice once and for all. Now is not the time to go after what is ‘possible’ or politically expedient. The reproductive justice movement must stand together and demand the end of Hyde. It is the height of injustice to claim that women only deserve the rights they can pay for. I am sick to death of the arguments of the anti-abortion crowd. If any of them really cared about reducing abortions, they would work to ensure that all women had access to the reproductive health care they need. Period. Study after study has shown that restricting access to abortion does nothing -NOTHING- to reduce abortions. Providing women with contraception, sex education, and unfettered access has worked in numerous countries to reduce the need and therefore the numbers of abortions performed.

I am sick to death of all this feigned concern over fetal rights. If you care so much about the fetus, start by providing health care, unrestricted health care, to the women who might end up carrying those fetuses. Oh, but that’s right, once a woman starts ovulating, her potential babies are what is really important.

I can’t believe that every single keep-the-government-out-of-my-business-Republican voted for this ridiculous amendment. If that is not the biggest hypocrisy of this decade, I don’t know what is. We don’t want single-payer health care because we don’t want the government involved in our private lives. Unless you’re a woman who needs an abortion - then we’ll dictate what your private insurance can cover as well as restrict public money for your health care. Because it’s ok for the government to interfere in pregnant women’s lives. Just not wealthy white boys’.

Anti-abortion democrats are threatening to kill health care reform if there is any chance that federal funding might go towards funding abortion procedures. (see this) Millions of people in the US go without adequate health care because they can’t afford it and these uptight white boys are going withhold health care reform that would at least attempt to get some of these people health care because they are worried that some women will use their new health care to obtain abortions. Is it just me or are these boys just a bunch of whiners?

First of all, the Hyde Amendment, which prevents states from using federal money to pay for abortions in State Medicaid programs is discriminatory and unjust. It is a big slap in the face of low-income women who are effectively being told that because they are poor, they aren’t entitled to the same reproductive rights as women who can afford private insurance. So, all this health care reform business aside, the Hyde Amendment should be repealed on the grounds that it is unjust (you know, freedom and justice for all? remember that?). Separate legislation also prohibits federal employees, members of the military and recipients of Indian Health Services from obtaining abortions under their health care. Again, denying rights to those Native American women, military personnel and female federal employees. Apparently, in the United States, you are only entitled to reproductive rights if you can pay for them yourself.

Second, singling out abortion from all other medical procedures when talking about health care reform is sexism. It is discrimination against women, pure and simple. I no longer buy the moralistic arguments of the anti-abortion community who claim that the public has a right to refuse to pay for things they find morally reprehensible. I don’t have that right. I think the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan and the building of nuclear energy facilities and nuclear weapons are morally reprehensible, but I don’t get the option to refuse to pay for those. The defense bill doesn’t get dissected and publicly debated (though, maybe it should), why should health care? Do we, as a nation, believe that access to quality health care for everybody is important? Then we should fund it. All of it. No one should be given the right to pick and choose what health care someone else needs or should be given access to. Repeal the Hyde Amendment and start funding health care, comprehensive health care for EVERYBODY.

Refusing public money for abortion does not stop abortions. It restricts access for our most vulnerable populations and makes it harder for women who are already struggling - but it doesn’t stop abortions. Study after study has shown that restricting access to abortion does not stop abortions, does nothing to prevent abortions - it only makes them unsafe and riskier for women. What DOES prevent abortions is access to contraception, comprehensive sex education and overall better access to health services. The nations with the lowest abortion rates are the ones where abortion is free and accessible.

Republicans and Democrats who are farting around health care reform and making a stink about abortion, aren’t concerned about stopping abortion. They are using women’s lives and women’s bodies to preserve a broken health care system that they and many of their friends reap huge profits from. They are using the anti-abortion crowd to stir up a frenzy of anti-reform that would not exist if they just talked about health care reform. This country’s health care system is sick and the way politicians are using women’s reproductive health as a bargaining chip is even sicker.

Of all things. The Christian Defense Coalition started a campaign this month, “Abortion is not health care” in order to keep public money from paying for abortion in any health care reform that actually gets passed. These people really are a bunch of crackpots. If abortion is not health care, why are only doctors (and some nurse practitioners, depending on where you live) allowed to perform them? Why is it the safest outpatient surgery available in the United States today? If abortion is not health care, what the hell is it? Oh I know all the standard responses: it’s an abomination in the eyes of god (so are blood transfusions and immunizations according to some folks), it is an act of ‘genocide’ against the now persecuted ‘pre-born,’ and, of course, it is murder.

It is disturbing to me how much anti-abortion folks are controlling the discourse on health care reform these days. Truly, I don’t think it’s so much about abortion as it is about blocking any reform of the health care system. Which is so sad because the only ‘people’ who don’t stand to benefit from serious reform are the health insurance corporations. Which, for the record, mostly pay for abortions with the money they get from premiums from people in the Christian Defense Coalition (and others). This whole argument of not wanting your tax dollars to pay for abortion is specious in my opinion. My tax dollars pay for all kinds of things that I don’t want to pay for: long range nuclear missiles, the bombing of villagers in Iraq and Afghanistan, bailouts and subsidies to oil corporations and car manufacturers who destroyed the electric car. I don’t understand why I have to pay for things that I find immoral, but people who want to curtail my human rights are allowed to decide they don’t have to pay for things that they disagree with.

Unlike bombs and wars, public funding for abortion is a matter of justice. Refusing to allow women to access public funds discriminates against low-income women and denies them their human rights, as well as equal protection under the law. Denying public funding for abortion, says to poor women you can’t exercise your right to an abortion, because you can’t AFFORD it. So only women with money are apparently allowed to have reproductive rights in this country.

I am truly sick of all the pandering to the right-wingnuts that is going on in the government these days. The debate on health care reform has gotten ridiculous with wingnuts claiming that the reforms will ‘kill your grandma’ by forcing older folks to submit to euthanasia or that senior citizens will be denied treatments they need so that the government can afford to pay for abortions. And it is fascinating that the Obama administration is quick to debunk the ‘kill your grandma’ myth, but will only skirt around the issue of a public health system paying for abortion.

I wish these people would just get over themselves. Millions of these wingnuts pay premiums to private insurance companies that pay for abortions. And while some of them undoubtedly would like to force the private companies to stop paying for abortions, it doesn’t stop them from paying their insurance premiums. This attitude of ‘I don’t want to pay for anything I don’t use or believe in’ is just ridiculous. After all, Jehovah’s Witnesses, who don’t believe in blood transfusions, aren’t saying that public funding shouldn’t be used to pay for other people’s blood transfusions, are they? and we would laugh in their faces if they even suggested it. Scientologists don’t believe in vaccinations for their children, but they aren’t insisting that public funding should not pay for those either. Why should abortion be any different? Abortion is a safe medical procedure that nearly half the women in this country will need access to at some point in their lives. To deny women coverage of a medical procedure because of your moral beliefs is discrimination. Pure and simple.

I wish the government would quit tip-toeing around this issue and just come right out and say: health care for everyone people. The majority of people in this country believe women should have access to abortion, why are we even listening to these wingnuts? Why does their opinion, their morality get so much air time? Hell, I’m even writing about them now.

The truth is that we all pay for women’s abortions now. Having abortion be covered by a national insurance system would not represent a significant change in what happens now. I wish those rightwing fundamentalists would just grow up and leave the rest of us alone.

I started writing this post last month and got interrupted, so I’m picking it up today.  Apologies for tardiness!

I read this posting from the National Advocates for Pregnant Women today. And while I don’t know all the details of the case, I found the concept of it highly disturbing. The short of it is that a woman in New Jersey went against medical advice and refused to give her consent for a cesarean section. Her baby was born vaginally and in good health - proving that she did not, in fact, need an operation. However, the hospital staff apparently called in child protective services and accused the mother of medical abuse. The state took action and stripped the woman of her parental rights.

The New Jersey court ruled that there was ‘ample other evidence’ of abuse and neglect to justify the state taking her baby away but that it could not rule that simply refusal to submit to surgery was sufficient to declare this woman an unfit mother. So, that latter part of the ruling is heartening - especially given the over-use of cesareans in this country. Could you imagine the cesarean rate if women were threatened with losing their babies for refusing? Or maybe even suggesting that it might not be necessary?

In a related story, a couple in the Pacific Northwest was recently acquitted of manslaughter of their infant daughter who was denied medical treatment because her parents believed in ‘faith healing.’ These two cases really exemplify the tricky-ness of involving the state in personal medical decisions.

On the one hand, a young girl died because her parents didn’t believe in using modern medicine to save her but they are exonerated of any blame and on the other, a woman makes a decision about her body and her pregnancy, which turns out to be a good decision, but because the doctors and medical staff disagreed with her decision, she is judged to be an ‘unfit’ mother.

And all I can say is ‘huh?’