Reproductive Rights Prof Blog

Senate Postpones Debate on Abortion Amendment

OnPolitics (USA Today): Health care debate on abortion delayed:

An amendment that would determine how the health care legislation moving through the Senate will handle the potentially explosive issue of abortion will be put off until Monday at the earliest, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat said today.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Democrats are working furiously behind the scenes to find a compromise on abortion and a proposed government-run health insurance program -- two issues that have divided the Democratic caucus in recent weeks. Durbin made the comments in a call organized by Families USA, a group that supports the health care legislation. 

Senate Amends Health Care Bill to Include Mammogram Coverage and Other Preventive Services for Women

NY Times: Senate Passes Women's Health Amendment, David M. Herszenhorn & Robert Pear:

Breaking a three-day stalemate, the Senate approved an amendment to its health care legislation that would require insurance companies to offer free mammograms and other preventive services to women....

The Democrats’ legislation had already contained requirements that insurers cover a wide range of preventive care. The amendment, put forward by Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, goes further, mandating coverage for a broader package of services for women.

“The insurance companies take being a woman as a pre-existing condition,” Ms. Mikulski said. “We face so many issues and hurdles. We can’t get health care. We can’t get health insurance because of pre-existing conditions called a C-section.”

She added, “My amendment offers key preventive services, including an annual women’s health screening that would go to a comprehensive assessment, including the dangers to women in heart disease and in diabetes.”

Democrats Seek Additional Preventive Care for Women in Health Care Bill

NY Times: Senators Pitch to Women and Elderly on Health Bill, by Robert Pear & David M. Herszenhorn:

WASHINGTON — In a day of desultory debate on sweeping health care legislation, senators appealed to two potent political constituencies on Tuesday, with Democrats seeking additional medical benefits for women and Republicans vowing to preserve and protect Medicare for older Americans.

The Democrats’ first amendment, offered by Senator Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland, would require insurers to cover more screenings and preventive care for women, with no co-payments.

“Women often forgo those critical preventive screenings because they simply cannot afford it, or their insurance company won’t pay for it unless it is mandated by state law,” Ms. Mikulski said. . . .

A vote on Ms. Mikulski’s amendment has not been scheduled but could come Wednesday. . . .

Ms. Mikulski’s proposal was prompted, in part, by the recent furor over new recommendations from a federal task force that breast cancer screenings begin later for many women. . . .

"Stop Stupak!" Week of Action Continues with Lobby Day

RH Reality Check: Hundreds of Pro-Choice Advocates Converge on Capitol Hill as Hatch and Nelson Prepare Senate Stupak Amendment, by Jodi Jacobson:

As advocates for women's health--including leaders of pro-choice, faith-based, and health service delivery organizations--converge on Capitol Hill to ensure women's basic health needs are included in health reform, two conservative Senators--Orrin Hatch (R-OR) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) are planning introduction of a "Stupak-like" amendment to the Senate bill.

The Coalition to Pass Health Care Reform and Stop Stupak!, a broad group of advocacy organizations including progressive groups, women’s health groups, organizations representing youth, communities of color, and people of faith and health professionals, has brought hundreds of advocates from throughout the country to meet with their members of Congress and stress that the Stupak amendment will take existing benefits away from women and jeopardize women’s health.  The coalition is working to ensure that health care reform is passed and does not restrict women’s ability to purchase private health insurance that provides comprehensive reproductive health care, including abortion...

The DC Lobby Day is part of the coalition’s National Week of Action, November 30–December 6, to send a message to Congress that the anti-choice Stupak amendment must not be included in the final health care reform legislation.

Take action.

Does Stupak Amendment Mirror Wider Public Opposition to Abortion?

New York Magazine: The Abortion Distortion: Just how pro-choice is America, really?, by Jennifer Senior:

Most New Yorkers hadn’t heard of Bart Stupak before he attached his devastating anti-abortion amendment to the House’s health-care-reform bill three weeks ago. We know a lot more about him now, of course: that he lives in a Christian rooming house on C Street; that he’s a former state trooper. He has become a symbol of legislative zealotry, living proof that the fight over the right to choose will always attract a more impassioned opposition than defense. (As Harrison Hickman, a former pollster for NARAL, put it to me: “If you believe that choosing the wrong side of the issue means spending eternal life in Hades, of course you’re going to be more focused on it.”) Just a week after the vote, when I reached the Michigan Democrat as he was driving across his district, he seemed dumbfounded that anyone found his brinkmanship surprising. “I said to anyone who’d listen: ‘Do you want health care, or do you want to fight out abortion?’ ” says Stupak. He points out that he’d nearly managed to bring down a rule about abortion funding earlier in the summer, this time in a bill about spending in the District of Columbia. “I said, ‘Look, that was a shot across your bow,’ ” he recalls. “ ‘I was being polite to you. That was a warning.’ And the leadership just blew us off.”

Until it realized it couldn’t, of course. And the results sent chills through the pro-choice world, dampening what was otherwise an impressive victory for Democrats on the issue of universal health care. . . . Four days after the vote, Kate Michelman, the former head of NARAL, and Frances Kissling, the former head of Catholics for Choice, warned of an ominous new landscape in a Times op-ed: “The House Democrats reinforced the principle that a minority view on the morality of abortion can determine reproductive-health policy for American women.”

But is that actually right? Was Stupak’s truly the minority view?

Abortion: A Generational Perspective

NY Times: In Support of Abortion, It's Personal vs. Political, by Sheryl Gay Stolberg:

WASHINGTON — In the early 1950s, a coal miner’s daughter from rural Kentucky named Louise McIntosh encountered the shadowy world of illegal abortion. A friend was pregnant, with no prospects for marriage, and Ms. McIntosh was keeper of a secret that, if spilled, could have led to family disgrace. The turmoil ended quietly in a doctor’s office, and the friend went on to marry and have four children.

Today, Louise McIntosh is Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York. At 80, she is co-chairwoman of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus — a member of what Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, calls “the menopausal militia.”

The militia was working overtime in Washington last week, plotting strategy for the coming debate over President Obama’s proposed health care overhaul. With the Senate set to take up its measure on Monday, a fight over federal funding for abortion is threatening to thwart the bill — a development that has both galvanized the abortion rights movement and forced its leaders to turn inward, raising questions about how to carry their agenda forward in a complex, 21st-century world.

It has been nearly 37 years since Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that established a right to abortion, and in that time, an entire generation — including Mr. Obama, who was 11 when Roe was decided — has grown up without memories like those Ms. Slaughter says are “seared into my mind.” The result is a generational divide — not because younger women are any less supportive of abortion rights than their elders, but because their frame of reference is different. . . .

New York Times: New Jersey Should Legalize Marriage for Same-Sex Couples

NY Times Editorial: New Jersey's Marriage Moment:

Doing the right thing — promptly enacting legislation discarding inadequate civil unions in favor of full marriage equality for same-sex couples — requires no gargantuan amount of courage or risk-taking on the part of rank-and-file New Jersey legislators or their leaders...

If the Democratic majorities in New Jersey’s Legislature are unwilling to stand up for a fundamental civil right that a majority of voters would accept, when exactly would they stand up?

Abortion Coverage Has Become Hurdle to Passing Health Care Reform

Time Magazine: The Abortion Hurdle: Can a Pro-Life Dem Bridge the Health Care Divide?, by Jay Newton-Small:

The point of the Oct. 21 press briefing was to highlight Senate Democrats' outreach to faith-based organizations. Illinois's Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, spoke approvingly about all the policy areas that religious leaders have been working on with Democrats before adding, "And not just on negative issues like abortion." Across the room, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, a pro-life Catholic, listened in silence. A few minutes later, a reporter asked his opinion on abortion coverage in the Senate version of health reform. "We want to make sure that there is no federal funding of abortion," began Casey, but Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow quickly cut him off.

"We do not have funding for abortion services in these bills," she said. "Senator Casey doesn't need to worry about it. He can vote for health reform." (Read "Understanding the Health Care Debate: Your Indispensable Guide.")

Casey smiled patiently but stood his ground. "We need more work done on this," he said.

Shaking her head, Stabenow jumped in again. "This health care debate is not about changing current policy on abortion," she said. "There is no funding for abortion. So there should be no problem." Unfortunately for Stabenow and other Democrats, in the month since that meeting, abortion has become very much a problem — if not the biggest hurdle — in passing health care reform. . . . 

Fertility Control Provisions in the House Health Care Bill

Stop Family Violence.org: Beyond Stupak - The Shocking Fertility Control Provisions in Health Care Reform Legislation by, Gwendolyn Mink and Dorothy Roberts (Northwestern Law):

The House health care bill (H.R. 3962), contains a provision affecting Medicaid recipients who are pregnant for the first time or who have a child under two years of age.  Section 1713 allows States to use Medicaid funds for non-medical home visits by nurses to advance certain goals affecting reproductive decisions and family life.  The goals include: "increasing birth intervals between pregnancies," "reducing maternal and child involvement in the criminal justice system," "increasing economic self-sufficiency," and "reducing dependence on public assistance." 

( Click here to contact your legislators )

These goals of the home visitation program have nothing to do with providing health care.  Instead, they are based on the false premise that poor mothers’ childbearing is to blame for social problems.  The proposed visitation program is eugenicist, deceptive, discriminatory against low-income women, and utterly inappropriate to the medical work of nurses.  

Under the program envisioned in the House bill, government-sponsored medical professionals are charged with exhorting fertility control among poor women, based on the mistaken premise that reproduction among the poor leads to crime, neglect, low educational attainment, and dependency.   Yet according to the government's own statistics, families receiving welfare have, on average, only 1.8 children; half the families receiving welfare have only one child, and only one in ten have more than three children. 

 

Rep. Kennedy Denied Communion Due to his Stance on Abortion

NY Times: Kennedy Barred From Communion by Bishop, by Ian Urbina:

Widening a growing rift, Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, a Rhode Island Democrat, said on Sunday that the Roman Catholic bishop of Providence had instructed him to refrain from receiving communion because of the congressman’s stance on abortion.

Rep. Kennedy said that Bishop Thomas J. Tobin “instructed me not to take communion and said that he has instructed the diocesan priests not to give me communion,” according to The Providence Journal, which first reported the article....

The allegation by Rep. Kennedy, a Democrat in his eighth term, is the most recent escalation in a bitter and unusually personal dispute between the men that began after the lawmaker criticized the nation’s Catholic bishops for threatening to oppose an overhaul of the health care system unless it tightened restrictions on publicly financed abortion....

Activists Mobilize on Abortion Coverage in Senate Health Care Bill

Wall St. Journal: Abortion to Be New Flashpoint in Senate Bill, by Naftali Bendavid:

Activists Aim to Keep Curbs Out of Final Health-Overhaul Measure After Being Caught Off Guard by Amendment in House

WASHINGTON -- Abortion-rights groups, acknowledging they were caught off guard by a last-minute amendment toughening abortion restrictions in the House health-care bill, are mobilizing to ensure that doesn't happen in the Senate.

Activists hope to flood Washington to rally and lobby on Dec. 2, during the week that Senate floor debate begins. The Center for Reproductive Rights has aired television ads criticizing the restrictions. On Tuesday, activists will announce the creation of the Coalition to Pass Health Care Reform and Stop Stupak, a network of more than 30 groups. Planned Parenthood -- which says it will oppose the final bill if it contains the restrictions -- has started a petition drive that has been promoted by Cosmopolitan magazine. . . .

Senators Nelson and Lieberman Voice Opposition to Current Version of Health Care Bill

NY Times: Centrist Senators Say They Oppose Health Care Bill, by Joseph Berger:

The morning after voting to commence debate on ground-breaking health care legislation, two centrist senators, Ben Nelson and Joseph I. Lieberman, said on Sunday that they were opposed to the bill as it is currently written, particularly its inclusion of a new government-run insurance program.

Mr. Nelson, the Nebraska senator who voted with his fellow Democrats to start debate sometime after Thanksgiving, said that he was opposed to the bill’s insistence on a so-called public option — a government insurance plan that would compete with private firms to offer coverage for uninsured Americans. While the bill gives states the right to opt out of a public option, Senator Nelson said he would only support a bill that required states to opt in, a step that would stretch out the time that such a program could be broadly enacted. Such a provision would allow for more “state-based solutions” to issues of health care coverage . . . .

He added that if the public option remained in the bill in its present form, he would refuse to stop an expected Republican filibuster. Because he is one of the 60 votes the Democrats had counted on to prevent a filibuster, his statement could dampen the enthusiasm for Democrats still exulting over their ability Saturday evening to come together to a crucial procedural vote and launch debate. . . . 

Senate Advances Health Care Bill to Floor

MarketWatch (Wall St. Journal): Senate moves health care bill forward for debate, by  By Robert Schroeder & John Letzing:

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The Senate voted late Saturday night to advance a sweeping health-care reform bill to the full floor for debate, vaulting a key procedural hurdle and handing an early legislative victory to Democrats and President Barack Obama on his top domestic priority.

The vote came only hours after Senate Democrats won the support of two lingering holdouts, Louisiana's Mary Landrieu and Nebraska's Blanche Lincoln, who reluctantly committed to help their party move the legislation forward.

It also sets up the Senate for a heated debate across party lines, with Republicans and many Democrats demanding significant changes to the bill.

Huffington Post: It's Too Early to Celebrate the Senate Health Care Vote, by Mitchell Bard:

I swear, I find no no joy in being Debbie Downer. I really wish I could celebrate the Senate's 60-39 vote to begin the debate on health care legislation, narrowly holding off the blocking tactic of the Republicans. I am 100 percent in favor of health care reform (I'm a fan of Rep. Anthony Weiner's proposal to extend Medicare to everyone). But a realistic view of what happened (and what has happened leading up to the vote) reveals far more things to be concerned about than to cheer for. . . .

Abortion is Not the Only Moral Issue in Health Care

Newsweek Magazine: Abortion Is Not the Only Moral Issue, by Lisa Miller:

Our entire health-care system is filled with complex moral choices. We shouldn't make our health-care debate about just one.

We suffer, this week, from a moral myopia. Thanks to the passage in Congress of a health-reform bill, abortion is in the news again, but with the same old warriors brandishing their same old spears. Kate Michelman and Frances Kissling talk about how the current version of the health-care bill “risks the well-being of millions of women for generations to come.” The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops thanks the members of the House, “who took this courageous and principled step to oppose measures that would force Americans to pay for the destruction of unborn children.” Abortion, the pundits like to say, is a "complex moral issue." According to recent research by the Pew Forum, about half of Americans believe abortion is "morally wrong," yet half wish it to remain legal most of the time. Surely we and our representatives in Congress, who are able to hold such paradoxical views in mind, are not so deafened, cowed, or paralyzed by the screaming on both sides that we can't absorb a truer reality. Culture warriors are not the only arbiters of the great moral questions of the day, and abortion is hardly the only ethical component of the health-care debate. Our entire health-care system (and the proposed reform) is rife with "complex moral issues." To activate our consciences only in the realm of abortion relieves those consciences of too much responsibility.

Take a "complex moral issue" completely unrelated to fetuses. One in 10 Americans suffers from hearing loss—including more than a million children. Few private insurers cover hearing aids, which cost, on average, more than $2,000 each. Medicaid covers hearing aids for kids, but after 21, they're on their own. . . .

Student Scholarship: Health Care Reform and Abortion Coverage

Jennifer M. Keighley (a student at Yale Law School) has posted Health Care Reform and Reproductive Rights: Sex Equality Arguments for Abortion Coverage in a National Plan on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

The national health insurance reform effort threatens to reduce the number of women who have health insurance coverage for abortions. Instead of evaluating whether the Supreme Court would invalidate restrictions on coverage, I employ a model of legislative constitutionalism that presents arguments for why Congress must independently consider the constitutionality of imposing restrictions on abortion in national health insurance legislation. I argue that Congress’s debate over abortion coverage in a national health insurance scheme should recognize the ways in which state regulation of women’s reproductive capacities violates Equal Protection principles.

Pew Survey Shows Abortion Plays Minor Role in Driving Opposition to Health Care Reform

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life: Abortion Plays Small Role in Health Reform Opposition:

While most Americans oppose government funding of abortion, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that concern about abortion funding plays only a small role in driving opposition to the health care reform legislation under consideration by Congress.

When health care opponents are asked in an open-ended question to describe their main reason for opposing the congressional proposals, just 3% raise the issue of abortion funding.

Even when they are asked to choose among a list of reasons, fewer than one-in-ten (8%) opponents of health care legislation say the most important reason for their opposition is the possibility that government money might pay for abortions. Although a majority of health reform opponents (56%) cite the abortion issue as one of the major factors for them, far greater percentages cite concerns about big government, costs and the impact of reform on people's own coverage.

The full report and questionnaire are available here.

A Comparison of the House and Senate Health Care Bills

The New York Times website offers an interactive feature that provides a look at how the House and Senate health care proposals compare on some key issues, including abortion.

NY Times: Comparing the House and the Senate Health Care Proposals:

Senate Democrats unveiled sweeping legislation Wednesday to overhaul the nation’s health care system. Earlier this month the House passed its own version. The proposals are broadly similar but differ on some major issues, such as on a new government insurance plan, abortion and immigration. Many provisions of the Senate bill, including the mandate for individuals to obtain insurance and the creation of insurance markets, would take effect in 2014, a year later than similar provisions of the House bill.

Senate Health Care Bill Less Restrictive on Abortion Than House Version

God & Country (US News & World Report): Senate Healthcare Plan Lacks House Bill's Strict Abortion Funding Ban, by Dan Gilgoff:

Now that Sen. Harry Reid has released the Senate version of the healthcare bill, the two main sides in the culture war—abortion rights advocates and foes—are back to their usual corners.

The House healthcare bill's strict ban on federally subsidized abortion coverage earned Democrats the wrath of their abortion rights allies and praise from abortion opponents. The Senate healthcare plan lacks the language of the House's Stupak-Pitts amendment, which prohibits abortion coverage in the public plan and from private plans receiving government subsidies; instead, it has language that hews closer to the House's scuttled Capps amendment, which allows abortion coverage in the public plan and in private plans receiving federal dollars as long as the money comes from pooled private premiums. (Abortion opponents call it an accounting trick.) . . .

See also: NY Times: Reid Says Saturday Vote on Health Care Bill Likely, by David Herszenhorn:

The majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, scheduled the first crucial procedural vote on the major health care legislation for Saturday at 8 p.m., after what is expected to be two marathon days of initial debate on the Senate floor.

Mr. Reid, announcing his agreement with the Republican minority on Thursday afternoon, said debate on the $848 billion health care measure would begin Friday morning and continue until 11 p.m., and would pick up again on Saturday morning.

At 8 p.m., the Senate will take its first vote, a procedural hurdle that will require Mr. Reid to have all 60 members of his caucus unanimously in support of calling up the bill for formal floor debate. If he wins, the Senate will then recess for Thanksgiving.

Republicans Consider Filibuster of Obama Pick for Seventh Circuit; Obama Supporters Worry About Lag in Filling Vacancies

The Hill: Conservatives split over filibuster of Obama court pick, by Alexander Bolton:

Leading conservative activists are split over whether to filibuster Judge David Hamilton, whose nomination to the 7th Circuit will serve as a test case for President Barack Obama’s more controversial appellate court picks.

Twenty four leading conservatives have signed a memo urging Republican senators to filibuster Hamilton, setting the stage for the first protracted Senate fight over one of Obama’s judicial nominees.

Hamilton will likely receive an up-or-down vote because Democrats control 60 seats, but conservative and liberal advocates say a filibuster would be significant because it would serve as a precedent for Obama’s future judicial nominees. . . .

See also: NY Times: Obama Backers Fear Opportunities to Reshape Judiciary Are Slipping Away, by Charlie Savage:

WASHINGTON — President Obama has sent the Senate far fewer judicial nominations than former President George W. Bush did in his first 10 months in office, deflating the hopes of liberals that the White House would move quickly to reshape the federal judiciary after eight years of Republican appointments.

Mr. Bush, who made it an early goal to push conservatives into the judicial pipeline and left a strong stamp on the courts, had already nominated 28 appellate and 36 district candidates at a comparable point in his tenure. By contrast, Mr. Obama has offered 12 nominations to appeals courts and 14 to district courts.

Theodore Shaw, a Columbia University law professor who until recently led the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., said liberals feared that the White House was not taking advantage of its chance to fill vacancies while Democrats enjoy a razor-thin advantage in the Senate enabling them to cut off the threat of filibusters against nominees. There are nearly 100 vacancies on federal courts. . . . 

RNC's Health Insurance Plan Covers Abortion

Time Magazine: RNC Health Insurance Plan Covers Abortion:

(WASHINGTON) — The Republican National Committee's health insurance plan covers elective abortions for its employees, an option Republicans strongly oppose in health overhaul legislation that Democrats are trying to push through Congress.

Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele learned of the policy's abortion coverage Thursday through a news report and immediately instructed staff to inform the insurance carrier that the RNC wanted to opt out of elective abortion coverage, RNC spokeswoman Gail Gitcho said. "Money from our loyal donors should not be used for this purpose," Steele said in a statement. "I don't know why this policy existed in the past, but it will not exist under my administration. Consider this issue settled." (See TIME's interactive graphic "New Fronts in the Abortion Arena.")

Gitcho said the policy has been in effect since 1991.

The GOP platform traditionally includes strong anti-abortion language. All House Republicans, except one, voted for an amendment imposing restrictions of coverage for abortions in the health care bill that passed the House last Saturday. Inclusion of the abortion restrictions prompted an angry backlash from liberal House Democrats, and some are now threatening to vote against a final bill if the curbs stay in. . . .