The Center for Reproductive Rights has launched a much-needed attack on the Hyde Amendment — a long-standing law that disallows federal Medicaid dollars from paying for abortion. Hyde is back in the press lately after it was used as the starting point for the abortion “compromise” in the health care bill, which eventually snowballed into the Stupak amendment in the House. Hyde established the baseline rule that abortion should be segregated out from all other medical procedures and not funded with tax dollars, even though the whole thing with tax dollars is that we all pay for things we either don’t like or don’t use, but we also all reap the benefits of whichever social programs we do use, and things like shared roads and fire departments and schools. Hyde, though, is unusual legislation in that it identified a particular (and particularly common) medical procedure and said, “Even though we have this program that helps to pay for medical care for low-income people, we aren’t paying for this one procedure. Poor women can pay for it themselves.”
The impact has been devastating, and it hit women hard long before the latest incarnation of health care reform was on the political map. I used to volunteer for the Haven Coalition, which provided housing for low-income women coming to New York for abortions — before Haven, women were sleeping on subway benches and in parks because they couldn’t afford a place to stay (and I suspect that even with Haven’s volunteer network, many women still do spend their time in New York without shelter). Women come to New York to terminate pregnancies because we allow abortion later than many other nearby (and not-so-nearby) states; for low-income women who rely on Medicaid, affording an abortion means saving and scraping and pawning and borrowing and begging. It takes time. And as they work to get the money together, the pregnancy progresses. There is no single reason why women have second-trimester abortions, but a lot of the stories I’ve heard are some version of “I couldn’t afford it earlier.” Of course, as the pregnancy progresses abortion also gets more expensive. Some states (including New York) cover abortion with state Medicaid dollars, but most don’t. And the federal ban on coverage gives states cover to also refuse to use state funds to fully cover women’s health.
This history came to head when the Stupak Amendment was proposed, but it even set the state for the compromise proposed by Democrats. At no point was there a serious suggestion that the new health care package should cover abortion the same way it covers most other medical procedures. The assumption that abortion coverage was simply off the table is a direct result of the Hyde Amendment.
Thankfully, Hyde is now starting to come under fire. The Center for Reproductive Rights has put out the below video with bloggers and activists (including Jay Smooth, Aimee Thorne-Thompson, Melissa Harris Lacewell, Sarah Seltzer, Jesse Taylor, Amanda Marcotte, Heather Corrina, Allison Kilkenny, Jamie Kilstein, and yours truly) all discussing what we don’t want our tax dollars paying for. You can submit your own video here.
Transcript (thanks Chally!) below the fold.
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