Archive for October, 2009
Why Abortion Should Be Covered
October 28th, 2009 by janeyRead in detail at Salon.com Broadsheet
1. Abortion is legal medical care.
2. Abortion is common, mainstream medical care. It is one of the most common surgical procedures in America.
3. Abortion is already broadly covered. Between 50 and 85 percent of women who have private insurance, including employer-sponsored plans, have coverage for abortion care.
4. Covering abortion does not raise the abortion rate.
5. Covering abortion makes abortion safer. Out of pocket, abortion can be expensive, all the more so as the pregnancy progresses. Yet women who take time to “save up” only wind up paying more — and taking more risk.
6. Covering abortion is what the people want. According to a recent poll by the Mellman Group, voters oppose reform that would prohibit insurance companies from covering abortion.
7. Excluding abortion from coverage sends us down a slippery “moral” slope.
8. Let’s have insurance companies hold an annual poll of subscribers and decide on a majority basis what gets covered. Let’s especially ask if they want their premiums to pay for obesity-related diseases, smoking-related diseases, STDs, neonatal intensive care where the life expectancy is less than 5 percent and put a cap on care for people over 80.
9. Without coverage, there is no “choice.” Sex — a natural human drive for most — entails risks. Even with the best prevention measures, there will be unintended pregnancies.
10. Megan Carpentier, former Jezebel writer and current editor of News and Politics of Air America Radio, sums it up thusly: “Why should abortion be covered? Because sometimes abortion is medically necessary, and the government shouldn’t be writing regulations from Washington that tell a woman in Kansas when that is. Because exempting cases of rape and incest, as the Hyde Amendment does, means that women who are victims of rape and incest don’t get the coverage they’re supposed to have anyway, because there’s no way to police whether their pregnancies are the result of government-approved circumstances. Because there’s no actual government money that’s going to get spent on the so-called public option, so it’s a question of whether you, with your own money, can get insurance that covers what you choose to have it cover. And because eliminating coverage that currently exists through federal law is just another back-door way for the antiabortion movement to make it more difficult and expensive for women to get a legal medical procedure, since they can’t convince women not to have abortions on the ‘merits’ of their arguments.”
Maria Shriver Needs to Read “The Mismeasure of Woman”
October 27th, 2009 by catherineJust last week Maria Shriver released, surprise, The Shriver Report. The report claims to be a portrait of today’s American Woman. The report is titled A Woman’s Nation. To pump up attention for the report, California’s First Lady has been making the rounds of the networks. This morning she was on CNN.
The portrait that Shriver paints is not the America I know or that in which most of the women I encounter live. It is sure not the America of the women who are most in need of a reform of health care that does away with gender ratings and age ratings. (Read more at:
Take the time to read the op-ed by Joanne Lipman that appeared in The New York Times, October 24, 2009, The Mismeasure of Woman. Meet the real lives of real American women.
Remembering Rosie Jiminez
October 20th, 2009 by janeyRosaura “Rosie” Jiménez was a single mother living in McAllen, Texas. In September 1977, upon discovering she was pregnant, and being told that medicaid would no longer pay for abortions she had an illegal abortion and died of an infection.
Rosie was the first known victim of the Hyde Amendment which, in 1977, cut off Medicaid funding for safe abortion care to women on public assistance. Rosie was 27 years old.
Rosie is the reason why our mission is to keep abortion legal and to ensure that all women, regardless of age, race, class, status, geography or ability to pay, have full, unimpeded access to reproductive health care. And the reason why it is so important to have pro-choice elected officials at all levels of government.
Activist and songwriter Sandy Rapp has written a moving song about Rosie Jiminez. Please listen in remembrance.
