Can you imagine learning that complications from your pregnancy put your health at risk and yet your hospital refuses to act? What if you find out your daughter was drugged, raped, and is now pregnant, but an abortion isn’t allowed? Or worse yet, what if a young girl is pregnant because of incest and is forced to carry that incest to term?
Right now, federal dollars cannot be used for abortion, except in cases of rape, incest, or when the woman’s life is in danger. Since 1976, a truce between pro- and anti-abortion forces was forged to prohibit using federal dollars to pay for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest, and when the pregnancy endangers the life of the woman.
Apparently that compromise is no longer good enough for GOP members in Congress. And to that end, they now appear to be hell-bent on redefining rape so as to limit even further, those rape and incest cases eligible for government abortion funding. But, they’re not just stopping at government funding. They want to limit any woman’s ability to get an abortion by limiting coverage under private insurance policies, and even by proposing a constitutional amendment to define life as beginning at conception. Thus far, eleven bills addressing abortion issues, in one way or another, have been introduced:
HR 3 No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act: To prohibit taxpayer funded abortions and to provide for conscience protections, and for other purposes. [Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ4)] HR 212 Sanctity of Human Life Act: To provide that human life shall be deemed to begin with fertilization. [Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA10)] HR 217 Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act: To amend title X of the Public Health Service Act to prohibit family planning grants from being awarded to any entity that performs abortions, and for other purposes. [Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN6)] HR 358 Protect Life Act: To amend the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to modify special rules relating to coverage of abortion services under such Act. [Rep. John Fleming (R-LA4)] HR 361 Abortion Non-Discrimination Act of 2011: To amend the Public Health Service Act to prohibit certain abortion-related discrimination in governmental activities. [Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-PA16)] HR 374 Life at Conception Act: To implement equal protection under the 14th article of amendment to the Constitution for the right to life of each born and preborn human person. [Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA52)] S 91 A bill to implement equal protection under the 14th article of amendment to the Constitution for the right to life of each born and unborn human person. [Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS)] S 96 A bill to amend title X of the Public Health Service Act to prohibit family planning grants from being awarded to any entity that performs abortions. [Sen. David Vitter (R-LA)] S 121 A bill to impose admitting privilege requirements with respect to physicians who perform abortions. [Sen. David Vitter (R-LA)] S 165 A bill to amend the Public Health Services Act to prohibit certain abortion-related discrimination in governmental activities. [Sen. David Vitter (R-LA)] S 167 A bill to amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit taking minors across State lines in circumvention of laws requiring the involvement of parents in abortion decisions. [Sen. John Ensign (R-NV)]
H.R. 3 was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) this week that would deny abortion coverage to women who depend on the federal government for their health care. But it doesn’t stop there. It would also extend such unjust prohibitions into the private sector and effectively eliminate insurance coverage for abortion. Today, a majority of insurance plans offer abortion coverage. If H.R. 3 were to pass , millions of Americans whose insurance policies provide for abortion coverage would see their tax liability instantaneously increase. It’s passage would penalize businesses that seek to offer insurance plans that cover abortion along with other pregnancy-related care, reducing the likelihood that insurance companies would provide coverage for abortion.
Remember the midnight “Right to Refuse” (Conscience Rule) regulation promulgated by Bush’s HHS Secretary Leavitt? Well … H.R. 361, S. 121, and S. 165 are attempts by the GOP codify “conscience rules” that would allow any person employed in the health care industry to refuse to provide not just care, but information relative to a woman’s options.
This horrific reality has happened and can happen again. If your local hospital is religiously-affiliated or if your hospital employs doctors, nurses or even receptionists who have religious objections to providing needed medical care, they don’t have to and they don’t have to give you a referral to a doctor or hospital who might. That last part is particularly important for those women who are covered by HMOs where their options for physicians and hospitals may be limited to only those who don’t happen to offer those services.
In November 2010, a woman in southern Arizona who was fifteen weeks pregnant with twins miscarried one at home. She went to the only hospital available, a Catholic-affiliated hospital, for treatment, only to be told that the miscarriage could not be completed because the remaining fetus still had a heartbeat. According to her treating doctor, nothing could be done to save the fetus, and without treatment the woman was at risk of hemorrhaging or developing a life threatening infection. Because hospital administrators considered completing an inevitable miscarriage to be an abortion, she had to be transported to a facility eighty miles away for treatment.
The treatment this woman was denied is not an isolated case. She, like many others, was denied the standard of care at the hospital in her community and subjected to an unnecessary delay in treatment, while enduring a traumatic experience. Some religiously-affiliated hospitals allow religious doctrine, and not proven medical best practices, to dictate the kind of care and procedures that pregnant women can receive. In these hospitals, patient care and medical standards often run a distant second to religious doctrine and, as a result, health for women, as a class of human beings, can suffer and their lives can be at risk.
Knowledge is power. I urge you to take the time to read each of the above introduced bills and stay current with others that will most like be introduced as well. To that end, I’ve created a spreadsheet that details all of the bills introduced in the 112th Congress. Let your legislator’s know where you stand, and that this is the United States of America, not the United States of Stepford, and that you do not appreciate them treading on your rights.
