I am not a policy buff.  Which is why I think I'm a good person to try to explain what happened with healthcare reform this week.

While I was visiting Washington, D.C. this weekend for the Pro-Choice Public Education Project's Young Women's Leadership Council convening and the 5th Annual National Membership Meeting of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, Congress democrats were fretting over whether or not their healthcare reform bill would pass.  With a House majority, why were they so worried?  They were worried that conservative democrats would not support the bill.  So, at 1:30 AM, in the wee hours between Friday night and Saturday morning, the House Rules Committee announced that they would let Rep. Stupak (D-MI) introduce an amendment to the healthcare reform bill that would ban abortion coverage from federally funded or subsidized plans.  If you are at all familiar with the Hyde Amendment - the Stupak amendment is Hyde's evil brother.

As Jessica Arons, Director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, points out, the Stupak Amendment (1) effectively bans coverage for most abortions from all public and private health plans in the Exchange, (2) includes only extremely narrow exceptions, (3) allows for a useless abortion “rider”**, and (4) allows for discrimination against abortion providers. 



Republicans also tried to introduce anti-immigrant proposals to be added to the bill during the debate on Saturday.  They proposed banning undocumented immigrants from using their own money to purchase health insurance and/or making immigrants wait five years from being able to access health insurance. 

By 10 PM on Saturday, the anti-immigration proposals were squashed (hooray!) and House Democrats passed a healthcare reform bill that include Stupak's anti-abortion amendment. 

Disillusioned yet?

It's not over though.  We still have the Senate and President Obama to go through before healthcare reform can be turned into law.  And they can NOT let anti-abortion access be turned into law.

While the Hyde Amendment has reduced abortion access for over 30 years - it is not a law.  It's a budget add on.  When I say that I want to see healthcare reform - I mean it.  But taking abortion care out of health insurance options - and insuring that it wouldn't be in federally supported plans as the Stupak amendment does - sets a precedent that says that abortion is not part of health care.  I can NOT live with a law that takes abortion out of the list of reproductive healthcare options.

If abortion is not part of healthcare reform, then I will not support it.  Will you?



**People could choose to add abortion coverage to their health care plan for an additional fee.  As Arons puts it: Stupak wants women to plan for a completely unexpected event.