The Stupak-Pitts amendment to the healthcare reform legislation means women who currently have insurance coverage for abortion services could lose this coverage in the new system.
This amendment makes it virtually impossible for private insurance companies that participate in the new system to offer abortion coverage to women. It forbids any plan offering abortion coverage in the new system from accepting even one subsidized customer.
This vote is a reminder that despite recent gains in the last two election cycles, anti-choice members of Congress still outnumber our pro-choice allies.
See our previous post on this issue. Learn more from our national organization, NARAL Pro-Choice America.
justice4all says
is that the standard exemptions are in the bill – the cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother.
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p>I also think it was going to be enormously difficult for Congress to rally around a bill that insured procedures with federal tax dollars that some people find spiritually and morally wrong.
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p>I thnk Speaker Pelosi did the right thing, because this bill was going nowhere without the amendment. She had a Hobson’s choice, and chose the better part to get this thing passed.
sabutai says
If this is in the final bill. I’d find it abominable, but for now I can tolerate it.
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p>This way, we can learn a lot about people if they change the vote with the amendment gone — to wit, they care more about the health of the unborn than they do the health of people already born.
neilsagan says
sabutai says
Stupak is one of the least useful Congressmen under the dome, and that’s saying a lot…
bostonshepherd says
The restriction applies only to the gvt, option or any other person or plan receiving federal money.
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p>If you have abortion coverage in a private plan which does not receive federal subsidies, I believe it will remain.
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p>Of course, if your employer dumps your private plan because the penalties or public option is cheaper, bye-bye abortion coverage.
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p>I assume you can always pay for it yourself.
kathy says
This leaves poor women with the options of a coat hanger or forced birth.
justice4all says
she can choose Walgreen, CVS or RiteAid…because there really is almost no excuse for an unintended pregnancy these days.
joets says
if she doesn’t have sex in the first place. I don’t recall the right to get laid anywhere in the top 10.
christopher says
I’ve felt for a long time that being pro-choice also includes encouraging the choice not to get pregnant in the first place. Rape, incest, and mother’s life are the standard exemptions for good reason. This goes to “safe, legal, and rare”.
huh says
and pre and post natal care.
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p>As Barney Frank once said (from memory), for many of the anti-choice crowd, life starts at conception and ends at birth.
joets says
not for fake.
huh says
Really, Joe, coherence is not a crime.
joets says
sex education will cut down on the number of abortions people procure during this era of legality.
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p>My position is perfectly coherent. I want the number of abortions = zero. It would be illogical for me to choose to, in the instance this is not going to happen, have circumstances that will result in the fewest possible.
joets says
huh says
What does “not for fake” mean?
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p>I fully support sex education, as you probably guessed. My goal is also to keep abortion legal, safe, and rare. I’ll add that the decision to get an abortion is not an easy one.
joets says
is another way of saying “for real”.
huh says
Your argument may be consistent, but if people can’t understand it without explanation it’s not coherent.
liveandletlive says
first in line to sign up.
liveandletlive says
for both men and women. Abortion should be available in cases of prevention failure, which does happen. But there really is no excuse for not taking every step available to avoid pregnancy, including saying no (both parties should be saying no) if there are no condoms available at a given time.
liveandletlive says
For every woman having heterosexual sex, there is a man having sex at the very same time, imagine that! Remember that, JoeTS. It’s an important part of the reality that seems to be easy for some here to ignore.
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p>
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p>If men didn’t have sex in the first place, there wouldn’t be this problem. Just to reinforce what you said.
joets says
If a woman can’t afford to raise a child and similarly is dependening on the government to pay for an abortion in the event she does get pregnant and also couldn’t bare putting the child up for adoption, than she is engaging in a socially irresponsible act.
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p>The guy’s involvement? He has no rights as to what happens post-orgasm.
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p>
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p>If you’re trying to insinuate that women don’t like sex as much as men or only have sex because men want to,you should just give up, because it’s laughable.
liveandletlive says
This has got to be the most incredibly immature statement I’ve ever heard. Do you happen to know how many children you have?
liveandletlive says
I’ve ever heard.
joets says
the part about not having sex if you aren’t prepared for the consequences or the part about women not being innocent of the charge of recreational intercourse?
liveandletlive says
and what you’ve said just validates that.
joets says
keep clucking.
liveandletlive says
christopher says
…to this comment from the main thread.
eb3-fka-ernie-boch-iii says
Abortion is not health care.
neilsagan says
it involves heath care workers, doctors, prognosis, surgery and patients.
eb3-fka-ernie-boch-iii says
Now that’s the kind of health insurance I could wrap my hands around and get behind.
neilsagan says
by most insurance policies currently. reproductive health care surgeries are covered currently.
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p>currently it is between a woman and her doctor. the stupak amendment put the government between a woman and her doctor.
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p>there are a lot of men who think they should own a women’s uterus. i’m not one of them. you are.
eb3-fka-ernie-boch-iii says
In my opinion a woman seeking birth control and OBGYN services is quite different than a woman four months pregnant walking into a doctor’s office and asking that the “pregnancy be terminated” with no reason other than she doesn’t want the child.
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p>It’s the woman’s choice but that is not a choice the government should pay for.
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p>This language in the bill merely closes a loop hole of government funded abortions. If a woman wants abortion insurance there will be private plans available, just like now, w/o giving up quality care.
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p>You are right Neil, there are a lot of men who think that way.
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p>But there are also a significant number (majority I believe) of men and women in this country, religiuos and non-religious, who believe it is immoral to terminate a pregnancy for reasons of convenience for the parent(s) rather than health concerns etc.
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p>Abortion on demand might be legal but it should not be government subsidized. It is not health care IMHO.
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p>Isn’t there a sliding scale fee at Planned Parenthood for poor people seeking abortions? Pro Bono abortions? Or do they just want the government check of (hmmm, how much $$$ does Planned Parenthood get for an abortion now-a-day? It’s been so long since there was an inconvenient pregnancy I needed terminated.)
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p>Pulleeeze Neil, take your enlightened male attitude and, as Cedric Maxwell would say, “Go in the kitchen and make me some bacon and eggs.”
neilsagan says
Stupak requires that no health insurance policy offered in the federal insurance exchange, whether it be offered by a for-profit insurance company or the public option plan, can include abortion services.
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p>It doesn’t even matter whether the insured pays their full premium them self or gets federal assistance to help pay for insurance.
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p>I agree there is an important distinction between abortion on demand and abortion for the health of the mother or rape, incest etc. Would you include those exceptions in the Hyde amendment? Would you allow HR 3962 to sell plans with abortions services for women who choose to buy them and make the people who get federal assistance pay the difference as a copay? That seems much more fair than Stupak which goes way to far.
eb3-fka-ernie-boch-iii says
But I need to control every women’s ‘woman parts’ like you said.
neilsagan says
somervilletom says
This comment looks like the presentation of a Y-chromosome disorder to me.
farnkoff says
So it’s not all about gender, right?
eb3-fka-ernie-boch-iii says
Good one BT.
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p>You are the best at arguing w/o saying anything.
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p>This particular cliché, which it has become, is so old that the last time I heard I fell off my dinosaur.
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p>Ignorance is bliss, right BT? Like ignoring the 5000+ phantom cars the Middlesex Fells developers have you and Deval speciously closing your eyes to.
lightiris says
gets thrown under the bus. Big surprise. I’m not going to detail my outrage here–which exists on so many levels regarding this issue–but I will state that I am becoming inured with each passing year. There’s a part of me that can’t wait to move when I retire and another part of me that mourns the cowardice of the leadership we elect.
menemsha says
Highly recommend this read -Hard to believe with Democrats in power I feel more vulnerable than ever as a women. How could this be? Until we get equal representation in Congress I’m afraid women’s issues will be thrown under the bus. 17% is not enough when women are 52% of the voters.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
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p>”Progressives in the House should have killed the bill.
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p>Civil rights begin with autonomy over our own body. If we don’t have that we have nothing. So, to hear Rep. Clyburn talk about “privacy rights” after passing the House bill was laughable.
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p>But at least Mr. Obama and Speaker Pelosi’s Democratic House got us closer to an “historic health care win.” That they did it on the backs of women’s civil rights isn’t mentioned, though some of us will never forget.”
neilsagan says
to own up to plagiarizing this paragraph here and falsely claiming I smeared you?
menemsha says
Please check my response to you from the other article where you accused me of plagiarism- You can’t plagiarize if you were the original author. How dumb do you have to be not to figure out that someone can have two usernames and post at different sites?
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p>Originally my response to you had been that I put quotation marks which I did at the comment on that piece referring to a lawyer’s comment from another site.
I never suspected you would accuse me of taking something from another website. I hope you feel as foolish as you must be.
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p>Please leave me alone, this is beyond classless and it’s frightening.