Last night, Congressmen Ed Markey and Stephen Lynch met for a debate in Lowell as part of the Democratic primary campaign in the special election for U.S. Senate. It didn’t seem like there was too much new ground covered (Markey is pro-choice, Lynch is anti-choice; Markey was proud to vote for health care reform, Lynch was proud to vote against health care reform), but there was one truly head-scratching moment.
Congressman Lynch tried to explain his view of women’s rights on military bases, and I’m still trying to figure out what he was trying to communicate. Here is Lynch’s full, unedited response (starting at about the 18-minute mark in the Boston Herald’s video of the debate):
Let me just- I want to- I want to- I want to address the- the, uh, military base issue. Look, I’ve- I’ve been to Iraq fourteen times. I’ve been to Afghanistan eight times. I’ve spent a lot of time on military bases. There is no free choice for anyone on a military base. Everything goes by rank. If- if a woman- what I- look- if a woman is pregnant, has an unwanted pregnancy on a military base, it is very likely that another enlisted person, perhaps even an officer, is- is on that base, as well. If- if- look, I support giving maternity leave or emergency medical leave to any woman to get off that base because, when a woman is on that base, under the control and command of superior officers, she does not have- she does not have free choice. I would rather give emergency leave to allow that woman to go back home and really make a full and a fair and independent decision on her own behalf in her own best interest, not being ruled over by a male superior officer that may have other interests involved, as well. I just think if you really want free choice, you don’t- you don’t make it happen on a military base. That’s not the way things happen there.
Anybody want to take a shot at deciphering that? Where to begin?
1. What is Lynch talking about when he emphatically declares that there is “no free choice for anyone on a military base”? I mean, I understand the chain of command, but that doesn’t preclude a human being who is serving on a military base from making personal medical decisions. If a person serving on a military base, for example, develops an acute case of appendicitis, that person should have access at the base’s hospital to surgical services for an appendectomy. The malicious superior officers running Lynch’s hypothetical dystopian military base shouldn’t be able, simply on a whim, to preclude someone serving on the base from having access to a needed, legal medical procedure. On a military base, soldiers follow orders and adhere to a chain of command, but they are not automatons. So what is Lynch trying to convey?
2. What is Lynch talking about when he says “everything goes by rank”?! Is this a mangled attempt to refer to the chain of command, or does Lynch think that medical care goes by rank, too? Like, all the female Privates have to wait for all the female Sergeants to be done before they get a turn?! Honestly, what the heck is Lynch talking about?
3. Does Lynch think it’s logistically easier for a female soldier to ship out from an overseas military base back to the U.S. rather than simply to have a medical procedure performed on the base if she would so prefer?
4. Perhaps the most menacing language in Lynch’s comments is when he describes female soldiers being “under the control and command of superior officers” and being “ruled over by a male superior officer that may have other interests involved.” What is he getting at? What are the “other interests” that he is talking about? Is he presuming that this “male superior officer” is the man who impregnated the female soldier and is ostensibly pressuring the female soldier not to have an abortion – is that what Lynch is confusingly hinting at when he cryptically says that “another enlisted person, perhaps even an officer, is- is on that base, as well”? Is he referring in some way to the epidemic of sexual assault against women in the military? If so, why not make that clear and explain what he sees as the connection between that epidemic and providing reproductive choice on military bases? What is he talking about?!
Stephen Lynch’s word soup suggests to me that Lynch would prefer to offer us confusing gibberish to muddy the issue rather than state a clear position that we will simply oppose, a tactic he has employed before. Either way, his attempted response is truly a head-scratcher. What are your thoughts and interpretations?
I was in the audience and I doubt I was alone in being confused by his word salad.
I think he was alluding to sexual assault and felt uncomfortable just saying that.
But you are totally on point: Getting clearance to travel off base is, I would imagine, much more difficult than having a procedure — ANY PROCEDURE — on base. Enlisted personnel have the right to medical care on base. It’s a question of whether or not this one procedure is available to be had on base or not.
Not to mention, delays are the enemy of true reproductive choice. So anyone suggesting that a woman should be delayed in any way — having to travel, especially internationally, having to perhaps raise the funds to do so, etc. — really isn’t that concerned about her rights, or doesn’t understand how time sensitive the abortion decision is.
And finally, what business is it of Stephen Lynch or any other member of Congress when/where an enlisted woman accesses medical care of her choosing? Seriously, focus on issues that are your business and keep your nose out of issues that do not concern you. Period.
This is an issue I am honestly unfamiliar with and want more information about. Is the issue that providing abortion on military bases would have to be funded by federal tax dollars that go to military health and thus are allocated via federal tax dollars banned by the Hyde Amendment? Or is there are another issue at play here? I don’t see why a third party like PP can’t operate on or near a military base using its own funding source, wouldn’t prohibiting an enlisted woman violate her choice and thus the Constitution?
but didn’t need to be. This is not a new issue, nor is Lynch’s response new. WBUR ran a story two weeks ago.
He seems to be saying there will be coercion on the base because the father is probably stationed there too.
If its private funds it doesn’t violate the Hyde Amendment. I don’t see how the military code of conduct supersedes a woman’s constitutional right to choose under Roe, or how Congress can control choice in this regard. I mean, obviously if it was a vote to overturn a ban there was a ban, and I applaud Markey for voting to overturn it and condemn Lynch for his (apparently unchanged) position.
put this in place. Clinton rescinded it by executive order, and the Gingrich Congress codified it in 1995. It’s been law ever since.
I don’t know if anyone has sued to challenge the constitutionality of the ban. The Constitution offers little protection to military personnel as a general matter. For example, in Goldman v. Weinberger, 475 U.S. 503 (1986), the Supreme Court held that “enforcing military discipline” justified forcing an orthodox Jewish military doctor to remove his yarmulke when on duty.
I honestly fear the ‘chip away’ strategy more since it infringes upon choice and does so in a more arbitrary manner. They know that if they wage a full frontal assault on Roe they will lose and galvanize the moderates like me to the pro-choice side. But, by chipping away here and there they can really cause damage in areas most people don’t think about, whether its Idaho, North Dakota, Kansas, Arkansas, and now apparently, on military bases. Few on this blog would argue I am anything but a moderate on this issue, and someone who until recently tended to side with more rather than less restrictive abortion policy. I favor the Hyde Amendment and defunding overseas abortions, I favor the partial birth ban, but I’ve always favored Roe and bans like this really skirt around the balanced and moderate settlement it offered.
Republican legislators and Republican courts have chipped away just about everything.
Personally I strongly oppose the Hyde Amendment. If someone (1) has a right to choose a particular medical procedure and (2) as a general matter qualifies for federal funding for healthcare under the law, I don’t see it as any business of the federal government’s conservatives to take medical options off the table because the woman might not make the choice they like. I’m not speaking here as a matter of constitutional law, but as a matter of policy.
I will disagree on Hyde, but agree that Republicans have abused its purpose and have largely chipped away at abortion rights since Roe. After Casey they gave up on Roe and have gotten away with dumb laws like the AR one, the KS and VA regulations that have shut clinics down, etc. Hyde was meant, as Joe Biden as put it, to make sure the government is not picking a side. Unfortunately it may have been viewed as a concession by the right to life crowd rather than a final capstone to abortion policy as Biden and others view it. And certainly women in the armed forced exercising their personal freedoms with their own money should not be banned at all.
It says, “we’ll pay if you choose this, but we won’t pay if you choose that. Because we don’t like that.” That seems to be the very definition of “picking a side.”
You could also make an argument that subsidizing abortion is not only allowing a choice but now subsidizing and incentivizing it with tax payer dollars, dollars not everyone is comfortable using for that purpose. It is picking a side, it just happens to be the side you wish the state would pick.
And the pro-lifers are not happy enough with Hyde, they also want to use my tax dollars to enforce a radical and draconian anti-abortion policy which would be far more expensive than the status quo. So Hyde was an attempt to forge a compromise and like most political decisions in the abortion debate it pleased no one.
I view it as the “abortions for some, miniature American flags for others” option.
What I’m saying is that, if we have government-funded medical care available to anyone it should cover all legal medical procedures equally. Then the choice is truly the patient’s. As it is, coercion is present. The choice to have the baby and give birth in a delivery room is subsidized and incentivized by the Hyde Amendment, but the choice to end that pregnancy is not.
The incentivization argument makes no sense to me. I highly doubt people who don’t want to have an abortion would sign up to have one just because federal funding was available. If that’s not their choice, that’s not their choice. It may be that, with the Hyde Amendment in place, there are people who WANT an abortion and don’t have one for money reasons, but that’s exactly what I’m saying is illegitimate. “Oh, I’m sorry, you wanted to exercise that right? Well, I guess you should have had more money.”
If people not being “comfortable” with how tax dollars are used were determinative, we’d have had no Iraq War or countless other objectionable federal expenditures. Since at least the time of Thoreau, that argument’s carried no weight.
And I am glad we can disagree agreeably. And whats more important is that we are open and honest about our disagreements, wish Lynch could be open and honest with himself.
on about 97% of issues that come up. If something arises that we don’t agree on I’ll argue it, but I’m not going to lose sight of the 97% we agree on.
Lynch has a big dance to do if he’s going to move from an electorate where anti-choice, anti-gay, etc. was an asset to a broader one where it’s a liability. That’s why I thought his saying “If I voted for X in 1996 or 1997 that deprived gay people of spousal benefits, I was wrong” was a lot more effective than the jumble of words on this issue. But I don’t think he can afford to say “I was wrong” on too many issues. It would only underscore that he has not, historically, been progressive.
“What I’m saying is that, if we have government-funded medical care available to anyone it should cover all legal medical procedures equally. Then the choice is truly the patient’s. ”
Including elective/plastic surgery?
No. But it’s hardly an analogous situation.
If someone doesn’t have elective surgery life goes on as before. You still hate your nose or whatever, but nothing changes. That option does not exist in case of pregnancy. There are, in essence, only three choices: (1) carry to term and raise the child; (2) carry to term and place the child for adoption; (3) have an abortion. The woman affected has a constitutional right, during much of the pregnancy, to choose any of these three options. The Hyde Amendment takes a side by saying federal funding may be used for the first two choices but not the third. That, to me, is inappropriately coercive.
Let’s put it this way. Imagine, at some future date, we have a single payer health care system funded by federal taxes. Would it be appropriate to apply the Hyde Amendment to that program?
but took it to mean that he’d support getting the woman off the base so she WOULD NOT have an abortion. He seems to be hinting that, either to protect the father or because his main interest is in keeping the underlings at their tasks, this hypothetical male superior officer would exert pressure on the woman’s decision. Her decision would not be her own because, as long as she’s on that base, she dare not resist the wishes of the commander.
Kind of like being in Massachusetts House of Representatives.
The Herald headline over that video says “Lynch fails to land knockout punch in debate.” It’s hardly as if Lynch is in any position to be landing “knockout punches.” He’s trailed in every poll. And not only did he not land this “knockout punch,” the first paragraph of their story says Lynch himself spent “much of his time on the ropes.”
In last night’s Bruins game, the Carolina Hurricanes fell 6-2. Wonder why the Herald’s headline didn’t read “‘Canes fail to score winning goal.”
or more precisely, you want someone to lose, you adjust your rhetoric to reflect that.
I was in the audience and by the time he finished answering my thought was, “Run that by me again?” It would have been at least easier to understand if he simply said he didn’t believe military hospitals should provide abortion services.
is Lynch’s friend at this point. He can’t say some of the things he believes in a straightforward way. Democratic primary voters might not like them. A little gobbledygook might obscure the issues a bit and help him.