Privatizing Women’s Reproductive Choices is a Bad Idea
“We are long past the time where we should consider abandoning the needs of women as a matter of political expediency. We cannot and should not negotiate away core rights for women, nor settle for a stigmatizing codification of the current, highly polarized abortion debate. The system of health care we need is one that will provide access to a full range of care options for all Americans. We can and should expect clear leadership on this from Congress, and in the coming days from the Senate, which must hold the line.”
Slate “The Fray”, August 18, 2009
Nancy Northup, President, Center for Reproductive Rights
Double X intern Meredith Simons posted a blog yesterday on Slate proposing that progressives strike a devil’s bargain. Her post suggested that a cutting a deal to throw women’s health care needs on reproductive rights under the bus would solve the current public outcry on health care. By “privatizing” federal coverage for abortion services, she imagined, progressives could have it all — “a public option, an individual mandate, and an employer mandate.”
It’s certainly hard to believe that this ugly compromise of our basic principles on non-discriminatory health care would actually keep the protesters home. No one watching the angry mobs at town hall meetings over the past few weeks could entertain the notion that eliminating federal coverage of abortion services would address all of their myriad objections to this latest step in the country’s alleged lurch towards “socialism.”
On the merits, it’s also a terrible idea. It is hardly surprising that the Executive Director of a national pro-choice organization would disagree with a “solution” that segregates abortion — a common, safe and legal procedure that one in three women will have in their lifetimes — from the larger field of health care.
Moving further in this direction would stigmatize the health care needs of women, one-third of whom will have an abortion before the age of 45.
It would also cement access to abortion as a permanent outlier in the spectrum of health care for women and marginalize the courageous abortion providers and staff who safeguard women’s reproductive rights, as documented in our recent report Defending Human Rights: Abortion Providers Facing Threats, Restrictions, and Harassment. Allowing Congress to develop special rules that, in practical terms, would threaten established rights for women would also hand policy-making power to these latest highly vocal, yet thoroughly unrepresentative, insta-mobs, encourage politicians to play doctor, and set several dangerous and unnecessary precedents.
The post also misses the key point that reducing abortion is not a simple matter of aligning financial incentives. Asking charities to fund this fundamental aspect of health care for women is illogical, and would leave poor women at the mercy of inherently fickle if well-meaning funding streams. The Madoff-fueled round of foundation closings is only the most recent and dramatic reminder that the health of funding for non-profits and foundations depends on many external financial factors.
But what worries me most is not that this modest proposal lacks historical perspective or seasoned analysis, but that once again, something that wasn’t really about abortion has suddenly been held captive to it. And women-disproportionately younger, poorer women — will bear the cost, both in the scarcity of services and in the unrelenting stigma that has succeeded in virtually silencing the 45 million women in the United States who have chosen a safe and legal abortion. At what point do we recognize that one extremist’s moral crusade is a woman’s basic health concern?
We are long past the time where we should consider abandoning the needs of women as a matter of political expediency. We cannot and should not negotiate away core rights for women, nor settle for a stigmatizing codification of the current, highly polarized abortion debate. The system of health care we need is one that will provide access to a full range of care options for all Americans. We can and should expect clear leadership on this from Congress, and in the coming days from the Senate, which must hold the line.
