Health Care Reform
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Calls on Progressive Catholics to Resist Pressure from the Bishops on Abortion
Peggy Simpson reported this for the Women’ Media Center; it’s reprinted here with permission.
At a critical moment for health care reform, Townsend says it is essential for religious progressives to speak up.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend broadened the Kennedy family’s dispute with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Tuesday night.
She elaborated on an op-ed she wrote for Politico.com criticizing the Conference of Catholic Bishops’ opposition to health care reform unless an unprecedented expansion of restrictions against abortion is included. “I don’t think the bishops should be allowed to do that,” she said Tuesday night. “I think we should be speaking out (against them).”
Townsend, former lieutenant governor of Maryland, also said it was crucial for progressives from within religious groups who had fought for women’s rights and gay rights to be “more articulate” about their faith.
“We progressive religious people have our backs against the wall. We allowed it to happen,” she said.
Read MoreNot Under the Bus This Time
December 10 is Human Rights Day. Appropriately today, there’s a new campaign for women’s human rights that I want to share with you.
On the heels of the Senate’s defeat of anti-abortion measures, Bart Stupak published a defense of his amendment in the New York Times (“What My Amendment Won’t Do.” His aggressive protest clearly illustrates the crusade against women’s rights won’t stop any time soon.
The Women’s Media Center is proud to announce the launch of its new media campaign NotUnderTheBus.com, a platform that amplifies the voices of women and organizations devoted to a health care reform that is fair to women.
NotUnderTheBus.com’s first call to action is to stop the Stupak Amendment, the Hatch-Nelson Amendment, and others like them which are the most draconian restrictions on women since the 1977 Hyde Amendment that cut federal funding for abortions by Medicaid.
NotUnderTheBus.com will serve as an aggregator and media resource center in the fight to safeguard women’s reproductive rights in the national health care reform debate.
Read MoreWatch Tiffany’s Compelling Story About Health Care Coverage
Congressman Stupak and The Oglethorpe High School Cheerleaders
Friedrike Merck, a talented sculptor, passionate philanthropist, and great friend wrote this commentary with a perspective on the health reform battle that I have not seen elsewhere. She has allowed me to share it with you. Let me know what you think.
Recently, some enthusiastic cheerleaders where barred from holding up Bible verse banners for their football team to bust through at the start of a game because the banner practice was considered a breach of the First Amendment, the religious Establishment Clause part. The students cried “censorship”, as did local pastors and politicians, but they could not do an end run around the First Amendment of the Constitution, which states that there shall be no establishment of religion, that in a public school it gives the impression that the school endorses religion, and endorsing religion in a government funded institution is unConstitutional.
Recently, some enthusiastic Congressmen rammed their religion based amendment into the health care reform bill but strangely enough no one cried, “Establishment Clause!” If the rosy cheeked cheerleaders of Oglethorpe High can’t jump with Jesus, then how is it possible that a United States Congressman is allowed to? Have the Fundamentalist faction incrementally lulled us over the last three decades into thinking that their religiously motivated politics is OK in Washington and OK in our democracy? The Stupak Amendment brouhaha is giving us an opportunity to do a reality check.
Read MoreTake this action now to pass health reform without Stupak-type restrictions
Read MoreLooks like we’ll be spending another exciting Saturday night in front of the TV watching Congress debating a health care reform. I’m awfully glad women are so important that our bodies and our health seem to be a center of attention. On the other hand, I’m furious that the attention is once again on taking away abortion coverage rather than working to make sure women have access to all the basic health care services they need without Congress telling them what to do about their own lives, especially decisions as profound as childbearing and reproductive health.
It’s urgent that all senators hear from us TODAY AND TOMORROW. I vote in Arizona. My senators are Jon Kyl and John McCain, both 100% anti-choice Republicans who are almost certainly going to vote against the final bill. But still, they need to hear from me and you. Let them feel the heat.
So I’ve just signed this letter to my senators, prompted by the Center for Reproductive Rights which has it all set up so it’ll even figure out who your senators are and send it to them for you. Actually, I made several edits to the CRR letter and you can to if like me you find it too wussy for you. Here is my version–lift anything you want:
Dr. Nancy Tells It Like It Is: Stupak Isn’t Fair to Women’s Health
The Democrats’ Dilemma: Their Own Trojan Horse Kicks Free
Democratic leaders have said that the Stupak amendment’s draconian new restrictions on abortion contained in the House health-reform bill will not appear in the final version. Here why voters who value women’s health cannot sit back and accept such assurances. Re-posted here courtesy of the Women’s Media Center which originally posted it as an exclusive and is rolling out a public and media education campaign to help Stop Stupak. But I think stopping the bad is only the first part of what we need to do…
House Democrats broke into a paroxysm of self-congratulation for passing a health reform bill. By embracing the Stupak-Pitts amendment, however, they entered the women’s hall of shame. They had promised no more limitations based on preexisting conditions. But House leadership allowed a codicil: Except if you are a woman.
The Stupak-Pitts amendment to the health bill is a sweeping ban on insurance coverage of abortion. It expands the 1976 Hyde amendment, which outlaws abortion coverage by existing Federally funded programs, to middle class women participating in the public option, even if they pay from their own pocketbooks. Hyde began a juggernaut of restrictions on abortion and birth control that I’d hoped the current health care debate would rectify.
Headlines blaring, “Abortion an Obstacle to Health-Care Bill,” got it backward. And the biggest obstacle was President Obama’s approach, which meshed all too well with Speaker Pelosi’s: they are both so averse to feather-ruffling that one wonders why they entered the rough and tumble of politics in the first place. No amount of Rahm Emmanuel’s mean-guy interference could have kept this chicken’s eggs from breaking, let alone its feathers in place.
Smart as he is, why didn’t Obama know that when you start from a position of compromise, you’ll end up with a fragment of what you wanted, if that? The public option is too weak to exercise serious cost-cutting control. And now women have been sacrificed, like so much detritus, even though we are 51 percent of the population and (in case they haven’t noticed) 60 percent of Democratic voters.
Read MoreNo More Women’s Unhealthy Healthcare
I want to write an original post for the Women’s Day of Action on Health Care Reform, but I have to work on my book and get ready for tonight’s Body Politic program at The Tank (hope to see you there–doesn’t last night’s election news tell you we need to redouble our work? President Obama, are you paying attention? You need to get out there and make the change we said we needed, not allow yourself to get coopted by big insurance, big pharma, and big financial dudes–but that’s another post I want to write and don’t have time to do today).
Special thanks therefore to Lucinda Marshall over at Feminist Peace Network for allowing me to share this excellent post, to which I can only say “what she said.”
Health insurance provider Humana’s recent announcement of a 65% increase in their 3rd quarter earnings really got my attention because last week I participated in a health care reform rally at their corporate headquarters in Louisville, KY. After an outdoor gathering attended by 150 or so people, many of those gathered walked peacefully into the Humana building to stage a sit-in. One local newscaster breathlessly proclaimed that we had “stormed” the building, even though their own footage showed that clearly didn’t happen. They then gave a Humana spokesman a fair and balanced opportunity to tell viewers that Humana agreed with the protesters that there should be health care reform.
Oh really? Nothing says your definition of “reform” is slightly suspect like a 65% increase in profits while increasing premiums in double digit amounts and denying coverage for reasons that defy human understanding.
And that is truly the crux of it. Despite months of cynical political maneuvering in Washington, there really is nothing to debate about health care. Health care is not a commodity, it is a human right. What is being debated now is whether we will allow our health to continue to be commodified to satisfy corporate greed. And the answer to that absolutely must be NO.
Read MoreSign petition here to tell Harry Reid: Don’t let Max Baucus kill the public option
I used to kinda like Sen. Max Baucus. During the Bush2 administration, he was one of the best we could go to when we needed to make the Republicans’ legislation less draconian. Now that he is the pivotal leader for health reform, however, he’s acting like the Republicans are still in control. As you can read here and here, he obsessively dumbs down what should be the Democrats’ signature legislation.
Thanks to Credo, sponsored by Working Assets, here is a link to a petition you can sign to urge Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to keep pressing for a public option in the health reform plan despite the Baucus bill. More explanation below:
Next week, the Senate Finance Committee is expected to start debating and voting on its health care reform bill. Of the five Congressional committees writing health care bills, this will be the only one not to include provisions for a public health insurance option.
We can’t sit back and let the Senate Finance Committee kill the public option. That is why Open Left is joining with CREDO Action to tell Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to make sure a public option is included when the bill goes to the floor of the Senate.
The next step in the process is for the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate HELP Committee — which passed a public option under the late Ted Kennedy — to combine their bills into a single piece of legislation. This merging is largely determined by the Senate leadership, and so it is important that the Senate leadership hear from us.
Read MoreUncover (the Truth About) Abortion Coverage to End the Deceptive Health Reform Dance
I wrote this commentary for The Daily Beast–please go there to comment and share too!
I felt that it was way past time for someone to call out the cynical politicians who won’t vote for health reform under any circumstances but are using women’s bodies as a rallying cry to whip up the anti-choice right. Shamefully, President Obama and most of the Democrats are dancing to their tune, and will continue to unless we voters speak out and insist that abortion and other reproductive health care is covered fairly along with other basic medical care.
They named it “The Abortion-Controversy Hoax.” Probably a better, shorter title than mine.
It’s September. Congress will soon return to tackle health care reform, and I can’t help but notice a familiar political two-step. If you want to see whether a politician–Democrat or Republican–can cut a rug, just ask him or her about abortion. They’ll swing around faster than Tom DeLay on Dancing With the Stars.
Partisans on the right mobbed town halls during the August recess to exploit abortion and women’s health, whipping up controversy around President Obama’s health reform plan. Twisted logic and deliberate misinformation abound in a YouTube ad campaign by the Family Research Council, which, along with other anti-choice groups, also launched a paid media blitz claiming Obama’s health reform plan would pull Granny’s plug while covering abortion—ignoring that most of us grannies want to make advance directives and would be quite grateful if our health plans covered the service.
Meanwhile, Democrats were doing a dance of their own and, without Senator Ted Kennedy to lead them toward their higher principles, tried unsuccessfully to waltz away from the hot-button issue with the Blue Dogs to whom they owe their souls and their majority. No wonder voters are increasingly questioning Obama’s plan.
Read More