the Stupak Amendment

[raven]

It's been an interesting morning - I may have alternative career plans! Also I got a haircut! - and now I need lunch and coffee before sitting down to an afternoon of civil litigation, but first, a word about the Stupak amendment.

In brief: the US House of Representatives passed the health care reform bill. It is called the Affordable Health Care For America Act and expands federal healthcare provision enormously - 36 million more people will be eligible for Medicaid, most employers will be required to provide healthcare coverage for their workers, and there will be a government-funded "public option". Also notably, health insurers will be prevented from refusing coverage based on medical history (no more gender-based "pre-existing conditions" such as pregnancy, rape and domestic violence) and the exemption for insurance companies from antitrust legislation will be repealed.

So far, so hoopy. The Stupak Amendment, with which this Act has been passsed, is as follows:

"No funds authorised or appropriated by this Act... may be used to pay for any abortion or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion, except in the case where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury or physical injury which would... place the woman in danger of death unless an abortion is performed... or unless the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest."^[1]

In other words, to get this Act passed, someone had to be the sacrificial lamb and 150 million American women were it. (Also, something else I have just spotted - the obvious women are excluded, women who want abortions for what are nauseatingly called "social" reasons, because pregnancy is not the right thing for them, but also, women who have mental illnesses which pregnancy would exacerbate are excluded, too.)

I actually have no further commentary to make on the issue, and I wondered if that were just me, but actually, I think there is nothing very profound to say about it. Institutional politics, particularly in the United States, is boring and it doesn't yield to analysis. Feminist analysis of the narratives of privilege and oppression, that is interesting; so is sociological thinking about why people think the way they do such that amendments like this are seen as a good idea, but on the institutional level of why, in the specific instance, the House of Representatives has voted like this, I'm coming up with nothing. They voted like this because they're misogynists, fundamentalists, or spineless; you can lobby them, but to be effective, you either run for the House of Representatives or wait for the current incumbents to die, or both. You can't argue, you can't write about women's rights to their own bodies, you can't talk about restriction of reproductive options as a form of control of women. Well, you can, but it's a category error to think you can convince an edifice of misogyny to change their minds because that, I think, fundamentally misunderstands why they hold the opinions they do - it's not because they arrived at them through logical argument.

(Evidence in point: thirty-nine Democrats voted against the reform bill. Twenty-one of them, besides Stupak, voted for the amendment. Institutional politics defies logical analysis.)^[2]

I don't know. That's it. It'll go the Senate. The haircut looks quite cute, but has that new-hair feel of belonging to someone else who's much cooler than me. I really ought to do some work.

---

[1] Yes, yes, this is not proper legal citation.

[2] From here. And yes, lawyers are allowed to run a defence in the alternative, but I suspect it's not the same thing.

Comments

[speccygeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

you either run for the House of Representatives or wait for the current incumbents to die, or both.

Ah, progress. Also defined as "hurry up and leave us the earth, you've already put enough miles on her." Sad but true: it's going to take a lot of old people dying before equal rights comes around in more than a few states here.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Ah, at last we can do that! It's not like they can wait for us to die, after all...

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Well, you can, but it's a category error to think you can convince an edifice of misogyny to change their minds because that, I think, fundamentally misunderstands why they hold the opinions they do - it's not because they arrived at them through logical argument.

Point. And as someone pointed out at ontd_political, nauseating as the Stupak compromise is, it's better to *have* healthcare reform and throw 150 million women under the bus, than *not* to have it at all for another cycle of 15-30 years.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

That's almost the worst part, isn't it? That it's worth it!

[sophiahagia.livejournal.com]

This angers me so much, I can't even tell you. As a disabled American, I receive Medicaid. But since Medicaid doesn't cover a lot of things, and/or lots of primary care physicians don't take Medicaid, most people have a supplemental plan that covers things like eye exams, certain specialists, and oh yeah, your PCP. But here's the problem. In my state, the supplemental insurance program is funded by a Catholic charity. They refuse to cover any "family planning services" including abortion, counseling, more permanent methods of birth control, or, on the other end of the spectrum, fertility treatments.

So because I am poor, disabled, and oh yes, a woman, I have no rights to my body. But I feel like I can't complain because hey, at least I have some coverage, even though it took an outrageous fight to get it.

Good old America.

Sorry for ranting. I just, I do not understand why it's okay to use my body and the bodies of every woman in this country as bargaining chips.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Do not apologise for ranting. I appreciate the education.

[rosariotijeras.livejournal.com]

There is this! It's something to be happy about! http://www.hrcbackstory.org/2009/11/house-passes-health-reform-bill-with-key-lgbt-provisions/

I have an explanation for the Stupak Amendment, though. People are douchebags. Case in point: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/07/gop-gone-wild/

(This is not me mentioning that Tom Price was elected from my district in Georgia. Not noting that at all. Not taking another opportunity to complain. Nope.)

You're right though. There is nothing profound to say. These people are just...douchebags that take the money of whoever they can get because running for anything in America is prohibitively expensive, and ostensibly a representative wants to be able to run in two years so that he can continue to (mis)represent the opinions of his constituents. And running is prohibitively expensive because America's political system is fundamentally broken.

Also, douchebags.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yeah. Douchebags. The American political system is so ripe for reform I can't even begin to say what I'd do with it, but it's got built-in safeguards against anyone ever changing the status quo. *shakes head*

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

women who have mental illnesses which pregnancy would exacerbate are excluded, too.
While there are many women with disabilities for whom the consequences would be more severe, o hai! This is me! Get me talking about post-natal depression some time and have a paper bag handy!

Fail, HoR. Women's rights are human rights. Gah :(

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

And it's not like you can have much faith in the Senate, either. "Gah" is about right.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

My representative voted for both the amendment and for the bill. He's been really trumpeting his devotion to the cause of health care reform, but I just - gah. I don't approve of this amendment like WHOA. I sent him a nasty letter.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm glad you did. What a trainwreck.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

deathbyshinies points out that I'd be OK; getting pregnant would tip me over from 'obese' to 'morbidly obese' which is a TERRIBLE DANGER TO MY PHYSICAL HEALTH.

The thing which I wonder about - and really, I should just go read some American feminist blogs rather than ponder here, but I'm goth-dancing tonight - is how much this actually changes things. How many women can currently get an abortion on insurance/Medicare/Medicaid? I thought that the provision was already pretty heavily done by women paying themselves, or through charities?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I don't know the precise details, but this piece (http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/11/09/will-stupak-amendment-force-women-whove-miscarried-lose-insurance-coverage-i-think-so) suggests that at the moment, some insurers cannot refuse to offer cover for abortions.

(Also, sophiahagia mentions above that provisions in her home state of NY are made by a Catholic charity that won't fund birth control/abortion - but this isn't the case everywhere.)

Have fun goth-dancing! Wish I were coming. :)

Edited to add: that link may be triggering re: abortion.

[subservient-son.livejournal.com]

Awful as it is, I don't think anyone should be surprised. I'm fairly sure the whole "Socialised healthcare will lead to the taxpayer paying for baby killings" was a prominent attack on the expansion of healthcare, so I doubt the bill could have been passed without excluding (most) abortions. On the brighter side, the fact that they will be paying less for healthcae in general will perhaps mean that a lot of women will be able to afford abortions more easilly?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

The latter is a very good point that I hadn't thought of! Thank you for that.

[fyrdrakken]

Also there is the thought that if the bill does at least cover contraception, that'll cut down on the abortions that might otherwise have been required by women who couldn't afford hormonal birth control (including the required doctor's visits) on their own dime.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Wow. I hadn't heard anything about this, and as soon as you revealed the "catch" I'm nodding, unsurprised, because of course that's how politics works.

It shouldn't. I don't have the first idea about how to achieve political reform in the US. But the "waiting for people to die" principle is one I tend to mention every time someone's impatient about social change. It's slow.

But yeah, this sucks amazingly lots, even if it was the "necessary" price of healthcare reform. Do you know whether amendments like this can/tend to be repealed later, once there's more of a political consensus re. abortion? Because there will be, eventually. But it'll take a while. And I guess at that point there'll be more to change than just this bill.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

As far I'm aware, amendments can be passed in the US to non-constitutional legislation in the same way as they can be here, so it's not on the books for ever, that is true, and also it isn't actually a given that the bill will be passed with the amendment attached - the final version hasn't yet been agreed on by the Senate. (The complete lack of outrage by the pro-choice Senate Democrats rings ominous, though.)

One thing that cheers me in a morbid way: the one advantage of being a liberal and a social progressive is that we can wait for people to die! We always win in the end; it's not like the conservatives look at us and think they have that option... :P

[subservient-son.livejournal.com]

The way I understand it, though, is that the problem with abortion in the States is that it was decided by Judges and not lawmakers, so there was never a public debate, I don't think it was ever part of a Presidential platform (as in before Roe, when a candidate actually would have had direct power), and so the issue still seems unsettled to a lot of Americans. I'm not sure how you move from this to a near universal acceptance that abortion is necessary.

[subservient-son.livejournal.com]

On a slightly separate note (and hobby horse), I loathe rape and incest exceptions. If you believe that a foetus is a person with full rights, it's a position with a certain logic that I can respect. But that should be true regardless of the circumstances of conception. As soon as you make an exception for rape and incest you lose philosophical consistency and it is clear that what you care about is not the sanctity of life, but punishing women for their sexual behaviour or the choices they make about their bodies.

[jacinthsong.livejournal.com]

Is this "it's a position [with a certain logic] that I can respect" or "[it's a position] [with a certain logic that I can respect]"? Cos y'know, I can respect it as a philosophical position but as public policy I think it's inhumane.

[subservient-son.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I see the difference. Obviously I think being pro-life causes far more problems than it 'solves'.