An Eloquent Voice Raised
By CRAIG DELLA PENNA on December 20, 2009 at 2:45 PM in Current Affairs
A friend sent this copy of a letter she wrote to her Senator. I think it eloquently lays out a key argument against this atrocious health “care” bill.
Dear Senator _____,
Thank you for voting against the Nelson-Hatch Amendment. I appreciate hearing from you. More needs to be done.
In regard to federal funding of abortion: Please do not buy into “current law” propaganda, and please do not embarrass yourself by selling it. The so-called current law is far from settled law. Social conservatives have worked tirelessly and invested heavily to re-label and sustain the perception that this crazed sexist disconnect passes for evenhandedness and moral rectitude.
What good is the right to reproductive care if there is no way to access it? Access to abortion is a federally guaranteed right. It follows that federal funding for abortion coverage should also be legal. Preserving a right without providing a vehicle for implementation of that right is schizophrenic. Requiring women, especially economically disadvantaged women, to purchase private insurance (that they obviously can’t afford) for abortion coverage establishes an uneven and unjust baseline. The Mikulski Amendment is in the same disquieting class, since the MA has been fitted to the insurance industry, not to the rights of women. Shame on her, by the way, for offering tidbits and for not going further.
When you write that the Senate bill “strikes the right balance” in regard to reproductive care, you echo the reactionary (and disgusting) statement made by the President, for whom upsetting the “status quo” would apparently be a really bad thing. His words not mine.
The President’s status quo, a.k.a. current law, includes the following privative measures: The Hyde Amendment, conscience clauses, and the Bush appointed U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, all of which should be abrogated or dissolved. The President, with a nod to the Medieval Era, has said that he is “a believer in conscience clauses”, which he thinks should be “robust”. It’s one of the opinions he shares with the former Grand Inquisitor in Rome, Pope Benedict #16. I wish I were exaggerating, but sadly, according to his own statements, I’m not.
Here’s the 21st century view: Those who formulate or defend federal approbation of gender victimage contravene and circumvent a woman’s rights under the law. Make no mistake, they are wrong, unquestionably, and they should be defeated, unquestionably. The “status quo” is exploitative, anti-science and anti-woman. It is not possible for you, or any other well-intentioned person, to strike a rational, i.e. right, or ethical balance with people who are motivated by gender-bias, superstition, and fear. Why are Congressional Democrats letting the gynophobes win?
This is the time for Democrats to prove that reproductive issues, indeed all gender issues, mean more than electioneering slogans and political expediency. Universal, equal access must become – must be made to become – intrinsic to the healthcare items now under consideration in the Senate. It is vastly more important for you to do this for us, your constituency, than it is for you to please the feckless ephebe in the White House.
It is time to reverse the “current” stigmatizing of women’s health care needs. Health care reform is the perfect venue to bring abortion funding into full compliance with settled law. This is the moment to act.
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