Women's Rights and Health Insurance Reform

[asterroc]

An open letter to my senators and representatives.

I am writing to you today regarding the health care reform bill currently before the house and senate.

The bill as it currently stands sets women's rights back decades. Not only does the bill currently not provide access to safe, legal abortions, but it also does not provide access to the hormonal birth control which would reduce the necessity for abortions. If women are not provided access to safe legal abortions, some women will be forced return to back alley hack-job abortions, coat hanger abortions, or chemical abortions. The greatest benefit of Roe vs. Wade was not that it allowed women to have abortions, women were already having them, but allowing women to have SAFE abortions. In addition, removing access to hormonal birth control will only increase the need for illegal unsafe abortions.

What's even worse is that the bill as it currently stands does not allow for pelvic exams, a necessary routine yearly medical examination for the physical health of women. This routine preventative exam helps catch the early stages of fertility and life threatening diseases such as ovarian cancer or cervical cancer. Removing access to such exams threatens the lives of every woman on such a health plan, and will increase health care costs in the long run through treating the full blown disease instead of preventing it. In addition only women are being denied access to routine exams, giving the message that only men should have the right to good health care.

I urge you to work towards a more equitable health care bill by supporting any amendments that would provide access to abortion, to hormonal birth control, and to pelvic exams.

Look up your Reps and send your letter here.

Comments

...and more about abortion

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Both bills allow coverage in instances of rape, incest

Exceptions for rape and incest put the burden of proof on the victim, and few of these victims actually report when the incident takes place. There is no way to effectively put in a clause that forbids abortion except in cases of rape and incest that does not exclude the majority of rape and incest victims. The only way to make sure that the majority of rape and incest victims have access to abortions is to not ask any questions about the reason for the abortion. Don't worry, women know when they've been raped, you don't need a doctor or police officer to double-check.

Re: ...and more about abortion

[lurfmonkey.livejournal.com]

While rape may be tricky to prove sometimes, it doesn't seem like incest would be. Couldn't a DNA test confirm that? Or does the baby actually have to be born for a test to be performed?

Re: ...and more about abortion

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Proving it would not be difficult - an amniocentesis can get fetal DNA, that's how they screen for Down syndrome. I'm not sure if they can tell from just fetal DNA and the woman's DNA that the fetus is the product of incest though, they may need to compare DNA to potential fathers. If that's the case, the pregnant woman would have to admit to the incest and ID the man involved. While there are also other circumstances of incest, it's often a subset of rape. Do you think a 13-year-old girl would be willing to admit to being raped by her uncle? Do you think she'd even necessarily understand that it's rape?

I don't know how quick the turnaround is on this sort of DNA testing, I'm guessing faster than Down syndrome screening and that can be done before the baby is born, but I'm not sure.

It may be possible to do routine incest screening on all women seeking abortions, but doing so would solve the problem of "how do we enforce the incest exception and prevent non-incestuous abortions?" it wouldn't solve the problem of "how do we provide access for rape victims?"

I'm still thinking about your other comments. Thank you for your thoughtful and respectful responses.

Re: ...and more about abortion

[lurfmonkey.livejournal.com]

In the case of a 13 year old girl, I don't think she has to admit to anything. By definition, if she is pregnant, she has been raped, incest or not. It just gets more difficult after the age of consent. So the only option is to cover all abortions because the burden of proof is often too difficult to ascertain. I totally understand your argument. It's just in my personal opinion, I have a hard time justifying all cases. But if it must be done because it's the only way to cover legitimate reasons, then it's something that I'll just have to swallow.

However, I do understand why the provisions are in the bills. This reform is an extremely difficult thing to pass. The question is if it's worth not passing because not everything you like is in it. The country is split down the middle on abortion, so you will not be pleasing half the people if you go all the way to one side. My belief is that this bill should not have been one bill. It should have been a series of bills that were voted on individually. This all or nothing approach seems too risky and overreaching. If it doesn't pass, a lot of good things don't get implemented. If it does pass, some bad things will get implemented. They should have created a bill with all the things both sides of the aisle agree on and just passed that right away. Then they could have created additional bills to deal with the more controversial stuff like abortion, public option, and immigration that they could have argued about without affecting the core of the reform.