The Anti-Abortion Amendment to the House Health Care Bill

I identify myself as being pro a woman's right to choose when it comes to her reproductive system. This isn't a knee-jerk liberal reaction, either. I spent many years convinced that abortion is murder. I was most definitely pro-life at one time.

What changed? A couple of things. First, when I was in my late teens, my 14-year-old sister got pregnant. I was told she was pregnant, but not that she'd had an abortion until after it was done. Why? My step-mother was afraid that I would try to talk my sister out of it. She was probably right. I was so convinced that I was right, that I would have attempted to convince my sister, in the ninth-grade, to have a baby that she was absolutely not equipped to take care of. And I would have done that only because I was so strongly pro-life, without really looking at the situation.

I don't know everyone's situation. I do know my sister's. I know that there are things that happened just a little before she was 14 that contributed to her pregnancy. This situation, and especially being seen as so close minded that on top of everything else my little sister had to keep a secret from me, really made me rethink my position. Who am I to make decisions for every woman in America?

The next thing that happened that really made me do a double take was having a daughter a couple of years later. What if my little girl got pregnant in the eighth or ninth grade? This thought stripped me of any residual thoughts about believing abortion was a black and white issue. I have no idea what I would have done had that scenario come to pass (my daughter is 17 now, and thankfully has not been pregnant), but I do know that I wanted she and I to be the ones to figure it out. No one else.

The Stupak-Pitts amendment to the House Health Care Bill passed this weekend with a 240-194 vote. It restricts federal funding for abortion to those women who have been the victims or rape or incest, or if the mother's life is in danger.

My first reaction to this was--how petty. The same people who voted for this amendment are most likely those who have kept a health care bill from being passed in a timely manner. They're likely the same right-wing politicians who don't want to pay for the welfare that the children they are so desperate to have born will need once their nine-months is up. They're likely the same politicians who would prefer the federal government didn't pay the health care for these children.

I can see the argument that disallowing payment for abortion will cause insurance companies hoping to be providers for consumers who are subsidized by the government to stop paying for abortion at all. It's a viable argument.

Here's my problem though. One in nine children already born have no health insurance. My five-year-old daughter is one of them. My husband and I both work, but we can't afford the $600 per month each that insurance would cost. We can't even afford to cover only her. So we take advantage of a sliding fee at our local clinic, which doesn't cover tests or procedures outside a doctor visit, and pray that she doesn't get really sick before our government stops bickering and figures out a way to put health care within our reach.

I don't agree that abortion is not a health care issue. But I think that getting caught up on this one thing will result in an even longer wait for the health care reform our country so desperately needs. The Federal Government already doesn't pay for abortions--Medicaid won't cover them except under the same situations the Stupak-Pitts Amendment allows. Please don't hold up providing health care to the eleven percent of American children who both don't qualify for Medicaid and also have parents who can't afford the high cost of out of pocket insurance.

Friedman, E. (2009, November 09). Abortion rights activists say stupak-pitts amendment would hurt women's rights . Retrieved from http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/abortion-amendment-
health-care-bills-ignites-debate-womens/story?id=9034995&page=1

Left behind: america's uninsured children. (2008). Retrieved from http://www.familiesusa. org/assets/pdfs/uninsured-kids-2008/national-report.pdf