Pizza Diavola

ALERT: HHS Rule Banning Abortion Coverage in High-Risk Pools

2010 July 30 at 10:59 AM (2010, feminism, Pres. Barack Obama, reproductive rights)

The Obama administration issued a rule yesterday that denied abortion insurance coverage for women in high-risk insurance pools (limited exceptions for rape, incest, and endangering the life of the woman). What exactly does this mean, aside from the steady eradication of a woman’s right to make decisions about her body, her future, and her reproductive choices herself? Well. The high-risk insurance pools are meant to provide health insurance to people who have been denied access to private health insurance due to pre-existing conditions. As a Planned Parenthood email puts it, these high-risk pools are for “some of the most medically vulnerable women in the country — those with pre-existing conditions such as breast and ovarian cancer, AIDS, diabetes, and other conditions that may make pregnancy extraordinarily dangerous.”

So this rule is nothing less than an attack on women who are already vulnerable and whose health is already at risk. “Endangering the life of the woman” is not the same as exceptions for “physical or mental health,” and I couldn’t find the text of the HHS rule to see if it includes exceptions for fetal abnormalities that would prevent the fetus from surviving birth, either. This rule bars women from buying insurance policies that cover abortion, even if they use their own damned money. This is an attack on women’s rights and their independence, and is a statement from the White House saying that they do not trust women to make deeply personal medical decisions. You know how Republicans and conservatives shriek about Big Government making decisions for people? This is precisely an example of the government doing just that, except that it’s a position that Republicans and conservatives espouse in this instance. The irony, it kills me. No, wait, it doesn’t kill me, a healthy, employed, middle-class woman–it kills poor women, sick women, and unemployed women.

Planned Parenthood Action Fund: Send a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services

ACLU Press Release with more info

Please write to your senators, your representatives, and the White House and ask them to stand up for womens’ rights and repeal the HHS rule. Midterm elections are in three months, so let’s remind our elected officials that we’re watching them and we expect them to uphold womens’ rights.

Please spread the word; the HHS rule is getting distressingly little publicity in the news.