Stupak Amendment 'Diminishes Women, New Yorker Opinion Piece Says

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance;  Women's Health / Gynecology
Article Date: 19 Nov 2009 - 4:00 PDT

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"A clear understanding of the structure of the health care proposals currently under consideration" in the House shows why Rep. Bart Stupak's (D-Mich.) amendment to the chamber's health reform bill (HR 3962) "is such a threat to abortion rights," Jeffrey Toobin writes in a New Yorker opinion piece. Toobin writes that the insurance exchange proposed in the House bill -- which would include the public plan option -- will at first offer plans to "those who are unable to pay for health insurance on their own" by way of government subsidies. Stupak's amendment "states that anyone who buys insurance with a government subsidy cannot choose a plan that covers abortion," according to Toobin.

He continues that the "influence of the amendment reaches beyond the beneficiaries of federal subsidies" because it "would prohibit the public option from offering any plans that cover abortion." Although "it is expected that each year more Americans will use the exchange, including people who don't need subsidies," the amendment does not give insurers any incentive to offer abortion coverage for those people, "since doing so might cost them the business of subsidized customers," Toobin says.

"Today, most policies cover abortion; in a post-Stupak world, they probably won't," Toobin writes. He explains, "With a health care plan that is supposed to increase access and lower costs, the opposite would be true with respect to abortion," adding, "And that, of course, is what legislators like Stupak want -- to make abortions harder, and more expensive, to obtain."

According to Toobin, "Stupak and his allies were willing to kill the whole bill" if stricter abortion language was not added, while "liberals in the House were not." He notes that President Obama "is pro-choice, and he has signaled some misgivings about the Stupak amendment." However, "like many modern pro-choice Democrats, [Obama] has worked so hard to be respectful of his opponents on this issue that he sometimes seems to cede them the moral high ground," Toobin argues.

"But, as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg observed not long ago, abortion rights 'center on a woman's autonomy to determine her life's course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature,'" Toobin says. He adds, "Every diminishment of that right diminishes women." He concludes, "With stakes of such magnitude, it is wise to weigh carefully the difference between compromise and surrender" (Toobin, New Yorker, 11/23).

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