Often the argument is that if we try and fight the public funding battle, we might lose ground in overall access to abortion. But I think that the exact opposite is true. If we don’t fight the public funding debate, we’re going to lose altogether.
For nearly four decades, the Hyde Amendment has limited the abilities of low-income women to implement timely decisions about ending a pregnancy.
We know what we think about the Hyde Amendment. But what do women who are on Medicaid, the very people who are most affected by Hyde, think about the restrictions it places on their insurance coverage?
The Affordable Care Act requires cumbersome administrative procedures that will limit coverage of abortion in the new health care exchanges. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that abortion has been unfairly singled out from health care coverage.
To say abortion is stigmatized in this country is to state the obvious. But we have a special brand of taboo that we foist atop even that stigma, which is the taboo of having someone else pay for a service you need – especially if it’s an abortion. Yet while abortion may be legal, but if you cannot afford it, it’s inaccessible.
January 22, 2012, marks the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Reflecting on this, I am reminded of an interview with a woman who, when asked what she thought about the fact that Medicaid would not cover her abortion care said, “I wish women had a right [to Medicaid coverage of abortion]…. I think women should have that option…. There’s a lot of things to having a right to choose.”
On this, the 35th anniversary of Hyde, I invite you to share your own story. Share it through the 1 in 3 Campaign or just with a few people in your own social circle. Share my story, or one from the other women who have courageously contributed to this campaign.
September 30th is the 35th “anniversary” of the Hyde Amendment. Hyde’s legacy is that pitted women of different economic classes against each other, and resulted in a pattern of trading reproductive health care for other health coverage.
It is the 31st anniversary of the biggest Supreme Court case no one has ever heard of.
House Members are using a backdoor route to get their way on “forcible” rape using patently false claims about the law. It’s not the “longstanding policy” of the government to exclude victims of statutory rape. It’s “longstanding policy” to include them.
