Today, President Obama will sign into law the Affordable Health Care for America Act. An initial summary of the wins, losses, and remaining challenges for women’s health and rights.
Having stuck around long enough to do the dirty work of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) has stated he will now vote no on reconciliation.
The White House is an executive order to placate Bart Stupak on a bill that already includes the most wide-ranging restrictions on women’s rights to choose since before Roe v. Wade.
“Under the Stupak Amendment, my baby would have died,” says Tiffany Campbell, mother of three from South Dakota.
Like a petulant child, Bart Stupak is going all over radio and television media stomping his feet on health care reform. Last week he claimed he had 15 to 20 members who would refuse to vote for reform unless they could impose their own religious ideology on the entire population of American women. Today he is down to 11. Bart is having a classic tantrum and I think its time for him to get a time out.
The President’s version of a health reform bill is based on a flawed Senate bill that contains totally onerous and untenable conditions on American women. It needs to be fixed, now.
The Democrats want Martha Coakley elected in Massachusetts today to get the 60th vote for a health care bill that presently renders American women unequal to the men around them. I can no longer support this.
A society that would force a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term would also force her to have major abdominal surgery.
The hijacking of abortion rights as a bargaining chip for the provision of health care is morally reprehensible and if it stands will result in significant harms to women’s health. Yet this is only one aspect of reproductive rights.
The Senate passed its health care bill in the early morning hours of Christmas Eve.
Next, representatives from the House and the Senate will merge their respective bills in a conference committee.
