Exploiting the healthcare debate to restrict abortion

[Henk Elegeert]

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Exploiting the healthcare debate to restrict abortion

Some religious leaders are pushing Obama for more limits on federal abortion
funding

By Frances Kissling
Read more: Abortion <http://dir.salon.com/topics/abortion/>,
Catholicism<http://dir.salon.com/topics/catholicism/>
, Christianity <http://dir.salon.com/topics/christianity/>,
Opinion<http://dir.salon.com/topics/opinion/>
, Barack Obama <http://dir.salon.com/topics/barack_obama/>
[image: News]

AP Photo/Virginia Mayo

Sojourners editor Jim Wallis at the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland, in January.

Sept. 14, 2009 | It was discouraging to hear Barack Obama, the man I
supported for president, announce so resolutely during his speech to
Congress last week that "under our [healthcare] plan no federal dollars will
be used to fund abortion." It was infuriating, however, that before the
morning cock could crow following the speech Jim Wallis of the antiabortion
organization Sojourners was claiming that the president's remarks on
abortion were just what "a broad coalition of the faith community had asked
for -- no federal funding for abortions."

I had been prepared for Obama to close the door on a healthcare reform
package that would include funding abortions for women who rely on Medicaid
for health coverage. Low-income women already lost that right 30 years ago
when the Supreme Court upheld the Hyde Amendment. I believe a principled
compromise to maintain the status quo on abortion is justified if it gets us
better healthcare for millions of men and women and security from the
rapaciousness of the insurance industry. And no pro-choice organization
wants to bear the responsibility for healthcare reform failing. And so,
tacitly, pro-choice leaders have basically accepted that the Hyde Amendment
restrictions, as well as those that deny federal workers, women in the
military and women who get healthcare on Indian reservations funding for
abortion, would be reflected in the healthcare package.

Unfortunately, the good will shown by the pro-choice community has not been
met with a good-faith effort by Wallis and his friends. They now hope to use
the president's promise as a way to press for further restrictions on
abortion coverage in the final healthcare legislation. As one moderate
pro-life leader told me, "It is going to be a long fall." All the talk about
finding common ground on abortion and the emergence of moderate pro-lifers
is floundering as Wallis and a few others prepare to push Congress and the
White House for further concessions. "[The president's] commitment to these
principles," said Wallis, "means we can now work together to make sure that
they are consistently and diligently applied to any final healthcare
legislation." For Wallis, that means that "no person should be forced to pay
for someone else's abortion and that public funds cannot be used to pay for
elective abortions."
<http://a.tribalfusion.com/h.click/aDmxf3UArTRq3XQGYMPWfM1dBuV63O2G3UYFMKT6qw56FdPPnK2dZbr1WZbLmHan5PUU3sUcTGQdUcb8RAFuWdQRUFbP5rEmUEjoTTnjSEnGScQJRrIoPWvbWGnU4burodqEaFZbLjm/http://a.tribalfusion.com>

Before the congressional recess, the moderate pro-lifers and pro-choice
leaders had pretty much agreed that both sides would not seek provisions in
healthcare reform that would change the status quo. Rep Lois Capps,
D-Calif., codified that agreement in an amendment to the House bill. The
Capps Amendment gave those opposed to abortion both the guarantee they
wanted that providers would have adequate conscience protection against
having to provide abortions and a prohibition on the use of federal funds to
pay for abortions in accordance with Hyde and other current federal law. It
made no change in the ability of private insurance plans to decide whether
or not to cover abortions, but prohibited private plans from using federal
subsidy dollars for abortions. It provides that every state have at least
one plan that offers abortion coverage and one that does not, so that
someone really opposed to abortion can buy a plan that does not cover that
service.

This, it now seems, is not enough for Wallis and company. They now want to
be sure that if an anti-choice person chooses a plan that does cover
abortion, the minuscule part of his premium that is allocated to abortion
coverage for all subscribers is not used for abortion. Stephen Schenk, a
moderate pro-life Catholic and a professor at Catholic University, wants
healthcare reform to extend the Hyde Amendment beyond those groups that are
already denied coverage to everyone. "If we are stuck with the Capps
Amendment," he says, "we are going to have problems." Chris Korzen of
Catholics United, a small Catholic advocacy group that claims to be
progressive, is worried that the public option plan is going to offer
abortion coverage. Although it will be funded through premiums and there
will be at least one private plan in the "exchange" that those opposed to
abortion can buy, Korzen is now poised to oppose abortion coverage in the
plan most designed to help low-income people.

Enough already! This is not an attempt to achieve common ground and use
common sense. This is not that different from the hard-line Catholic bishops
and Family Research Council effort to use public policy and healthcare
reform to make abortion less available than it already is and stigmatize
every woman who even contemplates it. And frankly, while Christian
progressives like Korzen and Wallis are spending all their time worrying
about abortion, they're ignoring the major gap in all the plans -- the
exclusion of undocumented workers living in the U.S. I always thought
faith-inspired social justice advocates were the ones I could count on to go
out on a limb for what is right, even if it gives the president they helped
elect a hard time. I guess I was wrong.

*S*

The irony of all this is that Wallis and Korzen don't represent the majority
views of either mainline or progressive religion on abortion. How long the
mainline pro-choice faith community will allow Wallis and a few small groups
of progressive Catholics to use healthcare reform to push for further
restrictions on abortion remains to be seen. For Wallis and others to assert
that denying poor women the same access to abortion as other women is moral
and "what a broad coalition of the faith community had asked for" is as
dishonest as claiming, like Joe "You Lie" Wilson, that the healthcare reform
plans are going to provide coverage to undocumented workers.

The broad coalition Wallis refers to is, in fact, a specific group that is
largely in favor of federal funding for abortion. All the members of the
group have done is to put that support on the back burner in hopes of
getting healthcare reform passed. Organized under the umbrella name "40 Days
for Healthcare Reform," the coalition draws on about 25 denominations and
independent interfaith groups for various actions. Many of these groups are
on record as supporting public funding for abortion and have worked to
overturn the Hyde Amendment. They include the Religious Action Center of
Reform Judaism, the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, the
Unitarian Universalist Association, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America,
United Church of Christ, Presbyterian Church USA, Faith in Public Life, and
the Disciples of Christ. Some religious groups that are not part of the 40
Days campaign are also on record as supporting Medicaid funding for
abortion. The National Coalition of American Nuns has no position on
abortion itself but has since 1976 supported providing federal funds for
poor women's abortions, asserting that it would be discriminatory to coerce
poor women into continuing pregnancies by denying them the same right to
decide as women who can afford to pay for their own abortions.

So eager are Wallis and his antiabortion friends to convince the media and
policymakers that progressive religion is antiabortion that they have
stacked the deck and excluded some pro-choice organizations from the effort
to pass healthcare reform. The Web site for the 40 Days campaign sets
forward criteria for membership that exclude religious groups working on
"single issues" -- code for abortion. For example, the Religious Coalition
for Reproductive Choice was told that if it sent in a sponsorship fee for
one of the many actions, its check would be returned. The group, founded by
the Women's Division of the United Methodist Church, had sent a letter to
members of Congress strongly supportive of federal funding for poor women's
abortions in healthcare reform. The letter is signed by religious leaders
like the deans of the Howard University and Episcopal divinity schools, as
well as Nancy Ratzen, president of the National Council of Jewish Women and
a member of Obama's faith-based advisory council.

Wallis and the rest need to be called to accountability for their decision
to push an antiabortion agenda in the midst of what was meant to be an
effort to reform healthcare. Otherwise, we will see the moral commitment
most mainline and progressive religious groups have to respecting the
consciences of poor and low-income women deeply compromised. Abortion is not
going to sink healthcare reform, but poor faith leadership can sink the
opportunity of poor women for a decent life.

"

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