It’s open season in Congress on women’s reproductive rights. The Pence, Pitts and Smith trio of conservative Congressmen have been using gruesome depictions of abortion, charges of child-abuse (against fetuses), and other inflammatory tactics to help whip up support for their three separate pieces of anti-choice legislation.
Today, rhetoric grabbed the spotlight when the House voted 240-185 to pass Rep. Mike Pence’s (R-IN) amendment to specifically cut off all federal funding for Planned Parenthood, the 95-year-old women’s family-planning stalwart that he calls a “criminal enterprise.” The House vote is "a victory for taxpayers and a victory for life,” according to Pence who has had his sights on Planned Parenthood for years now. In fact, Pence’s amendment is a redundant, mean-spirited piece of legislation that is designed to not only block women’s access to a legal medical procedure, but is also aimed at preventing women from getting contraceptives, counseling, HIV testing and basic gynecological care.
Planned Parenthood estimates it received about $80 million in Title X funds (the only federal appropriations available for reproductive health and family planning), about one-third of its total budget. Pence’s bill, which is sure to die in the Senate, is redundant because the Hyde Amendment already prevents any federal funding received by the group from being used to pay for abortions. Meanwhile, abortions made up just 3% of services Planned Parenthood provided to patients in 2008. Millions of women seek out Planned Parenthood for family planning and gynecological care; some 1.85 million of them are low-income women who have no other option.
Pence’s bill is just one of three pieces of new legislation designed to prevent women from having abortions. The “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” introduced in Congress last month by Rep. Mike Smith (R-NJ) is a broader piece of legislation designed to make permanent existing bans on federal funding for abortion, like the Hyde Amendment, which prevents Medicaid from covering abortion except in the cases of rape or incest or for the life or health of the mother. The bill, known as H.R. 3, also prohibits employers and the self-insured from using federal tax breaks to help buy private health insurance that covers abortion.
Beyond these already draconian restrictions on funding, H.R. 3 includes a new limitation on what “type” of rape a woman must experience in order to qualify for federal funding of her abortion: “if the pregnancy occurred because the pregnant female was the subject of forcible rape…” Just in case a woman tries to get the government to pay for her pregnancy that resulted from consensual rape? A further clarification in the proposed bill is that federal funds can be used for a woman’s abortion only if she suffers from a “physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness” that a doctor certifies as posing a danger of death. This line was included, no doubt, to make sure that women who are carrying severely damaged fetuses and are suffering great mental distress carry their pregnancies to term; i.e. severe mental distress, including suicidal behavior, does not qualify you for a government-funded abortion.
Smith stood up on the House floor last night and described in great, gruesome detail how a “baby” is “dismembered” limb by limb in a second-trimester abortion. In a commendable act of courage, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) was moved to present a very personal and unplanned response to Smith’s histrionics. Speier told of having to endure such a procedure while 17-weeks pregnant because her “child… moved from the vagina into the cervix.”
"I lost the baby” says Speier (you can watch a video of her testimony here). “And for you to stand on this floor and suggest that somehow this is a procedure that is either welcomed or done cavalierly or done without any thought, is preposterous.”
Finally, there’s Rep. Joe Pitts’ (R-PA) “Protect Life Act,” the goal of which is to permanently extend the Hyde Amendment and also to make sure its restrictions apply to any new programs that result from the health care law. Specifically, Pitts’ bill would prevent women who receive even the smallest government subsidy from using their own money to buy an insurance plan sold on a state exchange that includes abortion coverage. Going one misogynistic step further, the bill also would allow hospitals to refuse to perform abortions without the fear of losing federal funding. The bill would allow doctors to refuse to provide abortion services even if the pregnancy threatens a woman’s life. On Tuesday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the legislation, meaning that it will move soon to a full House vote.
For all the attention being paid to abortion in recent weeks, you’d think this issue was foremost in the minds of Americans and their representatives. But it’s not; House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA.), have said repeatedly that House Republicans must focus on creating jobs and cutting spending. Mike Pence takes a leap into the absurd when he tries to connect anti-choice legislation with the economy: “What is more fiscally responsible than denying any and all funding to Planned Parenthood of America?”
I can think of a lot of things—removing tax breaks for the rich, reforming health care, and regulating the financial system for starters. Pence’s vendetta against Planned Parenthood and the other anti-choice legislation is not “fiscally responsible.” The amount of federal funding that goes toward abortion is miniscule, not even large enough to be calculated. Instead, what we are seeing is a concerted effort by social conservatives to jam through as many restrictions on women’s health care as they can before the major elements of reform legislation—state health exchanges, Medicaid expansion, etc.—are rolled out.
Speaking about the anti-abortion rhetoric that dominated much of the discussion on the House floor Thursday night Speier got it exactly right:
"To think that we are here tonight, debating this issue, for the American people, if they are listening, are scratching their heads and wondering, ‘What does this have to do with me getting a job?’ ‘What does this have to do with reducing the deficit?’ And the answer is, ‘Nothing, at all.’”
Did you see the list on the Republican war on women?
1) Republicans not only want to reduce women’s access to abortion care, they’re actually trying to redefine rape. After a major backlash, they promised to stop. But they haven’t.
2) A state legislator in Georgia wants to change the legal term for victims of rape, stalking, and domestic violence to “accuser.” But victims of other less gendered crimes, like burglary, would remain “victims.”
3) In South Dakota, Republicans proposed a bill that could make it legal to murder a doctor who provides abortion care. (Yep, for real.)
4) Republicans want to cut nearly a billion dollars of food and other aid to low-income pregnant women, mothers, babies, and kids.
5) In Congress, Republicans have proposed a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life.
6) Maryland Republicans ended all county money for a low-income kids’ preschool program. Why? No need, they said. Women should really be home with the kids, not out working.
7) And at the federal level, Republicans want to cut that same program, Head Start, by $1 billion. That means over 200,000 kids could lose their spots in preschool.
8) Two-thirds of the elderly poor are women, and Republicans are taking aim at them too. A spending bill would cut funding for employment services, meals, and housing for senior citizens.
9) Congress voted on a Republican amendment to cut all federal funding from Planned Parenthood health centers, one of the most trusted providers of basic health care and family planning in our country.
10) And if that wasn’t enough, Republicans are pushing to eliminate all funds for the only federal family planning program. (For humans. But Republican Dan Burton has a bill to provide contraception for wild horses. You can’t make this stuff up).
One can’t get over how much they hate women. As their grand pappies used to say, “Dogs, women and slaves are alright until they start sticking up for their rights.”