"The ban on abortions at military hospitals hasn't been a prominent aspect of abortion rights advocacy in recent years, as reproductive rights activists have scrambled to avoid losing further ground to anti-abortion measures like the House health care bill's Stupak amendment or the corresponding Nelson amendment defeated last week in the Senate," writes Kathryn Joyce at Religion Dispatches. "But there are reasons why it should be." Among those is the story of a former Marine she calls Amy, who found herself pregnant in Falllujah two years ago. Except in cases of rape, incest or a threat to the woman's life, military hospitals cannot provide abortions, due to restrictions on federal funding of them -- and meanwhile, a soldier risks substantial personal and professional repercussions if she admits to being pregnant at all. She can be punished for having sex in a war zone (even if, as Amy later recognized was the case, she was raped), denied promotions, derided by commanding officers and humiliated by her peers. As National Abortion Federation president Vicki Saporta told Joyce, "If you're a woman in the military, you're going to have to obtain a leave to get the care you need. If you're honest about why you need that care, you put your military career in jeopardy. If you're not honest, then you put your military career in jeopardy." Or, as Amy put it, it's "like being given a choice between swimming in a pond full of crocodiles or piranhas."
So, unable to access a safe and legal abortion, Amy used "herbal abortifacient supplements ordered online... her sanitized rifle cleaning rod and a laundry pin" to induce a miscarriage. The first time she tried it, she lost a tremendous amount of blood, but remained pregnant. The second time, she became so ill afterwards, she sought help from a female supervisor. After being taken to a military hospital, she miscarried alone, got a $500 fine for having sex in a war zone, and eventually asked to be sent home -- a request granted because a military psychiatrist was easily persuaded that Amy was unstable. "They convinced themselves that anyone who would do a self-abortion is crazy," she told Joyce. "It's not a crazy thing. It's something that rational, thinking women do when they have no options."
It's something that rational, thinking women do when they have no options. Today, when an entire generation of American pro-choice activists was born after Roe v. Wade, when those of us who've been geographically and financially able to access legal abortion -- and/or had the education, available contraception and good fortune to avoid pregnancy -- hear the words "back alley" and only picture Cynthia Rhodes hemorrhaging prettily in "Dirty Dancing," that point cannot be emphasized enough. Banning abortion does not stop women from seeking to end unwanted pregnancies; it drives them to risk their own lives and health to do so. And that's continued even since the Supreme Court declared that abortion is a Constitutionally protected right, thanks to restrictions on when and where abortions can be performed, and who pays for them. The military ban, Joyce writes, creates "just one more category of women -- including those below the poverty line, federal employees, those cared for by Indian Health Service and Peace Corps volunteers -- who fall into the canyons created by sweeping bans on federal funding for abortion." Now, anti-abortion clauses in the healthcare reform bill threaten to add middle-class women to the list -- meaning we'd essentially be right back in 1972, with safe abortion services available only to wealthy women who can afford to skirt the restrictions. The military ban may seem like a low-priority issue to pro-choice activists who aren't among the 200,000 female service members (not to mention spouses and dependents on military bases) directly affected by it, but it's a sobering example of how cutting off access to abortion services endangers people's health and lives. Says Joyce, "Going forward, the failure in care that military women have long had to contend with could be shared by all American women."
The Senate has just voted to table an amendment to its healthcare reform legislation that would have tightened the bill's restrictions on coverage for abortion, bringing it in line with the language contained in the House's Stupak amendment.
By tabling the amendment, the Senate essentially defeated it. But don't think that's the end of the debate over abortion and healthcare reform.
This amendment was authored by Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., who represents a key swing vote on reform, one his fellow Democrats have been working hard to get. And Nelson has said that if language like that used in the Stupak amendment, and in his proposal, isn't included in the Senate bill, he'll vote to support a filibuster.
The vote was 54-45 in favor of tabling the amendment. Nelson and his allies needed 60 votes to keep it alive.
Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson introduced his anti-abortion bill Monday afternoon and, as promised, it is a carbon copy of the House's Stupak-Pitts amendment. It restricts abortion coverage in the public option as well as by insurance companies that receive any federal subsidies -- even if government funding is carefully segregated. Predictably, this clone amendment is garnering an identical response from pro-choice groups.
In a press release, the Center for Reproductive Rights called it "a full-scale attack that would dramatically worsen the current state of affairs and prohibit women from using their own money to buy abortion coverage." Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards said it "violates the spirit of health care reform by effectively prohibiting women from using their own money to buy private health insurance that includes comprehensive reproductive health care benefits." She added: "Health care reform is meant to guarantee quality, affordable health care coverage for all, not take benefits away from American women." What's more, a Planned Parenthood press release offers a reminder that the restrictions could all but eliminate abortion coverage options in the new health insurance exchange.
Since we've been here before, I suspect Broadsheet readers who disagree with Sen. Nelson's rigid abortion restrictions know just what to do.
Sarah Palin is the new anti-abortion icon, Ben Smith argues today in Politico: "Her decision to carry to term her Down syndrome child established a special relationship with anti-abortion activists, and now Palin has transformed herself from a politician who was anti-abortion into the leading figure of the anti-abortion movement." The truth, though, is that she has been upstaged by the movement's real star: Trig.
The 19-month-old has accompanied Palin on her book tour and is rarely out of the spotlight. He can be seen resting on her hip as she addresses a crowd or carried by an aide while Palin signs books. Adoring fans have showed up with handmade signs that trumpet things like, "We Love Trig." Jason Recher, a campaign aide who came along for the book tour, told Politico: "There’s a lot of people who come through the line to see Trig instead of to see her." It makes me think of the way believers the world over flock to see children who are deemed to be the reincarnation of a particular deity. Trig is being treated as the movement's blessed icon, a martyr because of what could have happened to him: abortion.
He's also being used as a straw man baby against pro-choice activists. "Palin's allies [suggest] that antipathy to her is based on the belief that she should have had an abortion rather than bearing her son," Smith explains. He quotes two conservatives bloggers who argue that this is part of a "broader societal bias against disability." This is just another iteration of the "pro-choicers hate babies" argument. Thankfully, Smith injects some reportorial balance: "Those people are, in fact, rather hard to find."
That doesn't stop Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-choice Susan B. Anthony List, from offering a sneering representation of the liberal point-of-view: "She had the audacity in the eyes of the abortion rights world to actually have this child and then has the audacity to bring him along with her and feature him as a centrally valued person in their family." Who, exactly, in the mainstream reproductive rights camp is offended by her choice? Dannenfelser dishonestly recasts disagreements with the way Trig is being used to further the anti-choice agenda with an objection to his actual existence and the fact that his family adores him. It isn't Palin's choice that we care about -- it's her disregard for other women's right to make their own choice, whatever that may be.
Remarkably, the article ends with a relatively inoffensive sentiment from Dannenfelser: She celebrates Palin for providing an example that will influence some women confronted with a similar situation. I think it's wonderful for there to be a public example of a family happily raising a baby with Down syndrome; women should be exposed to a whole range of role models for the various paths that are possible in life. But, again, it comes down to the issue of, hello, choice. Even Palin writes in her book that she considered abortion "for a split second" when she found out about Trig's condition. She considered it because she had a choice.
Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., has been a very tough nut to crack when it comes to healthcare reform, even though it's his own party's leaders trying to do the cracking. Nelson, who represents a key swing vote that Democrats must have in order to defeat a Republican filibuster, has been continuously reticent about supporting the legislation, especially because it currently contains a public option proposal.
Now, he's got a new reason to oppose the Senate's bill, and he's firm in his opposition -- in fact, Nelson says, if he doesn't get the language he wants added, he'll vote to support a filibuster.
Earlier this week, Nelson said he was working on an amendment that contains restrictions on coverage for abortion almost identical to those in the controversial Stupak amendment, which is part of the House's legislation. On Thursday, the senator told reporters that if those restrictions aren't in the bill, he won't vote for cloture.
"I've said at the end of the day if it doesn't have Stupak language on abortion in it I won't vote to move it off the floor," Nelson said.
There's a catch-22 here: Nelson probably doesn't have the votes to get his amendment attached to the Senate bill. Plus, enough House progressives have vowed to vote against the final legislation if it still contains the Stupak amendment that the bill couldn't pass. But without Nelson's vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will have to convince a Republican or two to defect in order to break a filibuster.
Two weeks ago gay activist John Aravosis asked the readers of his popular AmericaBlog to stop giving to the Democratic Party:
"Until the Democratic Congress passes, and President Obama signs, legislation enacting [the Employment Non-Discrimination Act], repealing [don't ask, don't tell], and [recognizing gay marriages], we ask you to join us in pledging to postpone contributions to the Democratic National Committee, Organizing for America, and the Obama campaign."
Within hours a host of gay or liberal activists endorsed the move -- Daily Kos, Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake, Dan Savage, Michelangelo Signorile, David Mixner, Andy Towle and Michael Goff of Towleroad, Paul Sousa of Boston's Equal Rep, Pam Spaulding, Robin Tyler of the Equality Campaign, Bil Browning of the Bilerico Project. Even the more conservative forces among gay politicos, like the establishment Human Rights Campaign, responded not by distancing itself from the activists' effort but by saying that donors should always think carefully when spending scarce resources.
Right around the time the gays took their hands out of their wallets, 64 Democratic representatives amended the House healthcare bill to ban women from obtaining abortion coverage in the new health insurance market, a provision known as the Stupak amendment. Women are supposedly "furious" about what the House Democrats did. But no one with money is on record as striking back. Can you imagine the response from gay political activists if the House voted to strip all money for AIDS treatment from the healthcare bill? Maybe rich women Democratic donors are reconsidering their giving strategies. But they're being awfully quiet about it.
We do not hear that Nancy Pelosi's best pals, Gap clothing heiress Elizabeth Fisher and Getty oil billionaire Ann Getty Earhart, paused their largess. In 2008 Getty gave more than $100,000 to various Democratic campaigns, $20,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Similarly, Fisher gave generously to various Democrats and $26,000 to the DCCC. In the alphabetical listing of the donors who maxed out at the DCCC's legal limit of $28,500 in the 2008 cycle, almost exactly half had female names. Sixty-four of the Congress members they funded voted for the Stupak Amendment. Yet we do not hear that Denise Abrams, Anne Abramson, Elizabeth Alter or Amy Stan -- just to take the first names on the list -- have threatened to withhold further $28,500 maximum contributions until the representatives stop the barefoot-and-pregnant campaign. The well-heeled Women Donor's Fund started a reproductive rights action circle and spent around $2 million to "create a values-based, affirmative way for progressive candidates to talk about their views that galvanizes support." The WDN's Web site says it "briefed thousands at both the national and state levels, including ... the leadership staff of the ... Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee." As the Web site Open Left points out, the DCCC spent $1 out of every $12 it collected from its substantially female donor base electing the 23 Democrats who both voted for the abortion restriction and against healthcare; they must have missed that reproductive rights action circle briefing.
Why won't women take a lesson from the bold voices of the gay movement? It cannot be that women think their contributions aren't large enough to pose a credible threat. Not only did women number heavily among the max givers to the DCCC, but they also accounted for 42 percent of the donations to the presidential campaign, a whopping $145 million. By contrast (although statistics for the heterosexuality of donors are not kept and strategic gay donors are clearly giving in ways that do not show up on surveys) we do know that during the primary, Barack Obama raised about $1.7 million, or about 3 percent of his contributions to date, from the gayest ZIP codes in the country. But that didn't stop the gay activists from raising the ante on him when they thought he was screwing them over.
Maybe women think the Stupak amendment is just one of those awful things that ultimately won't come to pass. Just be good girls and don't make a fuss and we'll water it down in the final bill. Word is that some such story kept organized pro-choice lobbyists mum during the months while the Catholic bishops and anti-choice activists successfully organized. Women's activism: the audacity of swallowing.
Women have been swallowing since 1973. In 1976, an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, pulling abortion out of coverage by Medicaid, and women did nothing to make the Democrats pay. Knowing that women were weak, the Democrats did not filibuster the Republicans' transparently anti-choice Supreme Court nominees, culminating last year in the court's decision in the late-term abortion case, describing women as incapable of making their own abortion choices. Seeing that women were weaker still, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and its Senate counterpart asked pro-choice women to gag down the host of anti-choice candidates the Dems had found in order to create a Democratic majority in Congress. Now the Democratic majority the women enabled is about to make the Hyde Amendment worse, and women are negotiating only about how much worse it's going to get. Anyone who knows anything about bargaining recognizes the dynamic: give in the first time, and you're weakened in the next round. And so it goes until you finally stop going along.
All histories of the gay movement record how much the founders took from the racial civil rights movement and the feminist movement that came before. It's time for women to return the favor. Gay leaders can threaten the Democratic Party with a few paltry million-dollar donations. To paraphrase the lady at the diner in "When Harry Met Sally," I'll have what they're having.
The abortion doctor
Susan Wicklund has received death threats and worn a bulletproof vest to work. But what really scares her, she writes in "This Common Secret," is the war on reproductive rights.
By Eryn Loeb, Salon
How abortion changed the world
From a sketchy underground doctor to the American fight against communism, a look at the unlikely forces that helped spread global family planning.
By Michelle Goldberg, Salon
What's wrong with the new pro-lifers
The progressive anti-abortion movement still doesn't truly value the life and identity of the mother.
By Frances Kissling, Salon
Is there a next generation of abortion providers?
As if the threat of violence and divisive politics weren't enough, getting trained is almost impossible.
By Kate Harding, Salon
When abortion was a crime
Reagan, an assistant professor of history, medicine and women's studies at the University of Illinois, dedicates her disturbing work on abortion in America before Roe v. Wade to "the lives of... women who died trying to control their reproduction."
The abortion debate
An incredibly interesting debate that looks at both the pros and cons of abortion from a secularist viewpoint.
Scientology Accused of Forced Abortions, Crimes in Oz
RNC Ditches Employee Abortion Coverage 
Did Health Reform Have To Come At the Cost Our Rights?
The Stupak Effect on Women's Health