Healthcare Reform: "Throwing Women Under the Bus"

Many young women take legalized abortion for granted, the thought of it as illegal is just beyond our comprehension. However now in 2009 we are getting quite close to this unfathomable idea. This past weekend the US Congress passed monumental Healthcare Legislation, however one amendment of that bill silently strips women of their rights to access to abortions. Susan Campbell's recent blog post describes the severity of this amendment and what we all can do to help!

Susan Campbell: Throwing women under the bus:
"On Sunday, a group of Hartford-area organizations sponsored a "Speak-out for Reproductive Rights" event at Trinity College. The night before, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to severely limit women’s access to abortion, and Sunday’s mood was somber.
Amid the afternoon’s seasoned activists and young women who stepped up to tearfully said they’d had abortions and told no one, one 20-year-old stood to say, voice shaking, that she’d never felt so mistrusted by her government to make her own decisions about reproductive destiny.

If ever you thought a woman’s right to choose was carved in stone, that notion could be abandoned based strictly on the Stupak-Pitts amendment [PDF] contained within the pages of the health care reform bill. That amendment, said one writer, "effectively bans insurance companies from selling insurance plans that cover elective abortion on the individual and small group market." This is the kind of compromise that turns a horse into a diseased gerbil. In favor of health care reform, we throw women under a bus. This is progress?

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had a huge hand in the language of the bill -- which seems odd to me because I didn’t vote for a single one of them. They are not my elected representatives, and I do not hold share their view of a woman’s place in the world -- this one or beyond. (Not everyone agrees they bear much of the blame.)

Ah, but we’re not done yet. It’s now the senators’ turn. Contact yours. Contact any one you care to. Let the powers that be know we’re not going back to the bad old days, no how and no way."
Please contact your Senators, we must protect our Rights!!