Injuring and insulting women: legislative edition (Or, "Hereafter Known As The No-Good-Reason Act")

You need to know about this. Chris Smith, along with several other congressmen (many of them newly elected), feel that our representatives' first priority in the new Congress ought to be the passage of "insult plus injury"-style anti-abortion legislation. Enter the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act." I want to discuss two especially stupid provisions, which this column summarizes nicely.

The tax credits that are encouraging small businesses to provide insurance for their workers could not be used to buy policies that cover abortions. People with their own policies who have enough expenses to claim an income tax deduction could not deduct either the premiums for policies that cover abortion or the cost of an abortion. People who use tax-preferred savings accounts to pay medical costs could not use the money to pay for an abortion without paying taxes on it.

I mean, this is purely symbolic for the legislators, and purely punitive for people who need an abortion! Republicans are going after tax deductions? Breezing right past that irony, let's consider: Does the fact that I can deduct my spending on medicine or a doctor's visit from my "taxable income" make me more likely to spend on those things? Not really, it just makes it slightly easier on me to afford the things I need without taking extra money from me at tax-time as though I had spent those dollars on "fun" stuff.

At my current income I don't actually have to pay federal income tax (shocker), but assume the default 20% bracket applied -- if I get to subtract, say, $500 spent on a first-trimester abortion from my total taxable income, I'll save $100 come April 15. Not enough to make me decide to have an abortion, and not enough to make me decide against an abortion if Chris Smith bans that deduction.

Another example, going further afield to tax credits, which really are a significant chunk of money credited to you directly (not just deducted from your taxable income base): if I have dependent minor children I can get $1000 taken off my owed taxes each year. Has that affected my decision to have or not have a child? Would it affect yours? Probably not; people decide to have children because they are ready to and want to, not because someone's giving them a coupon on it.

I know taxes are a drag, so we don't have to keep discussing, but you see the gist: this ban's purpose can't logically be to make people less likely to choose abortions -- it's only to injure them for it by taking out an extra $100 of their taxes (or more, depending on their income bracket), and to insult them by refusing to acknowledge that their abortion counts as a health-related expenditure. (Just like tampons and pads and menstrual cups don't count, either. Just like breast pumps don't count, either. I discern a fucking pattern.)

The Smith bill also would take certain restrictions on federal financing for abortions that now must be renewed every year and make them permanent. It would allow federal financing of abortions in cases of "forcible" rape but not statutory or coerced rape, and in cases where a woman is in danger of death from her pregnancy but not of other serious health damage. It would free states from having to provide abortions in such emergency cases.

FYI, as Sady Doyle notes, "70% of rapes are 'non-forcible.' Rapists consciously seek out people and situations where they’ll have to use a minimum amount of 'force'."

Currently I work in a state that doesn't provide any of its own funds for abortion coverage but supposedly abides by federally-funded Medicaid's mandate to cover abortions in cases where a pregnancy resulted from rape. Even the old-timers at my work say that they have never seen Medicaid cover a procedure, even when the rape was "forcible" (all rape is forcible, obvi, since that's the opposite of consensual, but by this Smith really means there must also be beating), even when prosecution occurred, even when the pregnancy was DNA-matched to the perpetrator. Many clinics don't bother trying to bill Medicaid anymore, so the state is passively stripping women of even the limited rights they supposedly have. Abortion patients whose pregnancies are a result of rape, even patients who do have Medicaid, overwhelmingly are already paying for their own abortion care (and often struggling to do so). And women who can't pay for their own abortion care overwhelmingly are already bearing their rapists' children. Doesn't that warm your Republican heart*? (Oh, a few Democrats too!)

So this provision, too, isn't going to prevent women from choosing abortion. If the federal government reverses decades of painstaking progress in legal thought, jurisprudence, and goddamn human rights, it isn't going to make women who were raped but just not beaten too feel that they deserve to remain pregnant any more than they did before. It's just going to bring written law more in line with the outrageous reality of states already not understanding rape or supporting rape survivors; add to the stigma of patients who choose abortion outside of the few 'acceptable' reasons (e.g. "I can understand it in cases of rape, but this wasn't even 'real rape'"); and in the process possibly fuck up criminal justice even worse than it's already fucked up.

Sorry, y'all: every time I tell myself I'll try not to rant, something comes up that just makes my brain start bleeding out my eyeballs.


*Update: also h/t Sady, these dudes aren't even in touch with their own supporters - in a November poll, "71% of American voters who voted for a Republican candidate opposed the Smith bill."

Update 2: Sorry, I should have included a What You Can Do!  The same post I linked above provides a handy-dandy link to your representatives' contact page and helpful hints (for a sample call, see rabbleprochoice):

Click on this, and it should take you to a page where you can find out exactly who your rep is, and what their contact information is. Look that person up on Wikipedia, to get a sense of who they are, if you don’t already know. Then, CALL THEM. Be polite; be professional; do not threaten or use violent or abusive language under any circumstances. Explain to them that their constituents don’t support this bill, explain how and why it’s a bad bill, and let them know that if they support or fail to oppose this bill, they can expect that to impact them in a very bad way when it comes to the matter of keeping their jobs.

Education Sunday.

I decided to post an excerpt from a paper I wrote. In case you didn't know the specifics, now you do.

On March 24, 2010, President Obama issued an Executive Order that prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion services (except in cases of rape, incest or life endangerment of the woman).[1] This provision continues the ban on federal funding of abortion that was set in place more than 30 years ago by the Hyde Amendment. Proponents of the Hyde Amendment assert that it is their democratic right as policy leaders, to express their opinion and be able to exert their beliefs in the health care debate.

Currently, six million women of reproductive age obtain health care coverage through the Medicaid system.[2] Federal bands on funding for abortion services have severely restricted access to safe abortion care for thousands of low-income women who depend on the government for their health care. Poor women especially, are unable to exercise their constitutional right to choose abortion when public funding is restricted. An estimated 18-35% of Medicaid-eligible women carry their pregnancy to term because they cannot afford an abortion.[3] While Medicaid does not allow federal funding for abortion, it does provide funding for childbirth.[4] Medicaid insures one-fifth of the nation’s children and pays for one-third of all childbirths.[5]

Under current health care policy, the federal government is willing to pay for some of poor women’s reproductive health but not all. In turn, the Hyde Amendment is negatively impacting poor women’s lives on the basis of policy leaders moral and ethical beliefs about abortion. Should Congress members and policy leaders be able to put their moral beliefs above the health and well being of its citizens? Low-income women often face serious hardship when trying to raise funds for abortion services. Many women use money they should have spent on rent, food, bills and clothing for their children. A significant amount of women resort to pawning household items, and some resort to theft and prostitution in a desperate attempt to have a legal, medical procedure.[6] The 1983 AGI study found that Medicaid-eligible women wait on average 2-3 weeks longer than women with economic means to have an abortion. As a woman gets farther along in her pregnancy, the cost of the abortion starts to rise, and it becomes more difficult to raise the necessary funds, creating a vicious cycle.

The Hyde Amendment is a discriminatory policy that targets poor women, who are disproportionately women of color. Women who are not covered under the Nation’s Medicaid system, are either not enrolled in the program, undocumented citizens, or not eligible under the Federal Poverty Income Guidelines. Women who can afford to pay for an abortion on their own, ranging from approximately $300-$500 for a first trimester procedure, are mostly unaffected by the Hyde Amendment’s restrictive policy. An estimated 18-35% of Medicaid-eligible women carry their pregnancy to term because they cannot afford an abortion.[7] There is a huge disparity between impoverished women and middle/upper class women. In 1983, AGI researchers found that “nearly 60% of Medicaid recipients said that paying for an abortion caused serious hardship, compared with only 26% of non-Medicaid-eligible women.”[8] Although Roe v Wade gave women the constitutional right to have an abortion, they are unable to exercise this right when access and affordability of services is denied. The Hyde Amendment makes real reproductive “choice” a privilege for those that can afford it, rather than a constitutional right guaranteed by the Supreme Court.[9]

---

[1] Raising Women’s Voices. (March 30, 2010). Health Reform and Reproductive Health: Positive and Negative Effects. Available: http://www.raisingwomensvoices.net/storage/RWV%20on%20Health%20Reform%20and%20Reproductive%20HealthFINAL3.30.10.pdf.

[2] Boonstra, H., A. Sonfield. “Rights without Access: Revisiting Public Funding of Abortion for Poor Women.” The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy. April 2000: 8-11.

[3] Fried, M. (2007) “Hyde Amendment: The Opening Wedge to Abolish Abortion.” New Politics. 11(2): 82-85.

[4] Annas, G. J. “Abortion Politics and Health Insurance Reform.” The New England Journal of Medicine. December 31, 2009: 2589-2591.

[5] Weil, Alan, "There's Something About Medicaid," Health Affairs (Jan/Feb 2003).

[6] Boonstra, H., A. Sonfield. “Rights without Access: Revisiting Public Funding of Abortion for Poor Women.” The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy. April 2000: 8-11.

[7] Fried, M. (2007) “Hyde Amendment: The Opening Wedge to Abolish Abortion.” New Politics. 11(2): 82-85.

[8] Fried, M. (2007) “Hyde Amendment: The Opening Wedge to Abolish Abortion.” New Politics. 11(2): 82-85.

[9] Boonstra, H., A. Sonfield. “Rights without Access: Revisiting Public Funding of Abortion for Poor Women.” The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy. April 2000: 8-11.

Tax time

Sorry, I know you've seen this one before. It's just so apt. 

Did you file your taxes on time? I did, but just barely, because unlike the last couple of years, life was just way too crazy in January, February, and March to even think about anything beyond the coming week.

So I was doing the April-Fifteenth hustle and feeling anxious to hear how much I'd be getting back, because my bank balance has been dropping steadily over the weeks, much to this over-scheduled, under-employed wage-worker/student's dismay. And I thought of my funding clients -- the women who were struggling to make one paycheck stretch to the next, couldn't quite scrape together the full cost of their abortion care, and turned to local or national funds in hopes of pleading for the difference.

A couple springs ago, I was fully immersed in funding cases and found myself really impressed at all my clients who were so on top of their shit that they had already filed their tax returns. At some point it dawned on me that they HAD to be on top of their shit -- and they HAD to get an H&R Block "refund anticipation loan" or something similar, and give the preparers a cut of the return -- so that they could count on their tax return to help pay for their abortion services.

To so many of my clients, the idea of having savings for health emergencies is a nice dream. As shitty as it is to be faced with an unwanted pregnancy at any time, the spring clients could at least say, "Thank God this didn't happen in December," when obligations like traveling home and finding your kids a gift and keeping the gas account open would have made it even harder to raise the needed money for themselves. At least, since it was happening in February, they could get to work on a refund advance right away. Even if the tax people do turn it into a 15%-interest loan.

I can't tell you how sick I got of hearing, during this health-insurance reform circus, the petty selfishness of "Why should my tax dollars pay for abortions?" Even as people say that shit, thousands and millions of women out there are diligently filing their taxes each spring, hoping their measly take-home was measly enough to warrant a refund check to serve as non-existent health savings account, because "we" can't be bothered to provide a basic, extremely-common health service with "OUR MONEY."

This is all a very long, roundabout way of saying: Please fucking donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds Bowl-a-Thon. Even if it's just twenty, ten, or five dollars. Then email it to at least three people who might care. Can you do that? Please? It's the least we can do, living in this country full of very pious people who'd rather save their dollars to be dipped in the blood-bath of foreign wars and police abuse than see one cent of public "support" for the fact that women may choose not to be pregnant.

Health Scare

So. About that health reform.

Can I admit that I stopped following it months ago? Can I admit that, more than frustrating, I find the debates on health care utterly uninteresting? I simply can't pay attention. It's like arguing with a parrot who can only respond in one of three wise cracks, only far less amusing. We Abortioneers go through this time and again. You come at them with the knowledge, they retort with the yakety yak. YAWN.

That said, I proceed with my confession to admit that when the bill was signed, I had no idea what was in it. I Google it on occasion to see if anything interesting pops up, but what I've learned amounts to "Obama rules" and "It's better than nothing". What I do know, however, without having to watch CSPAN or read regurgitated AP articles, is that anti-abortion congresspeople just won't let up. What's the deal with this executive order? What does an executive order even mean? I had to ask my politically savvy BF, who informed me that it means dick and does not hold water in many cases. It sound to me like the antis calling for blood where it is not warranted or necessary. So what does this E.O. actually mean for abortion? Probably nothing, right? The Hyde amendment is still firmly in place (God bless it), and Lady Abortion is still dangling by a thread. I guess this just reaffirms what I already knew: our country sucks and always will.

As a self-proclaimed ignoramus on this issue, please enlighten me. But what I figure is we're sticking to the status quo and fighting in the trenches as per usual. I'm happy to do that, but at this point making myself angry by indulging anti banter is just not the way. Discuss, dear Abortioneers!

Mad about Michigan

Man oh man, has my home state gone bananas.

First, Bart Stupak is at it again! Blubbering like a baby, he condemns the new health plan for not telling women how to spend their money. The new version goes so far as to require insurance companies to itemize everything in their plans so abortion costs can be isolated. I wonder what the individual costs are for prostate exams and treatments. Actually, I don't really care. Men have the right to healthy prostates. None of my beeswax. As far as the ladies out there who might be screwed insurance-wise, start saving! Start making a list of your best friends and how much they're good for should you need to ask. Everyone else, start donating to local funds to help said women! Stupak, you are dumb. Also, get a haircut.

In other news, the pro-choicer who shot and killed an anti is heading to trial, and jury selection is beginning. Trouble is, the anti who was killed was so obnoxious that it is becoming difficult to find a neutral jury/jury members who didn't actually know the anti. Oops. Now at the end of the day, a murder is a murder, and I do not condone murder of even the most detestable of human beings. I am not pro-death (honest). But it just goes to show that being a jackass doesn't pay. I especially enjoy this little morsel:

"A barber, Jim Corrin, 63, once asked Pouillon, a regular customer, why he didn't display two pictures of happy children on his sign instead of just one accompanied by an aborted fetus."

Jim, you ask an important question with a simple answer. You see, antis do not actually care about people. They would rather use their Saturday mornings to scream at people than feed the hungry or read to children. But as far as I know, flies still prefer honey to vinegar.

And that's the latest from the Mitten State.

All I Want for Christmas Is

the ability to exercise my legal right to choose what happens to my body - not some old white men who will never know what it means to have an unexpected, unintended pregnancy. And yes, I include the crazy antis with nothing better to do with their time than harass women, who probably read this blog at 3am in their bathrobes.

Luckily, it looks like the particularly awful anti-abortion language (attempt to take away basically any insurance coverage) will not be in the final health care reform bill. Although, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they just replaced it with the same crap that basically defends the Hyde Amendment. I find it particularly funny that Republicans/conservatives call themselves small-government and claim that they don't want the government in their affairs. This is OK? Interfering in someone's ability to make their own health care choices is OK? It seems pretty Big Brother to me. Hypocrisy really pisses me off. But I guess it's OK when you're forcing your moral code onto everyone else.

How about this: Why don't you spend more time worrying about getting us out of the economic dump we're in right now and less time worrying about my body and what I do with it? As an adult, I think I can handle these affairs on my own. Thanks.

Since it doesn't look like women are going to get any help soon, and we all know choice means nothing unless you have the ability to exercise it, it looks like it's in our hands to help each other out. By us I mean, the abortioneers, clinic staff and volunteers, fellow pro-choice/pro-abortion bloggers, abortion fund workers, and all of you out their on the internet. In the coming new year, let's all do what we can to support each other. That might mean volunteering as a clinic escort, donating to a local abortion fund (you know how I like to plug for the funds), volunteer at a local clinic/Planned Parenthood with advocacy work, etc. - whatever you can do. Let's show that there are a lot of people out there in this country who support choice in all its forms.

In other news, Scott Roeder was denied the necessity defense for his trial. Some good news.

We KNOW you want one

We are going to open a full-service, abortion day-spa in every county, in every state, and then throughout the whole world. We'll provide the whole peace-loving, life-affirming, shebang that will beautifully honor the love inside each and every individual woman, but before you skip over like you're coming for a fresh ice cream cone to fit into your prom dress, as if it's some kind of birth-control mecca, consider this: unlike the measly population of steadfast and struggling current providers, we won't be compassionately servicing everyone in dire need of this most basic and significant procedure throughout your entire lifespan.

I'm keeping a scarlet list. It exists to preserve the sacrament of motherhood.

The following folks will have to continue to obtain the regular joe from some clinic or hospital, set way out yonder and peppered with it's very own protestor show--assuming they can afford it--as to not cramp the flow of this righteous and sacred occurrence on earth:

Republicans * **

Anti-abortion activists, clergy and empathizers * **

First families (past, present and future) * **

Famous people that talk shit about abortion during interviews * **

Members and affiliates of congress (speak now or forever hold your peace)* **

*No exceptions apply. NONE.

**No need to void where prohibited. We will be everywhere and it will suck! to be you.

Painting: Unwinding by Michael Parkes