one step forward, three million backward
i am livid.
so yesterday (i really hope you already knew this), congress passed a new health care bill which expands coverage to some 96% of working americans. yay!, right?
no. no, because women’s health was just stepped on, spit on and threw in a garbage can. if you are a woman with a health care plan, say goodbye to coverage for abortions.
i thought this was 2009. i thought women were moving forward in the world. i thought we were heard, and our choices and problems were heard. well shit, i was wrong.
i have had the TIME special report: the state of the american woman issue from october 26th sitting on my futon for weeks now. i keep opening it. i keep reading it, staring that cover which reads “a new poll shoes why they (women) are more powerful- but less happy.”
i keep wondering, why are we less happy? but i have realized why. we are less happy because we are illegitimate in the eyes of the government. we do not have a choice over our own bodies. with only 91 women in congress, out of FIVE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE, we are still outnumbered in government seats. we MUST have babies, because our health care will not cover abortions. obama and his crew are so concerned with more health care now! more health care now! and bi-partisanship! that no one stopped to see if the amendment was actually what the U.S. or more importantly, NEEDED. here are some view points from left and right on what this bill means for us:
A brilliant commentary on Global Comment points out that this is a class war issue, and that it is time for women to stand up for our rights and march and march until something is done (all over again).
Here is my favorite excerpt from this piece:
You think abortion is wrong? Don’t have one. I think killing people is wrong, so I’m not in the army. My tax dollars still go to fund it, though (in fact about 21 cents of each of my tax dollars). My tax dollars also go to keep prisoners on death row even though I think the death penalty is morally wrong. My tax dollars fund Guantanamo and Bagram, extraordinary rendition, and Jim DeMint’s salary, all of which I find disgusting. So why is abortion, a legal medical procedure, so remarkably different that we have to go overboard making sure tax dollars don’t fund it?
so i think it’s obvious i am “pro-choice” (i hate the phrases we use to describe abortion opinion, because saying i am not “pro-life” indicates i love death; which is exactly missing the point: i care about women’s lives). the point here, though, is that a) obama is not so liberal, b) this is a class issue, c) when we are so worried about getting something done we don’t think it through, d) there is going to be a large revolt on behalf of all liberal-leaning women.
if you wish to read more about this, or clarify the situation, this jezebel article does a wonderful job outlining the pros and cons of the bill, and what exactly our representatives just voted on. i highly recommend that if you read nothing else at all today or this week or even this month, that you read that article.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 6 Comments
Tags: abortion, health care, obama, stupak amendment, women's rights
what’s ironic about the “pro-life” movement is that the really radical members shoot abortion doctors and bomb abortion clinics. so it’s pro-life, but not ALL life.
i think a lot of the problem here is that the government still is so thoroughly male dominated, and i don’t think they really think about or understand the consequences of this issue. abortion can be argued from the standpoint of morality, but what about health? what about women who wouldn’t be able to afford abortions under the new system, so they get them some other unsafe way…and get sick or die?
i think more people should write letters (or call) their representatives and congressmen, just to let them know how the public really feels. these people are supposed to represent our interests, but sometimes they don’t. a lot of the time, they don’t. abortion is a divisive enough issue that people kill over it, so i understand politicians who are reluctant to get involved. but that’s just not responsible leadership. i do honestly think the best thing to do if you’re pissed off is contact your representative. do it more than once. maybe they really think they’re acting in your best interest.
or march on congress. the pissed off liberal woman march.
During the 2008 Democratic primary battle between Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton (and Dennis Kucinich, if we really want to be accurate here!), I had a deep, dense feeling of disenchantment. Not with my candidate of choice, Barack Obama, but with my favorite economist and political pundit, Paul Krugman of the New York Times. I was in the process of developing the various ideologies and mildly polarizing viewpoints that would govern my voting patterns,* and there were few commentators that I had more respect, more near-religious idolatry for, than Paul Krugman.
The disillusionment, then, came from Krugman’s bizarre hatred for Barack Obama. Following the Potomac Primaries, it was quite clear that Hilary Clinton was the spawn of a Salem witch, the kind of political gremlin who would stop at no level of slime-drenched bile and slander to win the election. Yet, Paul Krugman, my man, wrote column after column that was ceaselessly critical of every fact of Obama’s candidacy. It was a frustrating, mind-boggling process, how a man who was so right so much of the time could be, ostensibly, so wrong.
Well, that’s I get for second-guessing a Nobel-laureate. The main thrust of Krugman’s criticisms was that Obama’s pragmatism, his tendency to forgo the honest and altogether correct policy for the sake of public agreement, would tarnish any of his proposed reforms. To Krugman, the kind of crisis our country was experiencing did not need a Dwight D. Eisenhower. It need a Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
And now that Candidate Obama has become President Obama, all the gimmicky cries for bipartisanship and weak-kneed reconciliations that created such nausea with hard-lined progressives like myself have evolved into the very governing process for our country. Propose sweeping financial reforms, including the creation of a Consumer Protection Agency, but legalize Too Big to Fail banks and specifically legislate that roughly 80 percent of the risky derivatives and credit default swaps that destroyed the American economy be permanently left off the banks’ balance sheets; propose a universal health care reform, but secretly guarantee to Pharma that the government will not, under any circumstances, negotiate drug prices for medicare; ban all uses of torture; but maintain extraordinary rendition, preemptive detention, and expand the use of “State’s Secrets” privileges to such an extent that Alberto Gonzalez would weep; claim a change in US foreign policy, but appoint one of the key proponents of torture as the leading general in Afghanistan; claim to support an independent Palestinian state, but gush over Israel for temporarily halting illegal settlements on Palestinian territories; claim that nobody is above the law, but refuse to investigate war crimes committed by the past administration.
I think we see a fairly devastating pattern here. I could go on, but the central narrative to this dialect of disgrace is painfully clear: Krugman was right.
And the abortion issue is just the latest indicator of how right he was.
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*an undertaking that becomes more warped with each passing day—or whenever we learn a new tidbit about Tim Geithner
Oh, and, I apologize for the use of capital letters. They have the tendency to sneak their way into my pieces of writing.
hah. i know you would never do anything so improper, pete.
all i have to say is…you really hate hilary. it’s funny. and you’re right, this is a fairly devastating pattern.
and i like kucinich best.
It’s a sad shame that even today we are still fighting for vital rights that men have always had. Like you said, it’s 2009. Let’s gain a little perspective, America.
emileeee i LOVE this. i can always count on you to write exactly what i’m thinking, especially when it concerns women’s rights. this is ridiculous and outrageous and it makes me want to cry my eyes out. very well said!