Bill seeks to codify Hyde Amendment, end private insurance coverage

Passage of stringent anti-woman restrictions on abortion funding in the new health care system isn’t enough to satisfy Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ). Chair of the so-called Pro-Life Caucus for 28 years, Smith introduced HR 5939, the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” on July 29. As of Oct. 10 there were 183 cosponsors.

Smith’s law seeks to change the Hyde Amendment — which has denied more than 1 million poor women Medicaid funding for abortion since 1976 — into a permanent law. In 2008 one in eight or 7.5 million reproductive-age women, who are disproportionately women of color, qualified for Medicaid health coverage.

If that isn’t bad enough, HR 5939 includes such stringent tax penalties on private insurance providers that they would be forced not to offer any coverage for abortion services. That means the vast majority of women of childbearing age — approximately 62 million women in the U.S. between the ages of 15 and 44 — would have to pay out of pocket to have an abortion. The current average cost of a first-trimester abortion is $413; later abortions cost four or five times that.

Designed to severely restrict access to abortion, the sinister, blatantly discriminatory law poses the most serious threat to U.S. women’s reproductive rights since the Supreme Court declared abortion a constitutional right in 1973. If passed, HR 5939 would function like an unofficial tax on women of childbearing age. This would impose a heartless burden on women in this jobless recovery, in which women and people of color comprise the majority of those laid off.

Having to pay the full cost of abortion, Smith prays, would mean that many more women — who currently earn only 77 cents for every dollar that men earn, with women of color earning even less, would share the misery and desperation that women on Medicaid have been experiencing for the past 34 years.

A 58-page study on the Hyde Amendment published Sept. 22 by the Center for Reproductive Rights reports that 61 percent of women having abortions are mothers with one or more children and that 58 percent of women on Medicaid say the Hyde Amendment imposes a “serious hardship” on them.

Those driven to end a pregnancy have to beg, borrow or scrounge — often depriving their children of food, pawning cherished valuables or taking out high-interest loans — to pay for the health care they require. The report cited statistics showing that due to the Hyde Amendment, 18 to 37 percent of women who would have obtained an abortion if Medicaid funding were available instead carry pregnancies to term.

The timely study exposes the glaring inequality of reproductive rights in the U.S. and the critical need to renew the fight for reproductive justice for all women.

Since its founding in 1993, the National Network for Abortion Funds, which collaborated with CRR on the report, has been able to raise $3 million to help 21,000 poor women obtain abortions. In 2006 NNAF initiated a campaign, entitled “Hyde: 30 Years Is Enough,” demanding that the government fund abortions to ensure dignity, justice and equal access to essential health care.

“Representative Smith’s bill targets the most vulnerable women, and we know, after 34 years of the Hyde Amendment, the terrible toll that abortion funding restrictions take on women, families and communities,” Megan Peterson, NNAF deputy director, told Workers World. “Once again, politicians are dangerously out of touch with the true impact of abortion funding restrictions like the Hyde Amendment. Women are going hungry for weeks, missing utility payments and risking eviction so that they can scrape together the money they need for abortion care — and too often, still coming up short. Obviously it would be devastating to have these restrictions codified into permanent law. We must raise our voices against these persistent attacks on women’s health and autonomy.”

Other women’s groups, both national and regional, are organizing to stop the dangerous threat posed by HR 5939. Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, told Workers World: “NOW is very concerned about this law. We’re mobilizing our supporters and networking with other women’s groups to stop it. Abortion is a common medical procedure that one in three women will have in their lifetime. Putting obstacles in the way of women having abortions is dangerous sex discrimination and a human rights violation. NOW will do everything we can to defeat that law.”

Debbie Johnson, a leader in the Detroit Action Network for Reproductive Rights, thinks it’s time to call a national demonstration. “We definitely have to organize against this pending legislation that is directed against the poorest women, whose daily struggles for survival prevent them from coming out to protest,” Johnson told Workers World. “It’s an unwritten law that poor women, especially women of color and immigrants, have no rights. The progressive movement and all women who support the right to choose have to stand up for those whose voices would otherwise not be heard. We have to take this fight to the national level.”

Next: How the 1970s struggle to end the Hyde Amendment led to the concept of women’s reproductive rights.