Women, Abortion, and Health Care Reform
Ria Misra
Contributor
Posted:
12/8/09
The Senate rejected an amendment by Ben Nelson (D-Neb), which would have limited abortion coverage in the proposed health care reform bill. Still, it's worth taking a closer look at remarks by Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) on the subject. From the Senate floor, Boxer said:
I
"The men who have brought us this don't single out a procedure that's used by a man, or a drug that is used by a man, that involves his reproductive health care and say they have to get a special rider. There's nothing in this amendment that says if a man some days wants to buy Viagra, for example, that his pharmaceutical coverage cannot cover it, that he has to buy a rider. I wouldn't support that. And they shouldn't support going after a woman using her own private funds for her reproductive health care. Is it fair to say to a man you're going to have to buy a rider to buy Viagra and this will be public information that could be accessed? No, I don't support that. I support a man's privacy, just as I support a woman's privacy." (via the Huffington Post.)
I think she's right. The reason a similar amendment in the House and the Nelson amendment in the Senate caused such a stir was not just because of the attempt to establish a back-door curtailment of a woman's right to choose, but because they set women's reproductive health care as something outside of a normal health care -- and that has real world implications for what insurance companies will and will not pay for. Reproductive health care costs represent some of the highest health care costs that most women will pay in their lifetime -- and the push for health care to be covered equally across genders has provided the reform movement with a lot of its momentum.
I