Next abortion fight

The next fight is to get rid of the Hyde Amendment.

…lawmakers cut millions of poor women off from abortion coverage. They did so via a provision barring Medicaid from covering the procedure. Henry Hyde, the Illinois Republican who sponsored the amendment, made little effort to conceal that his was an effort to undercut Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion just three years earlier; nor did he deny his amendment would disparately impact women in poverty. “If rich women want to enjoy their high-priced vices, that is their responsibility…that is fine, but not at the taxpayers’ expense,” he quipped during one debate. Later he admitted, “I certainly would like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion, a rich woman, a middle-class woman, or a poor woman. Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the…Medicaid bill.”

… [Barbara] Lee, along with Representatives Jan Schakowsky and Diana DeGette, introduced a bill this time last year that would ensure that anyone with federally funded health insurance has coverage for abortion care; they now have more than 115 co-sponsors. Hillary Clinton criticized Hyde directly on the campaign trail for “making it harder for low-income women to exercise their full rights.” And, for the first time, the Democratic Party platform draft explicitly calls for repealing Hyde, as well as the Helms Amendment, which applies to foreign aid—for “full-fledged taxpayer funding of abortion,” to quote one scandalized anti-abortion writer.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.