ACN Opposes Stupak-Pitts

An Assault on Women
11/8/09

The Abortion Care Network, a national organization of independent abortion providers and allies, decries passage of the Stupak-Pitts amendment to the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Once again the United States Congress has turned its back on women.

In a shocking act of disdain for American women, the Stupak-Pitts amendment could actually result in insured  women losing the abortion coverage many of them already have because it would likely prohibit abortion coverage in the new private insurance market as well as any possible public option. This is a truly cowardly slap in the face of the more than 90 million American women and men who have chosen legal abortion.

We send our gratitude to members of Congress who voted against this anti-woman amendment.

The essence of freedom is protection of individual choice. We live in a pluralistic society in which there are dissenting views on many topics related to healthcare---blood transfusions, fertility treatments, hospice, immunizations, adoption, circumcision, sterilization, and birth control to name a few. Yet it is only the service of abortion that has been singled out and used, once again, as a political football. If the religious fundamentalists are able to achieve this, they might well go on to eliminate insurance coverage for contraception, stem cell research, infertility treatments, and any other medical care that doesn’t fit with their religious doctrine.

We like to call ourselves the land of the free, but since 1977’s Hyde Amendment prohibiting Federal Funding for abortion services for the poorest of women, there has been no freedom of choice for women.  If one option is funded and another is not, then women who have no resources have no choice. Independent providers and private funders have done everything we can to try to bridge this unbridgeable gap. We have donated literally millions of dollars of services--yet many of us are small medical practices, and we cannot hope to meet the need of the millions of good women who are making the best choices they can for themselves and their families.