Newly elected members of Congress had barely finished moving into their Capitol offices before ramping up their attacks on access to essential women’s health care.
With a list of bills lined up and ready to go—six have already been introduced —the new Congress of ultra-conservative zealots is not letting up in its anti-reproductive-rights crusade, which disproportionately affects low-income women and families.
You’d think there wasn’t much left to fight about given that in the past few years, state lawmakers have enacted over 213 new restrictions on abortion throughout the country — more than the total during the previous decade. But it looks like the new Congress will be doubling down. Take, for example, the passage in the House last week of the odious bill H.R. 7, which essentially acts as an all-out ban on abortion services for women who are poor and on Medicaid.
H.R.7– laughably called the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” passed in the House by an overwhelming 242-179, even with all of our Bay Area Congressional representatives voting against it. (It’s worth noting here that the Hyde amendment has prohibited federal funding for abortion services since the 1970s.) There was a school of thought that H.R. 7 might be an improvement over another bill – a ban on any abortions at 20 weeks gestation – that the House had originally planned to vote on January 22. (It was no coincidence that January 22 is also the 42nd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision.) Even some members of the Republican Caucus, mostly women, balked at one of the restrictions in that bill. So the caucus switched to voting on H.R. 7. But H.R. 7 could actually harm millions more women than the proposed 20-week abortion ban.
H.R. 7 would not only continue to exclude abortion services from Medicaid plans, but it would restrict a woman’s ability to buy private insurance plans that includes abortion coverage. It would also deny small businesses a tax credit, which they currently receive through the Affordable Care Act, if they include abortion services in their health insurance plans.
The existing restrictions on Medicaid coverage of abortion have already created conditions in which 1 in 4 poor women are forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. And this ratio will become even worse if H.R. 7’s provisions add even more restrictions to insurance plans bought with subsidies on the health care exchange.
It’s easy to imagine how restrictive legislation like this could eventually affect those of us lucky enough to have private health insurance plans. We’ve watched as early attempts to reverse the Roe v Wade decision by launching direct attacks on abortion rights have been replaced by more surreptitious and incremental tactics to erode women’s access to abortion. H.R. 7 is only the latest of those attacks.
As this new wave of abortion restrictions starts to move through the Legislature, we must be vigilant and ready to push back. Look at this avalanche of reproductive health-access restrictions for what it is: A far-right-wing legislative conspiracy that could make it all but impossible for low-income women to manage their own reproductive health and plan their own families.
Lupe Rodriguez is Public Affairs director of the South Bay region of Planned Parenthood Mar Monte and chair of the Santa Clara County Commission on the Status of Women.
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