Health care reform must include abortion

A small group of Democrats in Congress is looking to deny women full reproductive rights under whatever health care reform passes. From the NY Times:

Abortion opponents in both the House and the Senate are seeking to block the millions of middle- and lower-income people who might receive federal insurance subsidies to help them buy health coverage from using the money on plans that cover abortion. And the abortion opponents are getting enough support from moderate Democrats that both sides say the outcome is too close to call.

This cannot be allowed. For too long, minority viewpoints have held too many Americans hostage, denying citizens their rights under law and the Constitution because political power existed to make such denials possible. What could possibly be more unAmerican?

There are all kinds of reasons Democrats in the Congress have given for opposing aspects of health care reform: the absence of a public option, the presence of one, the lack of sufficient subsidies for low-income families and now this: the availability of public funds to pay for abortion services. What the opponents of a woman’s right to choose are forgetting, however, is that we live in a democracy. They can vote against the funding as an amendment, but if the House and Senate vote to include that funding, their duty as members of Congress is to support the package as a whole.

For too long, narrow views on what is Right and True — and these are usually based on what people believe God is telling them what is Right and True — have dominated over actual democracy. We do not live in a theocracy; we cannot build law based on what same people believe is right according to their religion (or even their lack thereof). We have to base our law on what we vote for. This includes within legislative bodies as well as the electorate at large. If we do otherwise, we undermine the principle foundation of democracy: the rule of the people, all the people, expressed through the ballot.

Congress needs to debate the issue, they need to vote on it, and then they need to commit to the will of the majority. Losing a vote means you do not get your way. There is no point in voting if, prior to that vote, you assert that you will work to overturn the majority’s will. That is what military juntas do. In a democracy, if we lose a vote, we suck it up and move on to the next step — which occurs when the majority will is made into law.

Yes, sometimes the majority gets it wrong. Measure 36, denying gays and lesbians the right to marry, is demonstrably unconstitutional. However, it did pass in compliance with Oregon’s constitution, so it is the law. Opponents accepted the will of the people and took the next step in the process set out in Oregon law, challenging the measure in court. When they lost that battle, they did attack the people, the process or democracy; they began their campaign to overturn M36 at the ballot.

This is how a minority should seek to have their preference become law. What the Dems in Congress are doing is anti-democratic. We know that the majority of Americans support the right of a woman to seek an abortion; that right cannot be dependent on her ability to come up with thousands of dollars for the procedure (and the tens of thousands if complications arise). Health care, as many Americans are saying, is personal and private, between a person and her health care provider. For a Democratic Representative from Michigan to impose his will on tens of millions of Americans by threatening to block all health care reform is tyranny of the sort we Americans claim to hate and oppose.

American women deserve, at long last, their full rights under the Constitution. To deny these because a few members of Congress have their own beliefs is intolerable. Pres Obama needs to do the right thing and insist that the bill he signs allows women the right to full reproductive services — including when the government pays for it.