|
|
On July 15th, 2010, the Obama administration imposed a ban on abortion coverage in the administration’s new Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plans Program (PCIP), which provides insurance to “high-risk” consumers who, because of a medical condition, have been turned down by private insurers. The ban, which denies coverage for abortion except in cases of rape, incest or in situations in which the life of the woman is in danger, only amplifies the anti-choice influence on the health-care debate and the marginalization of abortion in general.
According to Jessica Arons writing for RH Reality Check, “Women entering these plans are, by definition, those who have experienced serious medical conditions — so serious that insurers are unwilling to sell them insurance. In other words, those who get pregnant are already at a heightened risk for needing an abortion for health reasons when compared to the general population.”
The ban is yet another example of the ways in which women’s bodies are continually caught in an ideological debate that ignores the complexities of women’s lives. As is discussed in the third issue of Ipas’s Because magazine, both women and abortion have been increasingly confined by restrictive U.S. policies at home and abroad.
Elizabeth Nash from the Guttmacher Institute examines the harmful consequences of anti-choice legislation in the article, “When votes are more valuable than women’s lives: A global policy snapshot:”
“These laws establish an environment that is hostile to abortion, segregate abortion services from the rest of health care and prioritize a particular social agenda above public health. But most importantly, because these laws force a woman to overcome such obstacles, she may have to delay her abortion or she may not be able to access the procedure at all.”
Legislation is not the only strategy being used by extreme anti-choice groups. In the article “Reproductive justice and black women,” author Cynthia Greenlee-Donnell describes how anti-choice rhetoric on billboards targets black women in the United States in what Loretta Ross, national coordinator of the Atlanta-based SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, calls an “assault on black women’s dignity and rights.”
Jamila Taylor, Ipas’s senior consultant for public affairs, calls for the end of the practice of using women’s bodies as political bargaining chips:
“It is time for U.S. policymakers to stop playing politics with women's lives and realize that abortion is a vital component of comprehensive reproductive health care. Stigmatizing abortion by isolating it and imposing onerous restrictions does nothing but infringe on women's human rights. I cannot see any good reason for imposing abortion restrictions on new, health reform innovations other than for the sake of politics. Oftentimes, the women most heavily impacted by such restrictions are young, impoverished and a part of disenfranchised racial and ethnic minority groups.”
Visit our Facebook page and voice your opinion of the latest restrictions on abortion in United States!
For a subscription to Because, email because_magazine@ipas.org.
For more information, contact media@ipas.org