Skip to main content

New top story from Time: The House Just Passed Federal Spending Bills Without Abortion Restrictions for the First Time in Decades

https://ift.tt/2V3ikib

The House of Representatives passed a package of spending bills this week without provisions banning federal funding for most abortions in the U.S. and abroad, marking the first time in decades that the restrictions have not been included.

The changes face long odds in the evenly divided Senate, where moderate Democrats and Republicans have said they oppose removing the abortion limits, but the House’s move represents a milestone in the national battle over abortion access.

“Finally, the right to reproductive freedom has been recognized by the majority of Democrats,” says Rep. Barbara Lee of California, who has championed the effort to repeal the funding bans for years.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The best-known of these provisions is the Hyde amendment, which prohibits federally funded programs like Medicaid from paying for abortions except in the cases of rape, incest or to protect the life of the woman. It was first passed in 1976 and has been added to every federal spending bill since.

Lee was a Congressional staffer when the Hyde amendment was passed and says it made her “furious,” and she has been working to get rid of it ever since. “It’s a racial justice issue. It’s an economic justice issue,” she says. Democrats and reproductive rights groups say the amendment creates significant barriers for low-income women and women of color, who are disproportionately affected by the ban. Among women of reproductive age, 29% of Black women and 25% of Hispanic women had health insurance coverage through Medicaid in 2019, compared with 15% of white women and 12% of Asian women, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

Conservative states have enacted hundreds of abortion restrictions in recent years, meaning people often must drive long distances to reach an abortion provider, navigate waiting periods and take time off work in addition to covering the cost of the procedure. An April study in the journal Social Science and Medicine found that residents in states where Medicaid does not cover abortion faced more financial barriers and spent longer seeking an abortion. Other research has shown that for some women, not having insurance coverage of abortion effectively bans them from accessing it. A 2019 study in the journal BMC Women’s Health found that in Louisiana, 29% of pregnant women who were eligible for Medicaid would have had an abortion if it were covered.

But people who support Hyde amendment worry removing it will open the floodgates to more abortions, which they strenuously oppose.

“We respect the sanctity of that unborn child’s life. We want to protect that child. We don’t think abortion is good for unborn children or their moms. And when the government funds something, you get more of it,” says Autumn Christensen, federal policy director for Susan B. Anthony List, a conservative group that aims to elect anti-abortion candidates. The Hyde Amendment “saves lives by reducing by eliminating taxpayer funding from the federal government to those to that service,” she says.

The House didn’t just remove restrictions on funding for domestic abortions. Another measure, known as the Helms amendment, has barred U.S. funds from being used for abortions in other countries since Congress passed it in 1973. The House passed the State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs spending bill that dropped the Helms amendment Wednesday night.

Although it contains exceptions, advocates say the Helms amendment is interpreted broadly by international organizations due to confusion and fear over losing assistance from the U.S., which is the world’s largest donor to international family planning and reproductive health efforts. This not only curbs access to safe abortions in low and middle income countries, they say, but also hinders efforts to improve maternal health. If the Helms amendment were repealed, that would mean 19 million fewer unsafe abortions and 17,000 fewer maternal deaths each year, according to Guttmacher.

“This is impeding other governments who are trying to integrate safe abortion into their health systems,” says Bethany van Kampen, senior policy advisor at Ipas, an international non-governmental organization that works to expand access to contraception and abortion. She notes that more than 40 countries have changed laws to allow for more abortion access in the last three decades. “We absolutely cannot address maternal health issues, and the huge public health crisis that we’re seeing in maternal deaths, without addressing unsafe abortion.”

Republicans in Congress objected to the removal of both amendments. No Republicans voted for the Labor-HHS-Education spending bill that scrapped the Hyde Amendment when it was in the Appropriations Committee, and none voted for the package of spending bills on the House floor on Thursday. Senate Republicans have promised not to support a spending bill without Hyde, and the party believes it can highlight on the issue going forward.

Susan B. Anthony List launched a six-figure ad campaign earlier this year targeting Democrats in battleground states and connecting them to President Joe Biden’s decision to leave the Hyde Amendment out of his budget proposal. The amendments will be a “key part” of the group’s political and voter outreach in 2021 and 2022, Christensen says.

Still, Democrats who have been working on repealing these amendments for years have already seen progress towards their goal, and advocates say this week’s votes shows they have more momentum moving forward.

“It’s been a women of color led effort because our communities are the most impacted by Hyde,” says Destiny Lopez, co-president of All* Above All, which advocates for the repeal of Hyde. Reproductive justice organizations led by women of color have been raising concerns about the Hyde amendment for decades, but Lopez says the issue finally got more attention from Congress in recent years. “I think they’ve really understood how how racist this policy is, and how detrimental it is to folks of color who are working to make ends meet, because that’s who the harms of coverage bans like this fall hardest on.”

In 2015, when Rep. Lee first introduced the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance (EACH) Act, which would permanently repeal the Hyde Amendment, it got 129 cosponsors. This year’s version has 167. In 2016, the Democratic Party added the repeal of Hyde to its national platform, and in 2019, Biden reversed his long-held support for the amendment. Last year, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat from Illinois, introduced the first legislation that would permanently repeal the Helms Amendment, and Appropriations Committee Chair Rosa DeLauro and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised that they would not add the Hyde language to any government funding bill going forward.

Schakowksy knows that the House’s passage of the spending bills this week won’t address all the obstacles to accessing abortion. States can still choose to prohibit their Medicaid programs from covering abortion and continue to enact more abortion limits. And even with the Democrats’ success in the House, the Senate remains unlikely to follow suit.

But “as an organizer most of my life,” Schakowsky says, “these kinds of victories absolutely move an agenda forward.”

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

FOX NEWS: Americans will suffer 5 sweaty, sleepless nights before turning on the AC for the summer, survey finds Nearly half of Americans wouldn’t date someone who didn’t have the same thermostat etiquette as them, according to new research.

Americans will suffer 5 sweaty, sleepless nights before turning on the AC for the summer, survey finds Nearly half of Americans wouldn’t date someone who didn’t have the same thermostat etiquette as them, according to new research. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/2Ay0ABA

New top story from Time: A COVID Outbreak Sparked by Partying Teens Leads to 5,000 Being Quarantined in Spain

https://ift.tt/2UJaeL7 MADRID — Almost 5,000 people are in quarantine after vacationing high school students triggered a major COVID-19 outbreak on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca, a senior official said Monday. Authorities have confirmed almost 1,200 positive cases from the outbreak, Spain’s emergency health response coordinator, Fernando Simón said. The partying teens celebrating the end of their university entrance exams last week created a “perfect breeding ground” for the virus as they mixed with others from around Spain and abroad, Simón told a news conference. Mallorca health authorities carried out mass testing on hundreds of students after the outbreak became clear. It is believed to have spread as hundreds of partying students gathered at a concert and street parties. Officials have so far traced 5,126 travelers to Mallorca. More than 900 COVID-19 cases in eight regions across mainland Spain have been traced back to the outbreak. Scores of infected teens are...

PM Modi lauds IFS officers for their work towards serving nation, furthering national interests https://ift.tt/36HoEzw

Greeting Indian Foreign Service officers on IFS day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that their work towards serving the nation and furthering national interests globally are commendable. Their efforts during the Vande Bharat Mission, which was launched to bring Indians home from abroad during the COVID-19 pandemic as international travel came to a halt, and other related help to our citizens and other nations is noteworthy, Modi added.

FOX NEWS: Couple gets married at 'most beautiful' Taco Bell: 'It was the best of both worlds' Analicia Garcia, 24, and Kyle Howser, 25, from Sacramento, California, got married on Tuesday, Oct. 26 and had their reception at the famous Pacifica, California, Taco Bell.

Couple gets married at 'most beautiful' Taco Bell: 'It was the best of both worlds' Analicia Garcia, 24, and Kyle Howser, 25, from Sacramento, California, got married on Tuesday, Oct. 26 and had their reception at the famous Pacifica, California, Taco Bell. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/iznRBtFTJ

New top story from Time: ‘It’s a Catastrophe.’ Iranians Turn to Black Market for Vaccines as COVID-19 Deaths Hit New Highs

https://ift.tt/3AODY94 In January, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the sudden announcement that American and British-made COVID-19 vaccines would be “forbidden” as they were “completely untrustworthy.” Almost nine months later, Iran is facing its worst surge in the virus to date — a record number of deaths and infections per day with nearly 4.2 million COVID-19 patients across the country , and a healthcare system near collapse. “It’s a catastrophe; and there is nothing we can do,” said an anesthesiology resident in one of Tehran’s public hospitals who due to the current surge is tasked to oversee the ICU ward for COVID-19 patients. “We can’t treat them nor help them; so all I can ask people to do is to stay home and do whatever it takes to not get exposed.” The doctor requested anonymity in order to speak freely; others interviewed by TIME asked to be identified only by their first name. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The scale of the crisis is such ...

New Sculptures Light up Van Ness Avenue

New Sculptures Light up Van Ness Avenue By Luis “Loui” Apolonio Light sculpture at Van Ness Avenue and O'Farrell Street Spectators gathered both online and in person to watch new lighting sculptures on Van Ness turned on for the first time on March 31, 2022. The whimsical and brightly colored sculptures located on the new Van Ness BRT boarding platform between Geary and O’Farrell are made of steel with LED lights inside on a timer set to illuminate at night.  The lighting event was kicked off with SFMTA Director Jeff Tumlin and MTAB Chair Gwyneth Borden serving as emcees. Mary Chou, Director of Public Arts and Collections at the San Francisco Arts Commission, spoke about the art installation itself, as well as the process for selecting the artist who would be awarded the project. In addition, Maddy Ruvolo, a member of the SFMTA’s Accessible Services team and a recently appointed member of President Biden’s U.S. Access Board, shared the importance of having accessibility as a ...

Happy Lunar New Year 2022: Year of the Tiger 

Happy Lunar New Year 2022: Year of the Tiger  By Pamela Johnson Lunar New Year is one of the biggest holidays celebrated in many Asian communities. Diverse San Franciscan communities including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese people have long celebrated this festive occasion.  For many, the Lunar New Year brings a fresh mindset and resolutions for happiness and health. A zodiac animal with specific traits represents each year in the repeating zodiac cycle of 12 years. 2022 is the Year of the Tiger, the third animal in the zodiac. The tiger is considered courageous and adventurous.   The holiday follows the moon's cycles and usually begins in late January or early February. This year Lunar New Year begins February 1.   Fun Fact: In the lunar calendar, the Vietnamese zodiac and the Chinese zodiac are similar, but the Vietnamese zodiac includes a cat while the Chinese ...

New T Third Connecting Chinatown to Sunnydale Starts Saturday

New T Third Connecting Chinatown to Sunnydale Starts Saturday By Christopher Ward New Muni Metro map. This Saturday the T Third starts its long-awaited new route connecting Chinatown-Rose Pak Station from 4th & King in Central Subway, Mondays through Fridays, 6 a.m. to midnight every 10 minutes and Saturdays and Sundays, 8 a.m. to midnight every 12 minutes.   The K Ingleside will now travel between Balboa Park and Embarcadero Station. Customers using Embarcadero & Folsom, Embarcadero & Brannan and 2nd and King platforms should transfer to the N Judah at Powell Station or 4th & King. Watch the new Muni Metro service  map animations . The following bus service changes also start this Saturday: The T Third Bus will now run along 3rd and 4th Streets in SoMa and on Stockton Street north of Market Street to align with the new T Third rail line and will no longer travel on the Embarcadero and Market Street.   The 6 Haight/Parnassus  will now...

Smarter Traffic Signals Prioritize Transit and People

Smarter Traffic Signals Prioritize Transit and People By Robert Lim Have you ever wondered how traffic signals could better balance the needs of all road users, whether driving, bicycling, walking or taking Muni? The SFMTA is rolling out its Connected Corridor Pilot this month to use transit platform and traffic signal sensor data to inform signal timing adjustments. The pilot also aims to collect information to support transit efficiency and street safety improvements.  Traffic engineers use signal timing adjustments as a tool to prioritize the flow of travel in specific directions or for different travel modes – Muni, people walking or driving – to meet the changing demands of the road network across different timepoints in a day. The Connected Corridors Pilot seeks to push the envelope of innovation by investing in advanced technologies, funded through a U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) grant. These tools will better position the city to serve the potential future ne...

Free Muni and Paratransit to COVID-19 Vaccine Appointments

Free Muni and Paratransit to COVID-19 Vaccine Appointments By Phillip Pierce Free Muni and Paratransit to COVID-19 Vaccine Appointments Starting on Tuesday, February 23, Muni and Paratransit will be free for those traveling to get vaccinated for COVID-19. This includes trips in both directions. The SFMTA is also providing additional access to taxi service for those who use the  Essential Trip Card . These rides are good for trips to the city-sponsored high-volume vaccine sites, hospitals or anywhere else that is offering vaccines. More information on the city-sponsored sites as well as directions on how to get there can be found on  the city vaccination website. We know that getting San Franciscans vaccinated is the city’s highest priority. This program is designed to eliminate transportation and cost barriers to receiving this life-changing vaccine. How to Ride on Muni Use our  trip planner  or  service map  to find the best way to get to your vacc...