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

L Taraval Improvement Project Update

L Taraval Improvement Project Update By Sevilla Mann Roundtable at the Community Parklet Shares Project Updates  This past week, the SFMTA hosted a media roundtable discussing updates about the L Taraval Improvement Project at the community parklet located in front of the The Rolling Out Café  on Taraval St.   Segment B construction began in February 2022 and is scheduled to be completed Fall 2024. Sewer and water infrastructure work is currently taking place. Future work includes track work, overhead line work, the construction of new boarding islands and streetscape improvements.    On hand to answer questions and provide updates was District Four Supervisor Gordon Mar, SFMTA Board Director Sharon Lai and Director of Transportation Jefferey Tumlin.   The Roundtable  Supervisor Mar opened the discussion by highlighting the many benefits that the local community will receive with the planned infrastructure upgrades along the corridor. These benefits include:   Replacing sew

FOX NEWS: Cincinnati zoo renames sloth habitat after late 1-year-old who loved sloths The sloth habitat at Ohio's Cincinnati Zoo will be named after a toddler who recently passed away.

Cincinnati zoo renames sloth habitat after late 1-year-old who loved sloths The sloth habitat at Ohio's Cincinnati Zoo will be named after a toddler who recently passed away. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/3DLAshi

IPL 2020 | KKR, SRH search for first win to get off the mark https://ift.tt/333a9nc

Having suffered defeats in their opening games, the Kolkata Knight Riders and Sunrisers Hyderabad will lock horns on Saturday at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi. While Kolkata faced a tough 49-run loss to defending champions Mumbai Indians, the Sunrisers suffered a monumental batting collapse against Royal Challengers Bangalore, losing the game by 10 runs.

FOX NEWS: Decadent double chocolate mint cookies for National Chocolate Day National Chocolate Day on Oct. 28th calls for a serious dose of chocolate.

Decadent double chocolate mint cookies for National Chocolate Day National Chocolate Day on Oct. 28th calls for a serious dose of chocolate. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/3nEJxSB

Muni’s Equity Toolkit Helps Essential Employees Get to Work

Muni’s Equity Toolkit Helps Essential Employees Get to Work By Mariana Maguire The latest data from SFMTA’s new  Equity Toolkit  shows that Muni service changes are helping people in neighborhoods identified by our  Muni Service Equity Strategy  access more jobs and support the city’s recovery.   In winter 2020, we launched the  SFMTA Equity Toolkit  to understand how service decisions are affecting neighborhoods where there is likely a high prevalence of essential workers who rely predominantly on Muni to get to their essential jobs. Our goal is to make better service decisions based on the trends and impacts we see in the Equity Toolkit.   Recently, the greatest increases in access to jobs via Muni have been in Hunters Point and Western Addition. The Hunters Point neighborhood saw the largest gains from the addition of the  15 Bayview-Hunters Point Express , as demonstrated in the table below. Thanks to the return of key Muni lines and increased frequencies on connector routes, I

Powered Scooters Charge City’s Transportation Recovery

Powered Scooters Charge City’s Transportation Recovery By Jason Hyde The SFMTA is releasing its next round of Powered Scooter Share permits on July 1. Scooters remain a sustainable mode of travel and a complement to Muni and public transit service as the city recovers from the pandemic and San Franciscans begin to travel more. The SFMTA’s Powered Scooter Share Program is essential in ensuring that shared scooter operations support the city’s economic recovery in a safe, sustainable, and equitable way.  The SFMTA received four submittals for the permit program and will issue permits to two operators : Spin and Lime. Permits will be in effect for a one-year term, with the option to extend for another year at the discretion of the SFMTA based on compliance with various program metrics. While the new permit program does not set a limit on the number of scooters each operator may deploy, it does limit the overall citywide fleet size at 10,000. Starting at a base of 2,000 scooters per

New top story from Time: 3 Killed in Northern California as Wildfires Force Thousands to Evacuate

https://ift.tt/34at2Uy (SAN FRANCISCO) — Northern California’s wine country was on fire again Monday as strong winds fanned flames in the already scorched region, destroying homes and prompting orders for nearly 70,000 people to evacuated. Meanwhile, three people died in a separate fire further north in the state. In Sonoma County, residents of the Oakmont Gardens senior living facility in Santa Rosa boarded brightly lit city buses in the darkness overnight, some wearing bathrobes and using walkers. They wore masks to protect against the coronavirus as orange flames marked the dark sky. The fire threat forced Adventist Health St. Helena hospital to suspend care and transfer all patients elsewhere. The fires that began Sunday in the famed Napa-Sonoma wine country about 45 miles (72 kilometers) north of San Francisco came as the region nears the third anniversary of deadly wildfires that erupted in 2017, including one that killed 22 people. Just a month ago, many of those

Traffic Collisions have Decreased on San Francisco’s Slow Streets

Traffic Collisions have Decreased on San Francisco’s Slow Streets By Julia Malmo   As a whole, Slow Streets are safer than they were before being designated Slow Streets  Streets that are part of the SFMTA’s  Slow Streets Program have become measurably safer since the program began in 2020, with the number of traffic crashes falling by almost half. On average, these corridors have seen a 48% drop in collisions following their designation as Slow Streets, compared with a 14% drop in collisions citywide over the same period. Slow Streets also are more welcoming for people who walk, bike and roll. Fewer than 1,000 vehicles per day use all but four of the current Slow Streets (20th Street, Minnesota Street, Noe Street, and Page Street).  The goal of the program is to create safe, shared streets that are comfortable and enjoyable for people of all ages and abilities, using any mode of transportation. We now can see how it’s doing in a new evaluation report . When the SFMTA Board appr

New top story from Time: How History Is Repeating Itself for Haitian Migrants Trying to Enter the U.S.

https://ift.tt/3upRk9U In the past 11 years alone, Haitians have suffered natural disasters, rising gang violence, outbreaks of cholera and COVID-19, and political instability, including the recent assassination of President Jovenel Moïse . The crises left many in the hemisphere’s poorest nation feeling they had no option but to leave—despite the difficulties they face in fleeing to other countries. In late September, Americans were confronted with the reality of those difficulties too. An estimated 15,000 people arrived in Del Rio, Texas, during the month, below a bridge connecting the city to Mexico’s Ciudad Acuña. A majority were Haitian nationals, migrants and asylum seekers who ended up living in tents or under tarps, in conditions similar to those in other camps that have formed along the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Read more: Caught Between U.S. Policies and Instability at Home, Haitian Migrants in Tijuana Are in a State of L

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J कोरोना सकंट में TV सीरियल की शूटिंग शूरू, मास्क लगाकर पहुंचे स्टार्स- निया, पार्थ से लेकर रश्मि-PICS

कोरोना वायरस के चलते जारी लॉकडाउन में टीवी व फिल्मों की शूटिंग बंद थी। कोरोना के खतरे को देखते हुए तमाम सीरियल की शूटिंग रोक दी गई तो वहीं फिल्मों को रिलीज अटक गई। एंटरटेंमेंट इंडस्ट्री को कोरोना के चलते करोड़ों from टेलीविजन की खबरें | Television News in Hindi | TV Serials Update in Hindi – FilmiBeat Hindi http:/hindi.filmibeat.com/television/tv-shooting-starts-kasauti-zindagi-kay-naagin-nia-sharma-parth-samthaan-rashmi-desai-pics-090604.html?utm_source=/rss/filmibeat-hindi-television-fb.xml&utm_medium=23.11.231.156&utm_campaign=client-rss