In the Aftermath of the Stupak Amendment

Statement of Janice Rocco, Southwest Regional Director of the National Organization for Women (NOW)

Today is a devastating day in the battle to improve access to quality, affordable health care.   Members of the House voted to take away access to abortion coverage for millions of women, despite the fact that the majority of health insurance policies cover it today.  Low and moderate income women and any woman who chooses to buy her insurance through the “public option” are deprived of abortion coverage under the Stupak amendment. 

The adoption of the Capps amendment in June already ensured that federal funds would not be used to pay for abortion services.  The Stupak amendment goes much further than existing restrictions on access to abortion.  Poor and middle-class women who purchase insurance with their own hard-earned dollars and qualify for a subsidy to cover a portion of their premiums should not be denied access to abortion services.  Women who seek coverage through the “public option” and pay the entire cost of their premiums should not be denied access to abortion services.  The Stupak amendment is an outrageous attack on women’s rights and those who support it clearly want to prevent all women from exercising their constitutionally protected right to abortion. 

If this amendment is a part of the final bill that comes before the Congress, women’s rights will have been sacrificed in an unprecedented and unacceptable way.    Members of Congress acknowledged that this is the greatest restriction on women’s reproductive rights to move forward in the Congress in decades.  The women of this country won’t stand by and watch our rights be traded away.  We demand that the Senate pass a bill free of these unprecedented restrictions on abortion and that the final bill protect a woman’s right to safely access this legal medical procedure.