Posts tagged with 'choice'
Daily Pulse: The Public Option is Alive and Kicking
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By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium Blogger
Reports of the death of the public option were greatly exaggerated. According to Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly, liberals are once again optimistic that health care reform will include a publicly-run insurance option to compete with private insurance companies. The main excuse to drop the public option was that Republicans wouldn’t go for it. As Benen explains, now that a bipartisan bill is out of reach, Democrats can move further to the left. Progressive Democrats have convincingly argued that the public option would save money, which undermines the Blue Dogs’ opposition for the sake of fiscal conservatism.
The Senate Finance Committee will tackle the public option tomorrow. Meanwhile, the House Democratic caucus is wrestling over what kind of public option to support. Speaker Nancy Pelosi publicly rejected a so-called “trigger” which would activate a public option only if private insurers failed to control costs. “A trigger is an excuse for not doing anything,” she said. By contrast, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid supports a trigger. The views of the Speaker and the Majority Leader are important because they will lead negotiations to merge the House and Senate versions of the bill, creating the final text that both houses will vote on.
Meanwhile, in international news, scholars at the London School of Economics released new research last week showing that reproductive choice is the most powerful tool in the fight against climate change. The news broke as nearly a hundred heads of state gathered in New York for the UN Summit on Climate Change. As Amanda Marcotte notes in RH Reality Check, the report’s recommendations are sure to spark controversy from both the right and the left:
It’s easy enough to assume that the Obama administration and the Sierra Club are shying away from the issue because reproductive rights are such an explosive topic, and even touching it brings a hail of crazy from the anti-sex nuts down on your head. … But I can honestly say that I don’t think it’s the fear of the Anti-Sex Mafia that causes this sort of allergy. It’s the history of the fear of overpopulation being used as an excuse to coerce childbirth choices, and the fact that as soon as the potential for coercion is introduced, you suddenly attract a sea of racists who love to pontificate about eugenics all day, and would love to be able to influence policy to reduce the number of non-white people in relation to the number of white people.
At Feministing, Ann Friedman argues that the rubric of population control is irrevocably tainted by its historical links to eugenics and other forms of racism. She argues that international development should focus on empowering women for their own sake, not because we hope that they will have fewer babies.
I agree that the phrase “population control” is a misleading frame. You could just as easily call it “helping women have as many children as they want.” The key is that virtually all women want fewer children than they will bear if nature takes its course. And the more opportunities women have for education, paid work, and healthy children, the fewer kids they tend to want. The phrase “population control” should be scrapped, but the effort to put women in charge of their own fertility must continue, for the good of humanity and the planet.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care and is free to reprint. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on health care affordability, health care laws, and health care controversy. For the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Pulse: Mob Scene
By Lindsay Beyerstein, TMC MediaWire Blogger
This week’s edition of the Weekly Pulse is shorter than usual. Our team is getting ready for the fourth annual Netroots Nation blogger conference in Pittsburgh, PA. Esther Kaplan, editor of the Nation Investigative Fund, and I are conducting an investigative reporting workshop on Saturday from 1:30-4:15 p.m. Join us and help expose the corporate roots of the Teabagger/Town hall mob movement.
Here’s the latest news on the healthcare front: Republicans and their allies are pressuring Democratic healthcare reformers at townhall meetings around the country. Addie Stan has a blockbuster piece in AlterNet that exposes the network of corporate funders and lobbyists behind the mobs.
The Progressive’s Ruth Conniff explains the mobs’ marching orders, as spelled out in a memo by Bob MacGuffie, a volunteer for the Tea Party Patriots, an anti-reform group with ties to former Republican Rep. Dick Armey’s pressure group Freedom Works. MacGuffie instructs town hall protesters to shout at lawmakers and attempt to throw them off their game as they try to make the case for health care reform. So much for reasoned discussion.
As I reported in In These Times, the teabaggers are trying to scapegoat organized labor as the instigators of confrontations at town hall meetings. On August 6, a scuffle broke out in front of a town hall meeting in St. Louis. The below video clip shows the last 10 seconds of a scuffle in which a man in an SEIU t-shirt lies prostrate on the ground. A 38-year-old conservative activist claims to have been severely beaten, but the video shows him apparently uninjured, darting around to different cops and trying to convince them that he was attacked. The man’s lawyer claims that he saw his client get punched in the face and kicked in the head by SEIU members.
A spokesman for the St. Louis County police told me that the police hadn’t reviewed the video because nobody had submitted it to them, despite a call to the public to turn over evidence for the investigation. The fact that the videographer hasn’t turned over the video kind of makes you wonder if the teabaggers really take the “evidence” as seriously as they claim.
How’s this for irony? According to Talking Points Memo, the activist was asking for money to pay his hospital bills because he’s uninsured.
Finally, Jodi Jacobson of RH Reality Check reports that Kansas Now is calling upon AG Eric Holder to restore the Federal Marshall security detail of prominent late-term abortion provider Dr. Leroy Carhart, a friend and colleague of the late Dr. George Tiller. Carhart was placed under protection after Tiller was shot. But the feds didn’t even wait for the trial of Tiller’s alleged assassin to wrap before pulling Carhart’s detail. Now he’s on his own, just as the alleged killer’s links to a broader coalition of violent anti-choicers are coming to light.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about healthcare and is free to reprint. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy. For the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Pulse: The Rocky Road to Reform
by Lindsay Beyerstein, TMC MediaWire Blogger
Healthcare is dominating domestic politics this week, as Congress and President Obama outline their visions for reform. The president is pushing Congress to pass a bill that keeps healthcare costs in check before the August deadline. Obama must have been disappointed when the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announced last week that the Dem’s healthcare bills won’t cut spending. The president won’t sign a bill that doesn’t contain cost cuts, so legislators know they’ll have to tweak the bill.
Obama’s strenuous efforts to pass healthcare reform have invited comparisons to Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal, which created the American social safety net. In Salon, Michael Lind argues that Obama’s insistence on tying health insurance to employment actually betrays the legacy of the New Deal:
We decided that when it came to benefits our guiding principle should be a “citizen-based social contract.” We chose this phrase, not to discriminate against non-citizens, but to express two ideas: first, that benefits like healthcare ought to be not a privilege but rather an entitlement of all citizens in our democratic republic, and second, that all benefits should be detached from employers and follow individuals through their lives. In thinking about healthcare, we rejected various options that would not move us toward a citizen-based social insurance system. Unfortunately, the health plan being promoted by Obama and Congress is based on one of those bad options.
Special interests are sparing no expense in their final campaign to influence healthcare reform. Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus, D-Mont., was charged with crafting a public plan for a bipartisan seal of approval, but raked in more than $3 million from healthcare lobbyists and industry groups between 2003 and 2008, according to Mike Lillis of the Washington Independent. Baucus announced that he was swearing off healthcare bucks after June 1 in order to avoid the “appearance” of conflict of interest.
Aides for Baucus told The Post that the Finance chairman stopped accepting contributions from healthcare PACs after June 1 to eliminate the appearance of conflicts of interest. But he’s not doing a very good job following through. On June 15, according to the Federal Election Commission, Baucus accepted $5,000 from the Schering Plough Corporate Better Government Fund.
Baucus’s staff say the Schering Plough money has since been returned. No word on whether the money got sent back before or after the story hit the media.
Advocates of single payer did score a victory last week. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) managed to pass an amendment to the House bill that gives states the option of creating their own single payer healthcare systems. John Nichols of The Nation explains that the Kucinich amendment opened the door to single payer. As Nichols points out, Canada didn’t start with a national single payer system. The province of Saskatchewan created its own healthcare program that became the model for Canada’s celebrated Medical Services Plan.
Josh Holland of AlterNet says the Kucinich amendment may salvage healthcare reform. That sounds a bit hyperbolic, but it’s definitely a step forward. For additional background, check out Truthdig’s interview with Kucinich.
Abortion was back in the news this week. The Prospect’s Dana Goldstein notes that the White House appears to be vacillating as to whether abortions will be covered by national healthcare. Health and budget guru Peter Orzag danced around the issue on the last Meet the Press. This kind of equivocation is part of a pattern: Back in March, senior Obama domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes, a former Planned Parenthood board member, insulted the intelligence of viewers of the Christian Broadcasting Network by claiming that she hadn’t even discussed the issue with Obama.
Should the anti-abortionist zealot accused of gunning down Dr. George Tiller be charged as a domestic terrorist? I weigh the pros and cons in my new piece at RH Reality Check.
Finally, Laura Miller of Salon favorably reviews Ryan Grim’s new book, This is Your Country on Drugs, an offbeat social history of America’s twin love affairs with drugs and moral panics over drugs.
With the August deadline looming, legislators will be scrambling to get their respective bills in shape in time to pass healthcare reform through the budget reconciliation process. Odds are that the bills will be further scaled back and watered down in the process.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy. For the best progressive reporting on the Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net.
This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Pulse: Anti-Choice Terror in the Heartland
Dr. George Tiller, one of the few physicians in the country who performed second and third trimester abortions, was fatally shot in church on Sunday. It seems that Tiller was marked for death because of his work. The man charged with murdering Tiller, 51-year-old Scott Roeder, has a 20-year history of anti-choice and anti-government extremism.
Tiller’s compassion for his patients was legendary. Even during his lifetime, many referred to him as a saint for risking his own life to perform abortions that few other doctors would provide, irrespective of his patients’ ability to pay. The American Prospect features a moving tribute to Dr. Tiller by Michelle Goldberg, who relates a life story that’s equal parts John Irving and John Grisham:
Nation columnist Katha Pollitt attended a vigil for Dr. Tiller in New York’s Union Square. Pollitt reports that, compared a similar vigil she attended in 1998, the crowd was younger, angrier, and larger. She says that, over a decade after the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian, people are finally fed up with anti-choice terrorism:
Going back to the Prospect, Ann Friedman argues that Tiller’s murder, and the years of violence and intimidation that led up to his assassination show that the United States’ current protections for abortion providers are not working:
While we wait for reform, Attorney General Eric Holder is doing his best to protect abortion providers in the wake of Tiller’s murder. The Colorado Independent’s Ernest Luning reports that Holder has ordered U.S. Marshals to step up security for a late-term abortion provider in Boulder.
A 360-degree harassment of doctors and their staff is part of a deliberate, anti-choice extremist strategy. Josh Harkinson looks back on the time he spent reporting on anti-choice activists in Wichita, the home of Dr. Tiller’s clinic, for Mother Jones. The groups often targeted people at home. “People have a public identity that they like to keep separate from their private identity,” one anti-abortion activist told Harkinson, “but we believe you can’t separate the two when you are talking about killing babies. And people are more likely to listen to what you say and be influenced when you bring the issue home to where they work and live.”
In other reproductive health news, Rachel K. Jones, a co-author of a controversial paper arguing that sex educators should present withdrawal as a legitimate method of birth control, defends her study by questioning the motives of her critics in the blogosphere:
I would argue that, on the contrary, Jones’ study has been criticized for its shoddy evidence. The authors admit at the outset that there’s very little research on withdrawal and that the practice has not been systematically tested in clinical trials, unlike other forms of birth control. Most of what we know about the practice comes from small studies, and/or studies that weren’t designed to measure the efficacy of withdrawal as it is actually used. (For more discussion of the study, see last week’s Pulse.) The evidence the authors present barely supports the contention that withdrawal deserves more study. However, they go much further, suggesting that sex educators change their curricula to present withdrawal in a more favorable light. Many of Jones’ critics found that suggestion irresponsible. Before lecturing her critics about their receptiveness to evidence, Jones should take a hard look at the gap between her evidence and her recommendations.
Recent events have pushed reproductive choice to the forefront of national consciousness. For the latest on healthcare controversies, big and small, stay tuned to the Weekly Pulse.
Weekly Pulse: Key Dems Back Public Health Insurance Option
The chairs of five key congressional committees have finalized a plan for healthcare reform, and their blueprint includes a critical public option. The chairs’ decision to support government-administered health insurance for everyone who wants it is sure to attract ferocious opposition from both the insurance industry and its patrons in the GOP.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) also put single-payer healthcare on the agenda by introducing the American Health Security Act (AHSA) of 2009. John Nichols of The Nation describes the bill as an important piece of legislation. If AHSA became law, it would create a federal health insurance system administered by the states. The insurance program would give patients an unlimited choice of doctors and hospitals because their insurance would cover them everywhere. The proposed program would be financed by redirecting current healthcare spending and supplementing the total with a modest tax increase that would cost most consumers less than their current health insurance premiums.
As Ezra Klein of TAPPED explains in his public insurance primer, single payer healthcare is a step beyond the public option. Under single payer, the government is the sole supplier of health insurance, whereas, under the public option, consumers are allowed to choose public or private insurance. Public insurance will be cheaper and more comprehensive because the government will be able to use its vast bargaining power to lower prices. Also, U.S. government administered health insurance plans like Medicare and SCHIP consistently spend a smaller portion of their budgets on administrative costs than private insurers. Republican Congressional leaders are opposed to the public option because they fear that the private insurance industry won’t be able to compete with government-administered insurance.
Dave Weigel, the Washington Independent’s crack conservatologist, interviewed Rick Scott, the founder and principle funder of Conservatives for Patients Rights. CPR has been running ads nationwide warning that Obama is plotting a government takeover of healthcare. Scott also resigned from Colombia/RCA, a for profit-hospital corporation, in the middle of a $1.7 billion fraud investigation. Weigel asked Scott if he was concerned that his past might color public perceptions of his current healthcare advocacy:
TWI: People can still say, “Look, this was the guy who resigned in the biggest fraud settlement in American history.”
RICK SCOTT: But, you know, we were the biggest company. If you go back and look at the hospital industry, and the whole health care industry since the mid-1990s, it was basically constantly going through investigations. Great institutions, like ours, paid fines. It was too bad.
With all the talk about healthcare reform, it’s easy to forget that there’s more to health than insurance or the medical care it can provide. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! explored the bigger picture with Dr. Steven Bezruchka, a public health scientist who studies how inequality itself makes us sick.
Yesterday, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius had her first Senate confirmation hearing yesterday for the post of Secretary of Health and Human Services. As Emily Douglas of RH Reality Check notes, last week, Sebelius signed a bill into Kansas law that would force women to undergo medically unnecessary ultrasounds before obtaining abortions. The normally pro-choice Sebelius probably signed the bill to dodge controversy before her confirmation hearing, according to Dana Goldstein of TAPPED.
Agit prop ultrasounds are a favorite tool of anti-choice activists, who claim that the sight of the sonogram is necessary to informed consent. But women have been making decisions about abortions without sonogram assistance since the beginning of civilization. In practice, the ultrasounds are just another obstacle that anti-choicers throw in the path of abortion providers. It’s disconcerting that Sebelius was willing to sign a frivolous law to ease her own confirmation.
RH Reality Check’s Kay Steiger offers a first hand account of Sebelius’s first day of confirmation hearings. The governor said she supports a public option for health insurance and opposes conscience clauses for healthcare providers who seek to deny women abortion and contraception on religious grounds.
Finally, members of Congress are engaged in last minute wrangling prior to a vote on Obama’s budget. Democrats may try to use the budget reconciliation process to put healthcare reform to the Senate in a filibuster-proof format. (Due to an obscure rule, the Senate can pass a budget reconciliation with a simple majority, but only if the provisions in the budget are deemed to relate directly to spending and revenue.) Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo reports that Congressional Republicans are vehemently denouncing the reconciliation option. Surprise, surprise.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care. Visit Healthcare.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws, and healthcare controversy. And for the best progressive reporting on the ECONOMY, and IMMIGRATION, check out, Immigration.NewsLadder.net and Economy.NewsLadder.net.
This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Pulse: Not in Kansas Anymore: Sebelius Tapped to Lead HHS
By Lindsay Beyerstein, TMC MediaWire blogger
The Obama administration unveiled two major nominations on Monday: Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius for Secretary of Health and Human Services and Nancy-Ann DeParle for health czar. The czar is responsible for shepherding healthcare reform legislation through Congress and the Secretary will be responsible for implementing the plan.
Correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causation, but we’d like to remind everyone that In These Times floated Sebelius’ name for HHS in September of 2008; Ramon Castellblanch wrote:
Three major obstacles face the next secretary. One, tens of millions of Americans lack health insurance. Two, any attempt to deal with this crisis will result in the private insurance industry—and its lobbyists—swooping in to turn policy changes into a windfall for itself. And three, for eight years, the department has been crippled by low morale and staff departures caused by Bush administration mismanagement. The next secretary must have the ability to help undo this damage.
Castellblanch argued at the time that Sebelius was the right person for the job because of her executive experience as governor, her knowledge of the insurance industry, and her strong progressive values.
Julie Burkhart of RH Reality Check writes of Sebelius’ record as governor, “[Gov. Sebelius] has been a tireless advocate for expanded health care for pregnant women, for comprehensive and medically accurate sexual education and for more accommodating adoption statutes.”
Naturally, the right wing hates the Sebelius nomination because of the governor’s strong pro-choice record, but there doesn’t seem to be much they can do about it.
Anti-abortion groups are insinuating that Sebelius is a close ally of Dr. George Tiller, a Kansas physician who performs late-term abortions. Operation Rescue has tried unsuccessfully to shut down his clinic for years, making Dr. Tiller the White Whale of the Kansas anti-abortion movement. The alleged smoking gun is the revelation that Sebelius invited Tiller to the governor’s mansion for dinner. As Ezra Klein points out in the American Prospect, Tiller and his staff did dine with Sebelius, but only because they placed the winning bid at fundraising auction.
Burckhart reports in RH Reality that the Speaker of the Kansas House, Mike O’Neal, introduced two anti-choice bills on Tuesday in an attempt to embarrass the governor on abortion. Presumably, he hopes to force Sebelius to veto the bills before her confirmation hearing.
Senators Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts of Kansas, both conservative Republicans, have pledged to support Sebelius. Brownback says abortion is murder. So, it might seem odd that he’s supporting the ardently pro-choice Sebelius. Once again, home state boosterism triumphs over the “rights of the unborn.” Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly concludes that Sebelius’ confirmation is all but assured: If Operation Rescue can’t even pick up Sam Brownback, the religious right doesn’t have the political muscle to sustain a serious senate fight.
The liberal group Catholics United is also supporting Sebelius, Sarah Hepola reports in Salon.
As governor, Sebelius proposed that the state provide health insurance for every uninsured child in Kansas from birth to age five. In 2008, Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones praised Gov. Sebelius for vetoing a voter-disenfranchising ID law and nixing unhealthy coal-fired power plants.
Sebelius’s record as a reform-minded insurance commissioner may provide a preview of coming attractions at HHS. Sebelius served as commissioner from 1995 to 2002. As a candidate, she signalled her independence by refusing campaign contributions from the insurance industry. As insurance commissioner, Sebelius backed a number of pro-consumer reforms for health insurance including a patient’s bill of rights, mandated maternity coverage, and enhanced privacy protections. Sebelius also blocked a proposed merger of Kansas’ non-profit health insurance company, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, by a for-profit company because the deal would have increased insurance premiums and forced hospitals to turn away patients who couldn’t pay. The insurance companies fought Sebelius all the way to the Supreme Court and lost.
Obama’s pick for health czar, Nancy-Ann DeParle, is a health policy veteran from the Clinton administration. Matt Cooper of Talking Points Memo notes that she is married to New York Times reporter Jason DeParle.
Nancy-Ann DeParle currently works for a private venture capital firm and serves on the boards of various medical device companies. There was speculation that the Obama administration might scrap the health czar post alltoghether after former Sen. Tom Daschle was forced to abandon his confirmation bid when his income tax irregularities came to light. Ezra Klein writes in the Prospect that DeParle seems like an odd choice given the health czar’s portfolio as the president’s top liaison to Congress on health care reform:
DeParle must, of course, resign from the boards of medical device companies before she takes the job. According to the Obama administration, DeParle’s recent affiliations present no conflict of interest—time will tell whether that assertion bears up under scrutiny.
On the whole, Sebelius and DeParle are two strong picks to advance Barack Obama’s health care reform agenda. If confirmed, these two nominees will bring energy and experience to the fight.
Weekly Pulse: Bristol Palin Calls Abstinence Unrealistic
“I think abstinence is, I don’t know how to put it — like, the main — everyone should be abstinent or whatever, but it’s not realistic at all,” new mother Bristol Palin told Greta Van Susteren in an interview on Fox News (video below). Bristol’s unwed, teenage pregnancy made headlines last year just as her mother, Gov. Sarah Palin, kicked off her vice presidential bid.
Samhita of Feministing.com writes, “I feel bad for her. [Bristol's] story was used by her family and the GOP to make an example of what is considered “responsible” behavior for a teen mom. Holding all that, she is telling the truth that abstinence is not realistic for young people, even if it should be what everyone strives for. Comprehensive sex-ed wouldn’t be this unrealistic.” In Salon, Rebecca Traister dryly notes that all this honesty was too much for Fox News. As soon as Bristol said what everyone already knew, Sarah Palin hustled on stage to contradict her.
Jodi Jacobsen at RH Reality says it’s time for federal government to acknowledge what Bristol learned the hard way and axe federal funding for abstinence-only education.
Here’s wishing Bristol a happy National Condom Week. Too bad the stimulus package won’t included expanded opportunities to cover birth control under Medicaid. At Mother Jones, Taylor Wiles notes that Obama cut $335 million for STD prevention, and that Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) nixed $150 million to fund the Violence Against Women Act.
Over 600 public health professionals have written a letter protesting these and other health cuts in the stimulus. “A decent society doesn’t spent $70 billion on an upper-class tax cut and then cut costs around around the edges by eliminating public health programs that save the lives of the working poor and ease the lives of the chronically ill,” Ezra Klein writes in the American Prospect.
After Bristol Palin, Nadya Suleman is America’s most famous single mother this week. Society tells women that childbearing is the most important part of their lives. Nadya Suleman, the much-scrutinized mother of octuplets, was foolish enough to take that propaganda seriously. Suleman told Dateline that she felt obliged to use her frozen embryos from previous IVF treatments because each of those frozen eggs is a child: “Those are my children and that’s what was available and I used them.” When Suleman says it, it sounds obviously crazy. When the Pope says IVF embryos are little humans, we’re all supposed to nod respectfully like it makes sense.
At least Obama is poised to lift the federal funding ban on stem cell research, as the Colorado Independent reports.
Patricia J. Williams of the Nation is concerned about the vitriolic backlash against Suleman. “No doubt Suleman has emotional problems. But rather than caring about her mental health, much of the media are content to pillory her as a drain on the public dole–selfish, frivolous, calculating and cruel,” Williams writes. An unmarried, unemployed woman bringing 8 premature infants into the world pushes every button on the wingnut dashboard.
Elsewhere in the Nation, Katha Pollitt writes, “I’ve received a number of e mails urging me to defend Suleman on feminist grounds. But really, there is nothing feminist about borrowing all this trouble.”
I’m not sure what a feminist defense of Suleman would look like. To me, the feminist question is why one woman’s foolish decision is generating an outpouring of hate and derision so intense as to result in death threats against the new mom and even her publicists. After all, sperm donors don’t get pilloried for impregnating countless single women. As Patricia Williams noted, more moderate critics are calling for increased regulation of in vitro fertilization, as if Suleman proved that women can’t generally be trusted not to succumb to baby fever.
Conspicuously absent from the Suleman debate is reliable information about in vitro fertilization and multiple pregnancies. Mainstream media seems determined to infer that Suleman and her doctor were trying for eight babies from the get-go. Suleman’s doctor probably went outside accepted medical practice when he implanted so many embryos in a relatively young patient, but there’s no reason to believe that anyone expected octuplets. That’s a critical detail. It’s eccentric and risky for an unemployed woman with six kids to try for a seventh, but it’s not out-and-out crazy. That is, if you really believe that having children is the most important thing a woman can possibly do.
That Suleman is unmarried and broke apparently disqualifies her from the mantle of pro-life martyr. Conservatives lauded Sarah Palin giving birth to child she knew would have Down’s Syndrome. Yet, many of these same social conservatives consider Suleman a monster for carrying all eight fetuses to term, knowing they faced a high risk of lifelong health problems.
As Elisabeth Garber-Paul explains at RH Reality, it’s common to implant multiple embryos during a single IVF cycle because the chance of conception increases with the number of ova introduced. Yes, there’s a risk of multiple births, but introducing multiple embryos decreases the odds of a $12,000 IVF cycle failing completely. The answer, for many women, is to have multiple implants and selective abortions in the unlikely event that more than one or two eggs become fetuses.
Of course, Nadya Suleman is morally opposed to abortion. She made a choice, just like Sarah and Bristol Palin. Ironically, many of Suleman’s most vocal detractors also oppose abortion and embryo destruction. Few Suleman-bashers have come right out and said that she was morally obliged to get abortions, but that’s the subtext. Which is odd, because the pro-life party line for unwed mothers is that whatever “sins” got you pregnant will be overlooked as long as you Choose Life. (Cf. Bristol Palin.)
It’s about as logical as assailing Suleman for being a welfare bum and then threatening to boycott companies that offer to give her stuff for free.
Suleman is an unsympathetic character, but at least she inadvertently dramatized the contradictions of social conservatism.
Weekly Pulse: Obama Suspends All Last-Minute Bush Regulations, Pending Review
Within hours of taking the Oath of Office, President Barack Obama ordered all federal agencies to suspend all of Bush’s eleventh-hour rules changes, pending a full review. This means that Bush’s notorious “conscience clause” rules are on hold until Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services can review them. That would be Tom Daschle. It’s highly unlikely that Daschle would sign off on these rules, which would give government healthcare workers unprecedented latitude to refuse reproductive health services on religious grounds.
This isn’t just an abstract issue. A nurse in New Mexico is currently being sued for removing a patient’s IUD without her permission and refusing to put it back in because the nurse opposed IUDs on religious grounds, Jodi Jacobsen reports in RH Reality.
Obama is also planning to repeal the Global Gag Rule, which disqualifies international organizations from receiving any federal funding if they provide abortions or even inform women that abortion is an option. The flipping of the Global Gag Rule is becoming something of presidential tradition, Steve Benen notes in the Washington Monthly: Bill Clinton reversed it shortly after he took office and George W. Bush wasted no time in bringing it back when his turn came.
However, the new president is not expected to overturn the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research by executive order. Instead, Obama wants Congress to pass a law lifting the ban. Obama has said that he’d rather let Congress express its overwhelming bipartisan consensus in favor of stem cell research by passing a law, as opposed to overturning the ban by fiat.
Another controversial target for federal funds is needle exchange for intravenous drug users. Obama has said that he supports federal funding for needle exchange, but he sent a mixed message when he chose a Drug Czar who is opposed to the idea. In AlterNet, Alan Clear urges the president to include needle exchange as part of his drug control policy.
Looking at the bigger picture, Ezra Klein sits down with two policy experts to discuss the best road to universal healthcare for In These Times. On Air America, Thom Hartmann discusses the Campaign for America’s Future’s plan for universal healthcare (audio).
Healthcare reform can’t come soon enough for small business owners struggling to afford skyrocketing healthcare costs for their employees. Public News Service reports on the plight of small business owners in Oregon and Colorado.
Now that the inauguration is over, the real work is at hand. Obama has signaled that he will make healthcare reform a high priority in his administration. It remains to be seen whether his focus on the economic crisis will dilute his efforts in the healthcare arena. One hopes that these two projects will compliment one another and not conflict.
Envisioning Obama’s Healthcare Agenda
By Lindsay Beyerstein
The Media Consortium
Obama’s healthcare agenda has been the subject of much discussion in progressive media circles this week.
We know that healthcare will be one of the top priorities for the Obama administration. The candidate put it third in line after the economy and energy independence.
As Sara Robinson of the Campaign for America’s Future notes in AlterNet, Americans support the idea of a single-payer healthcare system by an astonishing 2-1 margin. So much for the myth that America is a center-right country.
Ezra Klein recalls that even Obama’s designate for White House chief of staff, Rahmn Emmanuel, once laid out a vision for health care reform.
Kay Steiger of RH Reality looks back on the debacle of the Bush administration’s health policies and looks ahead to a new, pro-choice cabinet. Former South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle, former DNC chair Howard Dean, and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius are all on the shortlist for Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Obama’s picks for Secretary of State and Attorney General will also have repercussions for reproductive choice. The shortlists for both offices are a mixed bag when it comes to reproductive health. Steiger cautions that Obama is considering two candidates for State who have very poor records on choice: Senators Dick Lugar and Chuck Hagel. As for AG, one of Obama’s favored candidates is Rep. Artur Davis, a socially conservative and anti-choice Southern Democrat.
Racewire’s Samantha Erskine asks what Obama’s base will ask for in terms of reproductive rights. She notes that women of color, mothers, and young women overwhelmingly backed Obama/Biden. Erskine expects a reproductive health policy that reflects the priorities of these critical constituencies.
Emily Douglas of RH Reality sees indications that some anti-choicers ready to focus on preventing unwanted pregnancies. Even the womb cops realize that their political mojo is waning. In the Iowa Independent, Lynda Waddington argues that in 2008 anti-abortion hysteria just didn’t energize Iowa’s conservative base the way it has in previous years. As if to amplify her point, all three major anti-abortion ballot initiatives were defeated on election night.
When the rubber hits the road: Condoms trump abstinence in Obama’s global AIDS prevention strategy, according to Brady Swenson of RH Reality. An Obama health adviser predicts that the new president will reverse Bush-era bans on family planning and disease prevention in the developing world.
Speaking of AIDS, a lucky accident may point the way to a cure: A bone marrow transplant to for leukemia seems to have cleared HIV from the bloodstream of a patient with AIDS. The marrow donor has a mutation that seems to confer immunity to multiple strains of HIV.
Elizabeth Zwerling has a report in Ms. Magazine on the proliferation of so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” on university campuses. CPCs mimic the trappings of reproductive health clinics, but they are propaganda outposts, not healthcare facilities. Zwerling describes the experience of 19-year-old student activist at Santa Monica College who investigated a CPC at her college.
This is certainly an exciting time for anyone with an interest in progressive healthcare issues. It seems as if there may finally be real momentum to move forward on both the nuts and bolts of health insurance and the various social/culture/civil rights issues surrounding access and choice.
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