Another Bill to Restrict Reproductive Freedom: HR 3 (UPDATED)

Riot.Jane

I just received the following e-mail, and the topic is news to me.  This is surprising because I'm usually pretty current on matters of reproductive freedom . . . More on this topic to come.

This is not an advocation that anyone should contribute, it's just the method by which I learned of the existence of HR 3.

The link in the e-mail: http://www.dccc.org/page/m/1d63cab1/1b83fc72/4a3c2f65/4e0ce84b/2346893725/VEsE/ .

Click for larger version

UPDATE: 05/05/11, 19:25 CST

The Library of Congress-defined summary of HR 3 can be found here.  In short, HR 3:

1. Forbids Federal funds paying for health plans that provide abortion coverage
2. Eliminates tax credits for out-of-pocket abortion expenses (such as itemizing on tax returns or reimbursement from personally-owned tax-free medical flexible spending accounts)
3. Prevents abortion service provision in Federal- and D.C.-owned healthcare facilities 
4. Prevents Federal- and D.C.-employed healthcare providers from providing abortion services
5. Excepts the previous two bullet points in the cases of rape/incest or the risk of substantial harm occurring to the mother in the course of continuing the pregnancy
6. Gives Federal courts jurisdiction to prevent/redress violations of the abortion provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (such as accounting issues with insurance companies that provide abortion coverage participating in the health care exchange)
7. Designates the bureaucrat to receive/investigate/refer complaints regarding the previous bullet point: Director of the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Health and Human Services

Why #1, especially with the post-PPACA Executive Order clarifying and solidifying the act's adherence to the Hyde Amendment, needed to be re-legislated is beyond me.  I guess codifying yet another law that says that "abortion is bad, m'kay" makes them feel like they accomplished something. >eye roll<

The elimination of abortion service provision in and by Federally-/DC-owned healthcare facilities and employees is striking.  What are female military service personnel supposed to do?  Let's force that birth while we're smugly talking about how we don't treat our women like tribal backwoods nations treat theirs. w00t!  Many healthcare workers don't have insurance, per se' -- they receive care from the facility at which they work. What are these women supposed to do? Apparently, visiting the competition is the "approved" option for them.

The removal of the ability to pay for abortion services with personally-owned funds is insulting and infuriating. "We're going to tell you what to do with your medical funds."  What's next, you don't like my contraceptive pills? You don't like my Depo-Provera?  You don't like my IUD?  You don't like my tubal ligation?  You don't like my hysterectomy?  You think I jest, but I do not.

The anti-abortion fervor that has been growing in this country in recent years is the product of internalized and externalized religious dogma and its cultural progeny programmed morality.  There is no medical reason why this medical procedure should be made difficult to obtain, stigmatized, or be illegal (and make no mistake: illegalization is their goal, here folks).

When someone talks about abortion rights, they are talking about the right of any individual woman to have a medical procedure without religious zealots, moralistic holier-than-thou types, or elected representatives from on-high sticking their nose into her uterus.  The person who talks about fetal rights is talking about the government regulating every woman's procreative life and medical decisions in a ham-fisted, one-size-fits-all response because we think what you think is wrong.

The same people that scream at the top of their lungs about government intrusion on individual liberty and wasting government money when it's any other topic are the first ones to hop up and down and cry for more government intrusion on individual liberty and wasting government money when this topic arises.

If I said that I didn't want my tax money to be spent on foreign wars, Viagra, fertility treatments, or welfare for people who have more than two children, I'd be laughed out of town.  "Suck it up, that's the way this country works," I'd be told.

If I cloaked those sentiments in religious/moralistic costume, they'd receive more credence.  That is something that I detest about this country, that the separation of church and state only seems to mean that you can't overtly say something is motivated by Jesus or the Bible.  Leave out those two words, though, and you're free to pass laws that trample everyone's liberty based upon "morality."  There's no harm in morality, right?

Morality is like a penis: It should be shared with those closest to you who want to share it but should never be forced upon anyone.

We women are not children.  We are reasoning, thinking, functioning adults who are fully capable of making our medical (and other) decisions without your morality shoved down our throats.  We have our own individual moralities, so we don't need or want yours.  When it comes to our individual bodies, our individual moralities are the only ones that matter.

Abortion is a legal medical procedure, and it's high time we as a society started treating and respecting as one.  I will never stop fighting this fight because as long as it isn't, the message is "We have more rights to your body than you do."  That message scares the crap out of me.

My body is sacrosanct to me, and no one else has say over it. There is no middle ground here.  I won't rest until that message disappears, and every little brick (like HR 3) that makes the message a little stronger makes me fight harder.

~Riot.Jane