Hyde Amendment Alert

By Carol Downer

This September, President Obama will be presenting next year’s proposed budget to Congress. Last year, he included the Hyde Amendment language! This year, we must not let this go without objection. He needs to submit a “clean bill”. We have 6 months to plan campaign. 

More specific information about the Hyde Amendment and what women are doing about it coming soon with my report on the Women’s Policy Summit.

Hyde Amendment Update

By Carol Downer

New Hyde Amendment--never discussed in Committee, much less debated on the floor of the Senate--and only discussed in Democratic-dominated Committee in the House last Friday and resulting in the decision of the Republican-dominated Committee to send a favorable “message bill” including the provisions that would expand last year’s Hyde Amendment.  This “message bill”, which doesn’t legally constitute an amendment, apparently wafted through the Halls of Congress and landed on the desks of the top level congressional negotiators to become a rider on the omnibus spending bill which will be voted on by both houses by this Saturday. 

The negotiations between the “appropriators” from both houses were secret, but everyone speculates that they vigorously debated this and other controversial items, and the language in the bipartisan spending bill contains the provisions of the democrat-sponsored Senate bill, S.142, and some, but not all of the provisions of the House H.R.7.  Significantly, the part of the message bill that died along the way was the provision to interfere with the provision of abortion coverage by private insurance companies.  Not coincidentally, this provision would have expanded Hyde to ban coverage to middle-class women who have insurance coverage.  Medicaid-eligible poor women and many women of color have once again been left out in the cold.

So, what are we to conclude?  Once again, despite the new and very welcome efforts of the All Above All organizations, including strong leadership from organizations of women of color, this anti-woman legislation has passed without the fingerprints of the legislators.  Once again, we’re told that the Democratic Party, who most of us faithfully support, has done its best.  Has it?

The Hyde Amendment has done more harm to the unity and strength of our women’s movement than all the right-wing fanatic attacks combined, because we have not made the fight against it the top priority.  After the significant but not unmarred victory of Roe v. Wade, Henry Hyde figured out a way to finagle his way through the congressional maze to strike a grievous blow against American women.  He used the ancient tactic of “divide and conquer”.  This idea of attaching the legislation to the appropriations bill was brilliant; it put congress members, both Democrats and Republicans, in the position of having to vote the budget down in order to defeat the ban on abortion funding.  But, over the 37 years that have passed since the Hyde Amendment slid through, both Democrats and Republicans have obviously had to cooperate in order for this strategy to work.  After all, both parties have had ups and downs, and the Democratic Party, which has a pro-choice platform, has enjoyed sessions where they had much more power than today, but still they winked at the legislative sleight of hand.

In the meantime, women’s organizations and abortion providers have all worked very hard to ameliorate the impact of the Hyde Amendment.  Many abortion providers offer sliding scale fees and both local and national fund-raising efforts have been able to offer full or partial help to women who could not afford their abortion.  THESE EFFORTS HAVE BEEN BAND-AIDS ON THE WOUNDS OF AN UNJUST SYSTEM.  Many individual women have been helped, but the fact remains that the Republican Party has been successful in keeping poor women and women of color down, and the Democratic Party has participated in this devious legislative charade to throw poor women under the bus in the name of the larger needs of the Democratic Party.

But, social injustice is only part of the harm.  Another, equally important is that we allowed the anti-abortion forces to separate us; of dividing us by race and class. 

We need to get real about this fight.  It’s not enough to decry the Hyde Amendment.  All Above All is correct in identifying the racist and classist Achilles Heel of the white, middle-class women’s movement, but we will make the same mistake today if we don’t go past this necessary step and start making the pro-choice advocates stop being apologists for the Democratic Party.    

We have to insist that they throw a spotlight on the back room deals.  We need to question the automatic support of the democratic candidate, especially if he’s anti-choice.  Democratic Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania may have personal feelings toward abortion.  He may even exercise those convictions by choosing to vote to outlaw abortion.  That’s something he’ll have to explain to his constituency.  But when he takes the lead in proposing Hyde Amendment legislation (S.142), then he is colluding with this deceptive process where bills are proposed and never get out of committee, but end up magically being hidden in the Budget Bill, so that Democrats can merely pretend to recognize the fundamental right of a woman to control her body, but vote for anti-abortion legislation. 

We must hold the Democratic National Committee accountable for supporting a Democratic legislator who is actively working against their pro-choice platform.

September is our next opportunity to force our pro-choice advocates in Washington, D.C., to stop pleading political expediency to justify their silence.

Hyde Amendment - Where Is It Now?

By Carol Downer

Where is this year’s version of the Hyde Amendment, a rider that Congress tacks on the Appropriations Bill?  In the House, it was in the “Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice” until Thursday, January 9, until Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes-Norton announced that the Republican-controlled Committee had decided to send a “message bill”, a way that gets around having to send the proposed legislation to the full House for debate and a vote.

Norton shed a spotlight on the hearing on this nasty piece of proposed legislation which expands the usual Hyde Amendment prohibition of federal monies to fund Medicaid abortions, when she spoke from the House floor to complain about the Committee’s chairman,Trent Franks (R) not having permitted her to speak before the Committee hearing even though her district would be directly impacted by the proposed bill which would prohibit the District of Columbia from spending its local funds on abortion services for low-income women, and define the D.C. government as part of the federal government for the purposes of abortion.

In the Senate, the Hyde Amendment has been lying dormant in the “Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee” since January 24, 2013.  This legislation’s sponsor is Senator Robert “Bob” Casey, Jr. (D, PA). Casey, this Democrat who is a liberal on all other issues than abortion, was given the dubious honor of leading the Democrat-controlled Senate in this war on women.

Now, leaders of both parties are expected to meet secretly and hammer out a much-delayed budget agreement and avoid another government shutdown. Somehow the House and Senate Appropriations Bills will appear magically containing some or all of the prohibitions of abortion funding listed in these two bills with no legislator’s name on it, and most, if not all, of the members of the House and the Senate will okay the budget.

Once again, the Hyde Amendment will get its annual lease on life, and we won’t be able to hold anyone accountable except the outspoken anti-choice legislators.

Whenever a pro-choice advocate talks about “repealing” the Hyde Amendment, you can bet that they know that the Hyde Amendment is a rider that lives only a year and it has to be re-attached each year, but they don’t want to risk revealing that for 38 years, no matter who was in power in the Congress, both Republicans and Democrats have voted for it.

The old saying is that no one would eat sausage if they could see how it’s made. This week - the money runs out Wednesday - the sausage-making is happening, and women will be the losers.

December Newsletter: Hyde Amendment, OC NWPC Report, and Next Meeting

Women's Health in Women's Hands

December Newsletter
http://eepurl.com/KSU4b

Women’s Health in Women’s Hands is a website by Carol Downer.  It features DIY Gynecology, with lots of woman-to-woman information about our reproductive and sexual anatomy, choices in the birth setting and breastfeeding, safe and effective birth control, abortion, menstruation, menopause, and menstrual extraction—told frankly from an independent woman’s point of view.

View the latest email - http://eepurl.com/KSU4b

To subscribe - email whwh@womenshealthinwomenshands.org

Newsletter Features:

Orange County National Women’s Political Caucus Gathering/Presentation (Report by Carol Downer)

IT’S TIME TO WAGE A OFFENSIVE WAR TO DEFEAT ANTI-CHOICE LEGISLATION! (Information by Carol Downer)

UNFINISHED BATTLE DISCUSSION GROUP in Los Angeles, CA (Note: Meeting postponed til January 11, 2014

As Access Slides, Feminists Need to "Extract" From Our Self-Help Past

[Originally published in On The Issues Magazine]
by Carol Downer

If working in the abortion movement for over 40 years qualifies me to gaze into my crystal ball to see the future for abortion rights in the United States, here goes.

Prediction Number One: I see the Supreme Court continuing to interpret Roe v. Wade in a way that will make abortion, especially later abortion, more expensive, less convenient to access and more humiliating, but I do not see the court reversing Roe v. Wade outright. I see clinics closing down due to restrictive regulations and lack of doctors, especially in areas far from an urban center. This lack of access will mostly affect young women and poor women of color. But, as was the case before the decision in Roe v. Wade, the majority of unwillingly pregnant women will continue to get abortions, no matter how far they have to travel or no matter how great the cost or risk.

Why? The hypocritical leaders of this country, both right and left, recognize that the U.S. industrialized economy is built on the small nuclear family with both parents working, so large families are out. This lowers the birth rate, which satisfies the leaders, who, rather than creating a more just, sustainable society, think reducing women's fertility solves social problems such as pollution and poverty. Immigration, legal and illegal, produces the influx of workers and soldiers so desired by the conservatives who have created an unjust society where one percent possess the wealth and resources, further enabling them to keep the 99 percent low-paid and politically powerless.

Prediction Number Two. I see successive generations of young U.S. women accepting new restrictions. I also see some radical feminist actions, such as the formation of an underground movement of menstrual extraction groups. This will keep the technology alive, but will not change the trend that makes abortion less available, more expensive and more stigmatized.

Why? Once Roe v. Wade became the law in 1973, all organized efforts to educate the public and to seize the technology of abortion came to an abrupt halt. The leadership, by default, fell to a few political advocacy groups, such as NARAL Pro-Choice America in Washington D.C. and Planned Parenthood Federation of America in New York and D.C. They keep a vigilant eye on how Congressional members vote on legislation affecting birth control and abortion. They, and NOW, have organized a couple of mammoth abortion rights marches on Washington over the years. But Washington D.C. ignores the masses who come in on Saturday, march through the streets, then board the busses and go home on Sunday.

In 1976, the first, most devastating blow to Roe v. Wade came through Congress, not the Supreme Court. Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, an addendum to an appropriations bill, to stop any federal funding of abortion for low-income women. Every year, Congress re-passes this amendment. Every year, Congress exploits the racist and classist bias of the women's movement. We were ignominiously defeated by the passage of the Hyde Amendment in 1976, 35 years ago.

Even though the vast majority of American women are pro-choice, even feminists are complacent and do nothing other than voting for pro-choice elected officials and sending a check to their favorite national pro-choice organization.

Turning Back the Attack
In my opinion, the factors keeping abortion "safe and legal" are: (1) the continuing broad public support for the decriminalization of abortion; (2) the stalwart daily work of hundreds of doctors and abortion clinics around the country in the face of anti-abortion harassment and violence, and (3) the policymakers' need to keep women in the workforce.
To regain the ground the women won in the past, we have to learn how we won it and apply those lessons to today. We must revive the spirit of the second wave of the feminist movement, which came out of the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement. The Women's Liberation Movement started out to liberate women by challenging the whole "system," but, unfortunately, changed its focus to raising women's status in that system.

Most American women today were not born then or were children, and have not experienced being part of a major social movement for women's liberation, as I experienced in the 1960s and 1970s. I joined the Los Angeles chapter of NOW in 1969, and was part of that huge wave of women who came forward to demand women's liberation, including repeal or reform of anti-abortion laws. Through the decade before that, I read frequent newspaper articles announcing that a respected community or professional organization had passed some resolution recommending the decriminalization of abortion. In 1962, I saw the television coverage of Sherri Finkbine's trip to Scandanavia to get an abortion.

This coverage was part of a powerful campaign to stop back-alley abortions. It was led by white religious leaders, mostly men, and professionals, mostly men, who educated the public and roused public outrage against these unjust laws. By the end of the decade, the women's movement started. Many women's groups set up "women's nights" at the local free clinic to provide birth control; they were referring women to New York and California to get abortions. One group, "Jane", in Chicago, set up an abortion service. The women at Harvard were delving into the medical library to write a newsprint booklet, "Women and Their Bodies," which was so popular that Simon and Schuster published it as Our Bodies Ourselves in 1970.

On the West Coast, our group worked with Lana Clark Phelan and Patricia Maginnis, the founders of NARAL (which stood for the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws). We learned to do abortions with a new hand-held device that used suction to remove the contents of an early pregnancy; Lorraine Rothman modified that device so that groups of us who were minimally trained could extract either our menstrual period or an early pregnancy. We called this procedure "menstrual extraction." In 1971, Lorraine and I toured the country, teaching vaginal self-examination; self help and menstrual extraction groups sprung up at most of the places we visited. Rebecca Chalker described the process of menstrual extraction in On The Issues Magazine in 1993.

It was the cumulative effect of all these years of mainstream efforts, topped off by the massive numbers of women coming forward to protest, to march and to start projects to circumvent the law that laid the foundation for Roe v. Wade. The seizing of the means of reproduction by the women of the self-help movement did not escape the notice of Justice Harry Blackmun, the Supreme Court justice who authored Roe v. Wade and referred to it in his opinion (see section IX, Letter B) among a list of new medical techniques. I believe that in another couple of years, one way or another, abortion laws would have become irrelevant because women in the U.S. were taking the matter into our own hands.

The Women's Liberation Movement saw the right to an abortion as part of the right of a woman to control her own body and her own reproduction and sexuality, which, in turn, is part of women's full participation in society and their power to assert their values.

Through the years, women have been somewhat successful in raising women's status, but in a militaristic, environmentally destructive society. U.S. women may come closer to earning as much as their male counterparts and getting as much education, but the system has become more entrenched and women's education and work only makes it more so.

Women are losing ground every day in the control of our sexual and reproductive lives. Women seek genital surgery to make their vulva and clitoris look like some non-existent ideal; the medical profession dictates that women submit to radical intervention in their births, and, women face multiple physical and social barriers to nursing babies.

Even the movement pushing for liberation from the tyranny of heterosexual roles doesn't challenge the patriarchal nature of society, but rather seems to be challenging the legitimacy of women's pride in our women's bodies, our ability to bear and raise children and to fight together, as women, for social and economic equality and a humane stewardship of the environment.

Rebuilding the Future
There are powerful stirrings of people around the world challenging non-democratic structures; even in the U.S., we see the Occupy Wall Street protests. Perhaps the forces are shaping up that will promote a new wave of feminist activism.

Whether this is so or not, there are women's health groups building a sound base for a broader women's movement, doing radical feminist health and sex education with a holistic self-help foundation. Some midwives and full-spectrum doulas are rebuilding the network of menstrual extraction groups. In short, we will be ready.

Carol Downer is the author of "A New View of a Woman's Body," "How to Stay Out of the Gynecologist's Office," "Women Centered Pregnancy and Birth," and "A Book of Women's Choices."