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Remarks at the Stop Stupak Coalition Day of Action
My remarks at the Stop Stupak Coalition Day of Action on December 2nd, 2009.
Learn more about the Stop Stupak Coalition and how you can help here.
First I want to thank the Coalition for inviting the Campaign for Community Change to join the speakers here this morning. CCC works to strengthen and connect grassroots organizations that are led by people directly affected by social and economic injustice. We are excited that local leaders from key organizations in Tennessee and North Carolina are among us here today. It is these organizations that are on the front line working to move Members of Congress to oppose abortion restrictions and support health care reform.
CCC has been a core partner of Health Care for America Now since its founding. In the fight for quality, affordable, health care for all we have many powerful enemies. The insurance industry is out to kill reform. Our opponents have thrown every obstacle they can find to slow us down. Anti-choice activists have seized on the general controversy around the reform and found an opportunity to further restrict women’s access to reproductive health care by tying their cause to the general campaign of hate and misinformation that bombards the country’s airwaves.
Health Care Reform could represent a huge step forward in economic opportunity for women but these improvements should not come at the cost of more restrictions on reproductive health! It is also no surprise that some of the reforms that could most benefit low income families and workers, where single women of color represent a disproportionate share of the work force, are the reforms that are most under attack.
For instance, powerful interests are opposing standards for employers’ responsibility to provide coverage or to contribute to a general insurance pool – yet it is exactly these reforms that are most critical to increasing economic opportunity for women because so many jobs held by women have temporary, partial, and fragile health coverage if any coverage at all.
Consider also that adequate subsidy levels that would help consumers buy insurance on the exchange are under attack by fiscal conservatives. It’s this help that low and moderate income women need to be able to support their families and have the same opportunities as men.
Of course, no issue is more critical to women’s economic opportunity than the ability to choose when and under what personal circumstances to raise children. Access to reproductive health services including abortion has had a terrible legacy of class bias in the United States. Prior to abortion being legalized it was widely understood that many upper income families could find safe abortion services and low income families could not. We brought this legacy into law when we began restricting federal funds from being used to provide abortion services to low income women who receive Medicaid. Now we are poised to bring those restrictions to millions of women who will receive some subsidy to help bring down the cost of health insurance - just at the time in our history when we are trying to make health coverage more universal and accessible. The Stupak restrictions go even further and interfere with the whole private market. The current state of debate on abortion often misses this fundamental truth.
As you talk to members and their staff today – I hope you remind them that:
- No One should go broke or bankrupt because he or she gets sick.
- No One should have to choose between groceries and health coverage.
- No Woman should be worse off as a result of health care reform.
The Stupak amendment discriminates against low and moderate-income Americans who tend to incur higher health care costs. It is wrong to make it less affordable for the lower income people.
Economic justice for women, their families and their communities means access to affordable health care for all. Reform that provides the most comprehensive benefits at the most affordable cost will go the farthest to improve women's health and financial security.
Congress needs to hear that message today, tomorrow and every day.
Marvin Randolph is the Director of Organizing and Politics at the Center for Community Change.
