Dana Goldstein on the importance of reproductive-health coverage to the reform debate:
In September 1993, as Hillary Clinton lobbied Congress to pass her health-reform bill, she plainly addressed the looming controversy over reproductive care. “It will include pregnancy-related services, and that will include abortion, as insurance policies currently do,” she told the Senate Finance Committee. Conservatives were incensed. But as the history books record, it was industry pressure and legislative malaise that killed Hillarycare, not debate over women’s rights.
On the campaign trail, Barack Obama did not shy away from the issue of abortion, pledging, “On this fundamental issue, I will not yield.” In the context of health reform, though, the president and his staff have been reluctant to directly address reproductive rights. In a March interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody, the White House’s chief domestic policy adviser, Melody Barnes — who once sat on the board of Planned Parenthood — claimed she had never spoken to the president about whether abortion services should be covered under a universal health-care system. “We haven’t proposed a specific benefits package or a particular health-care proposal, so we’re going to be engaging with Congress to have this conversation,” she said. When Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag was asked by Fox News in July whether the public insurance plan should cover abortion, he was vague. “I’m not prepared to rule it out,” he said. The president finally addressed the issue himself in a July 21 interview with Katie Couric, in which he bucked reproductive rights groups by saying he would consider deferring to the “tradition” of “not financing abortions as part of government-funded health care.”
