Michelle Goldberg on how the pro-choice movement lost the health-care debate:
Over the years, I’ve put myself on lots of right-wing mailing lists, which must have been why the American Center for Law and Justice called this weekend to inform me that the Senate’s health-care reform bill is “an abortionist’s dream come true.” The robocall, featuring the voice of ACLJ chief counsel Jay Sekulow, said that the current bill is essentially the Freedom of Choice Act — a long-cherished legislative goal of the pro-choice movement — disguised as health-care reform. According to Sekulow, should the Senate bill pass, “every plan in the country will be forced to cover abortion.”
I was actually mildly surprised by Sekulow’s willingness to flat out lie to his supporters. In truth, after all, health-care reform has been a nightmare for the pro-choice movement. If health care passes at all — an increasingly distant possibility — it is likely to eliminate the abortion coverage that millions of American women already have. Right now, the most feasible way to save health-care reform is for the House to pass the Senate bill. Both bills continue the ban on using federal money for abortion, and both contain incentives for private insurance plans to stop covering abortion, though the House’s version is worse in this regard. Both bills would represent a big step forward in health-care coverage for the country at large but a significant step backward for access to reproductive rights.
