Michelle Goldberg argues in favor of health-care reform legislation, despite its weakness on reproductive rights:
In the final days of health-care reform, we’re once again mired in a dispiriting debate about whether the legislation is sufficiently anti-abortion. The Senate health-care bill will allow states to ban insurance policies that include abortion from their insurance exchanges. In states where such policies are allowed, women will have to send a separate check for the portion of the plan that covers abortion, which very few are likely to do. Still, conservative Democrats in the House complain the legislation doesn’t go far enough – they want plans that cover abortion removed from the exchanges altogether. It’s become clear that if health-care reform passes, it’s going to significantly erode, and probably end, insurance coverage for abortion. That makes it a serious step backward for reproductive rights.
Feminists should support it anyway.
