Republicans may have cowered in fear of Jon Stewart again, abandoning their quest to tell women that they weren't really raped unless they have bruises to show for it, but H.R. 3 is still the boldest move since the Hyde amendment to push back women's rights. To borrow from last night's Daily Show, this isn't "warish" on women, it's war on women.
Even as amended, the bill seeks to use financial restrictions to greatly curtail access to abortion throughout the nation. In addition to banning direct funding, it would disallow any insurance plan which includes abortion coverage from receiving any kind of favorable tax treatment - which would instantly guarantee that no employer-sponsored insurance would offer abortion coverage. What's more, premiums for an individual plan would not be deductible on your tax return. Nor would payment for the actual procedure, which under HR3 you'd almost certainly have to pay for in full yourself - and if you had an FSA or HSA, you couldn't use that either (without paying a penalty).
Fortunately at least some House Democrats are taking the removal of the word "forcible" as a sign of momentum to press on against the whole bill, not a token victory to excuse ending the fight (as was the fear from past capitulations).
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz had of course given us a pretty good line yesterday, when she called the bill a "violent act against women", in the context of the redefinition of rape. She's still on the attack:
"Look, my reaction is this is not really changing things that much," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) told TPM in an interview today. "This exposed them for what their true intentions are. Now that they're exposed they're trying to put the genie back in the bottle, and it's not going to work."
Carolyn Maloney backs her up:
"It's still a totally flawed bill," Maloney told TPM. "I would call it the deepest attack on a woman's right to choose in my lifetime."
Maloney also pointed out that this bill has nothing at all to do with jobs, but instead is "an anti-woman bill, an anti-choice bill and an anti-respect [for women's ability to make medical decisions] bill", that "goes far, far, far, far beyond current law."
Diane DeGette chimed in too:
"This would be the biggest intrusion on a woman's right to choose in our lifetime," she said. "This is not the will of the American people."
It's unfortunate that so far it's only House Democrats speaking out in strong terms about this, since we lack the numbers in that chamber to prevent it passing there. It would be more comforting to start hearing some Senators talking like this. In the event that this does pass Congress, let's hope that Carolyn Maloney's confidence in the White House is well placed:
"Fortunately we have a pro-choice president with a lot ink in his veto pen," she said.
The President gave ground on the right to choose in the fight to pass HCR, but with this being a standalone assault on women, there'll be no excuse if he doesn't stand firm against it.