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November 7, 2009

STEPHANIE SALTER: Brad Ellsworth ends the week back inside pro-lifers’ circle

By Stephanie Salter

TERRE HAUTE — Think antiabortion rights politics is simple? Take a look at the week Rep. Brad Ellsworth had.

Staunchly anti-abortion, Ellsworth is a longtime poster boy for “pro-life” Democrats. He has been given a “zero percent rating” from the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. His threat early last week to withhold support of the House health care bill, unless five “key pro-life changes” were made, will keep that negative rating unmarred.

As expected, Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights groups immediately spoke out against Ellsworth’s proposed changes as soon as they heard about them. Instead of seeing an amendment that would close perceived loopholes in federal funding of abortion, pro-choice organizations saw “new language [that] could tip the balance away from women’s access to reproductive health care,” according to a statement from Planned Parenthood vice president Laurie Rubiner.

The less predictable reaction came from several antiabortion camps.

A spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee likened Ellsworth’s proposed changes to “a money laundering scheme that is truly laughable.” In an e-mail statement, Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the committee, said Ellsworth’s altered language “is intended only to wrap the pro-abortion provisions in additional layers of concealment … Some of the people involved in this enterprise apparently think that their constituents are simpletons.”

Ellsworth not only was blasted by antiabortion groups like Johnson’s, his proposed amendment was rejected by the men who manage his church, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Apparently giddy with the political muscle they’re flexing these days on Capitol Hill, the bishops were unhappy with the level of antiabortion zeal their fellow Catholic displayed.

Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the bishops conference, told reporters mid-week that Ellsworth meant well, but that his proposed amendment was really just “an accounting gimmick.”

The aim of the health care reform bill is to provide federal subsidies for people who aren’t poor enough for Medicaid, but who aren’t affluent enough to purchase health care coverage themselves. These citizens could use their subsidies (based on income) to buy coverage from private companies in so-called health insurance exchanges. With a “public option,” the exchanges would include a coverage plan sponsored by the government but operated by a private insurer.

Wording about abortion coverage in the bill created the stickiest of points for people on both sides of the argument.

Antiabortion advocates like Ellsworth wanted to make certain not a penny of public money ever rolls toward an abortion. Wording that tethered the rules of the health care reform act to those of the Hyde Amendment satisfied much of that goal — but not all.

The 1976 Hyde Amendment, if you have forgotten, denies poor women access to the safe abortions that are legally available for women who can pay for them with private health insurance or their own bank accounts. Re-appropriated each year by Congress, Hyde prohibits any taxpayer dollars for abortion except when a pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or threatens the life — not the health — of the pregnant woman.

Since Hyde became law, Congress has expanded the denial of access to women in the military, women veterans, Native American women, female federal employees, women inmates in federal prison, and female Peace Corps volunteers.

Ellsworth directly entered the fray last week by floating amendment language that would have tightened all the health care bill’s existing and plentiful abortion restrictions, as well as providing for specific abortion prohibitions on the off-chance some future Congress decides not to rubber stamp Hyde re-appropriations.

Ellsworth also reportedly proposed a monitoring set-up to make certain that women’s personal insurance premiums for abortion coverage were not commingled with the premiums for all other medical coverage in their health insurance exchange plans. That set-up would have included a private contractor to handle the private premiums.

But the most ferocious antiabortion forces, in and out of Congress, wanted something tougher, an amendment that — until yesterday — carried the names of its two main authors, Bart Stupak, D-Mich., and Joe Pitts, R-Pa.

Now it is the Stupak-Ellsworth-Pitts, et al amendment. It passed last night, 240-194, and it offers all the Hyde limitations and more. Stupak-Ellsworth-Pitts says government money can’t be used “to cover any part of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion.”

Any part.

With those two words, access to abortion for millions more women will be virtually closed off because private insurance companies will be forced either to exclude abortion benefits in their health insurance exchange plans — even though women would have been required to pay for those benefits out of their own pocket — or be ineligible to compete for the considerable federal money.

By the way, lest you assume such a lack of coverage for abortion would mirror the existing situation among private insurers, don’t. Some 85 percent of American private insurance companies offer abortion benefits — maybe because it is still a legal medical procedure in the United States for everyone but the poor.

The Stupak-Ellsworth-Pitts amendment did include mention of an abortion rider option for women who need to get their medical coverage through a federal health insurance exchange. A few states have such options. They consist of separate, single-service, supplemental abortion plans that must be purchased outside of the rest of a woman’s medical coverage.

Given that the group of women we are talking about can’t afford any health care insurance now, such specialized extra coverage likely will not be a big seller.

Yesterday, Ellsworth was naturally upbeat. An e-mail news release from the Hoosier Congressman praised the fine “group effort among pro-life Democrats and organizations” in getting Stupak-Ellsworth-Pitts to the floor for a vote.

“… I am proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish over the last few days,” Ellsworth stated. “From day one, my goal has been to ensure federal tax dollars are not used to pay for abortions and to provide Americans with pro-life options on the exchange. And I am proud to be part of an effort to make this goal a reality.”

No doubt the bishops are pleased as well.

Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.

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