Abortion Fight Continues as House Passes Health Care Reform; Feminists Speak Out

Late Sunday, close to midnight, the House of Representatives passed by 219-212 a health care reform bill that will provide health insurance to tens of millions of uninsured Americans. However, the bill ensures the abortion fight will continue.

Feminist groups are speaking out over the singling out of abortion in the health-care debate, and are vowing to fight the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funds for abortion for poor women.

Read statements from NARAL, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Frances Kissling and Feminist Majority President Eleanor Smeal (below), who announces an “independent campaign against Stupak and Pitts”:

Feminist Majority blasts Bart Stupak (D-MI) and announces independent expenditure campaign to dump both Stupak and his co-sponsor, Joseph Pitts (R-PA). Their callous disregard for women’s lives cannot be forgotten or ignored.

As America is on the brink of expanding health care access for millions of people, Stupak and Pitts worked to hold health care hostage at the expense of poor women. We’re fed-up with Congressmen Stupak and Pitts and their total disregard of poor women’s lives, and their sanctimonious forcing of their extreme ideology on all Americans.

They cynically plotted and planned, until they got their way. We question did they plot and plan at C-Street, home of an extreme secret religious group?

Meanwhile as they mercilessly work against the rights of poor women, they both have not had to answer questions about their mysterious connections to C-Street, and its nefarious political deals and sex scandals. You can bet, this time, they will have to answer to their constituents.

We believe opponents of women’s rights and proponents of the Hyde Amendment, which denies poor women access to abortion, have had a free ride for too long. No more free rides. Win or lose, they will be challenged.

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About

Jessica Stites is the former associate editor at Ms. magazine. Today she's the editorial director of In These Times, where she runs the Leonard C. Goodman Institute for Investigative Reporting and edits stories on labor, neoliberalism, Wall Street, immigration, mass incarceration and racial justice, among other topics.