The simultaneous appearance of two items in yesterday's Arizona Republic requires that Planned Parenthood stand up for the truth in the debate over health care in America.
One article reported that Governor Jan Brewer is considering asking the Republican majority in the Arizona legislature to prevent enactment of health care financing reforms in Arizona. The second item was an opinion column by nationally syndicated writer Kathleen Parker in which Parker claims that the health care reform legislation funds abortion. Governor Brewer is woefully misguided, and Ms. Parker is willfully misleading.
There are many aspects of health care reform about which Americans can debate honestly and passionately. Some argue that the price tag is too high, others that the reforms don't go far enough.
However, there are a few facts in this debate about which no one can honestly disagree.
1. Nearly 50 million Americans have been living - and dying - without health insurance and access to health care for decades. 2. For decades, members of Congress have failed to tackle health care reform despite the desperate need to do so. 3. President Obama campaigned loud and clear that increasing access to health care was a priority. He has devoted his first year in office to fulfilling that promise. 4. Nearly 32 million Americans will have health insurance - and access to health care - thanks to these reforms. 5. These reforms will not allow federal funding of abortion beyond the current law that limits coverage to women whose pregnancies are life-threatening or result from rape or incest. 6. The reforms will ensure that millions of women will be able to receive low-or no-cost health insurance that covers prevention-oriented reproductive health care including contraception.
Despite what some would have you believe, this legislation - now the law of the land - is good news for all Americans. Thanks to just one feature, those who already have insurance will no longer risk having their care cut off by insurance companies because they are sick or have been diagnosed with what is referred to as "a pre-existing condition."
How this legislation ultimately passed was not elegant. Some people will continue to criticize the methods the President, Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid used to put these reforms over the top. Others will say that the obstructionist tactics employed by the opponents of health care reform justified the use of extraordinary means. Americans might have benefited from a truly bi-partisan collaboration. Unfortunately, there was no one on the other side of the negotiating table.
The fact that health insurance coverage for abortion came in for extreme scrutiny in this debate is also uncontestable. Women's health never should have been a bargaining chip in this debate. To ask women to accept a further narrowing of their health care resources in exchange for expanding access in general showed just how little respect too many elected officials have for women.
No woman expects to confront an unintended or medically compromised pregnancy in her lifetime. Yet one-third of women eventually seek an abortion over the course of their lives. On that basis there is good reason to expand abortion access rather than narrow it. Alas, politics once again proved more powerful than reason.
Supporters of women's health and rights have every reason to feel conflicted about how this debate was conducted and what eventually resulted.
Planned Parenthood mounted an aggressive and extensive grassroots campaign for women's health and health care reform. We generated more than 650,000 e-mails to Congress. We ran hundreds of phone banks that produced a total of 39,184 calls to Congress. We recruited hundreds of volunteers - 23 percent of whom were youth - to staff those phone banks and attend key events. All of these efforts helped narrowly avert a tragedy for American women and families.
In Arizona, Governor Brewer's efforts to prevent health care funding reform from coming to Arizona are at least consistent. After all, she also supports increasing the number of uninsured in Arizona by over 300,000 thanks to provisions in her plans for Arizona's budget.
Given the dramatic reduction in the number of uninsured Americans, combined with inclusion of reproductive health care including contraception, this reform is a historic achievement for all Americans and for women's health... even if the road getting there was painful.
Sincerely, Bryan Howard CEO, Planned Parenthood Arizona
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