March 2012

By Sergio Eduardo Muñoz, Senior Policy Analyst, Health Policy Project, Office of Research, Advocacy, and Legislation, National Council of La Raza. This piece is cross-posted at NCLR Blog.

Earlier this month, a curious thing happened in Texas. Despite repeated federal warnings, Texas enacted state rules that gutted its Women’s Health Program (WHP), a successful state program for low-income health care. Because this state action defunds almost half of the program’s health clinics solely due to their affiliation with Planned Parenthood, the Obama administration advised Texas that the move violated patient choice under federal law. Texas went ahead anyway, despite the ensuing loss of federal dollars as a consequence for noncompliance, and now over 130,000 low-income Texans will be without vital preventive services.

What didn’t happen?  Texas didn’t drop its vendetta against essential women’s health providers, choosing instead to come between some of the state’s most vulnerable people and preventive care. What else didn’t happen?  Texas, currently arguing before the Supreme Court that it is a victim of Medicaid coercion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), was not coerced to maintain its WHP. A program that is—you guessed it—funded by Medicaid.

Last week’s final reply brief filed by the states in the ACA cases has a quick explanation for the contradiction. According to the states, the Medicaid expansion under the ACA is unique, the coercion is unique, the challenge is unique, and the ultimate Supreme Court decision will accordingly be unique as well. Nothing to see over there in uncoerced Texas, and don’t worry about setting bad precedent either. A convenient assurance about a case that clearly could have sweeping consequences for many more federal laws enacted under spending powers, but one of cold comfort in light of the boldness of the actual challenge and the ineffectiveness of similar attempts at damage control. Furthermore, it’s curious that these state litigants, who were previously so concerned about the lack of a limiting principle on the federal government’s powers to regulate commerce and spend in the general welfare, now introduce an argument challenging the Medicaid expansion that itself has no limiting principle.

by Jeremy Leaming

Lawmakers bent on undermining the rights of women are not of course confined to the nation’s capital. They just happen to draw plenty of attention, especially when they attempt to scuttle health care policy intended to protect the health of women or decide to slow expansion of the Violence Against Women Act, a law that has been reauthorized, with bipartisan support, twice since its passage in 1994.

But over the past two years numerous state lawmakers have garnered increasing notice for their strident efforts to make it nearly impossible for women to obtain abortions. Louise Melling, director of the ACLU’s Center for Liberty, noted last year that the states were on a disconcerting roll of attacking reproductive rights. In the process, Melling said the states were stigmatizing women, by essentially saying they are incapable of making decisions on abortions. These state efforts say “women can’t make these decisions, we’re not … trusted decision-makers, and we need assistance as we make this decision,” Melling told ACSblog.

Reporting for The Huffington Post, Laura Bassett notes that Idaho’s attempt to force women to undergo an ultrasound and hear anti-abortion propaganda from the state before choosing to have an abortion included a ridiculously offensive comment from state Sen. Chuck Winder.

Before the Senate passed the bill, some opponents noted it failed to provide an “exception for rape victims, incest victims or women in medical emergencies,” Bassett wrote.

Winder responded to the concern by suggesting that women may not know when they’ve been raped.

“Rape and incest was used as a reason to oppose this,” he said. “I would hope that when a woman goes in to a physician with a rape issue, that physician will indeed ask her about perhaps her marriage, was the pregnancy caused by normal relations in a marriage or was it truly caused by rape. I assume that’s part of the counseling that goes on.”

Bassett notes that if Idaho’s bill becomes law, victims of rape or incest seeking an abortion will be steered to centers that aim “to dissuade women from having an abortion.”

Idaho is among the slew of states that have joined with national lawmakers in an increasingly aggressive attack on women’s rights. Blog for choice provides more information on the “serious nationwide outbreak of politicians who are practicing medicine without a license.”

What is likely not surprising is that many of the right-wing politicians peddling destructive health care policy for women, are also in the camp of decrying the landmark health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as a heavy-handed attempt by the federal government to regulate the health care industry.

Former U.S. Solicitor General Walter Dellinger (pictured), at last year’s ACS National Convention, lambasted the argument that the ACA was a grave threat to liberty.