Dianne Feinstein on Defeat of Anti-Abortion Amendment
Sen. Feinstein is the senator who spoke about the real-life examples of women whose health was endangered by pregnancy, and what can and does happen when the law demands a 100 percent guarantee that a woman will die before she can obtain an abortion, or be covered under provisions as draconian as the one defeated yesterday, which would deny federal funding for any insurance policy that includes abortion as a covered procedure, even if the woman pays for the abortion herself. Here is that part of her remarks, from her official web page:
This amendment would place an unprecedented restriction on a woman’s right to use her own money to purchase health care coverage that would cover abortions.
Let me give you one example.
My staff met with a bright, young, married attorney who works for the federal government. She and her husband desperately wanted to start a family, and were overjoyed to learn she was pregnant. Subsequently, she learned that the baby she was carrying had anencephaly, a birth defect whereby the majority of the brain does not develop. She was told the baby could not survive outside of the womb.
She ended the pregnancy, but received a bill nearly $9,000. Because she is employed by the federal government, her insurance policy would not cover the procedure.
Her physician argued that continuing the pregnancy could have resulted in “dysfunctional labor and postpartum hemorrhage, which can increase the risk for the mother.” The physician also warned that the complications could be “life threatening.”
However, the Office of Personnel Management found that this circumstance did not meet the narrow exceptions that a woman’s life, not her health, put her in danger.
The patient was told, “The fetal anomaly presented no medical danger to you,” despite the admonitions of her physician. The best she could do is to negotiate the cost down to $5,000.
[...]
A woman’s pregnancy may also exacerbate a health condition that was previously under control. Or a woman may receive a new diagnosis in the middle of her pregnancy. It happens, Mr. President.If this amendment passes, women in these circumstances would also learn that their insurance does not cover an abortion.
In some cases, it may be unclear whether the woman’s health problem meets the strict definition of “life endangerment.”
The National Abortion Federation has compiled calls that they receive on their hotline, which is available to women who need assistance obtaining abortion care.
Let me give you a few examples (the names have been changed):
* Molly was having kidney problems and was in a great deal of pain. She could not go to work, and could not provide for her two children. When she became pregnant, she made the decision to terminate the pregnancy in order to have her kidney removed to begin her recovery. She knew carrying the pregnancy would create additional health problems, and would leave her unable to provide for her family.
* Jamie already had severe health problems when she learned she was pregnant. She was a severe diabetic and her low blood sugar levels caused her to suffer from seizures. She was unable to continue her pregnancy but had difficulty affording the procedure.
* Another, Holly, was suffering from a serious liver illness when she became pregnant. Doctors were unsure of the cause, but she was in a great deal of pain. She already had two children, who she could not care for because of this pain. The tests and medications she needed to address her medical condition were incompatible with pregnancy.None of these women were experiencing immediate threats to their lives. So under this amendment, their circumstances would not meet the narrow exceptions permitted for abortion coverage.
This is really a problem. How can one say we’re going to provide insurance but we don’t like one aspect of it, and we don’t want the government to pay for it. Okay, okay. But the woman herself can’t pay for it? That’s the extra step that this legislation takes.
To this day, it is still legal to have an abortion. Women in this situation don’t buy insurance for abortion, but they do buy a policy – married women – in case something happens in the third trimester. For example, if they find a baby is without a brain, she can have an abortion and it is covered.
One of the problems in this whole debate is that everyone sees something through their own lens. They don’t see the grief and trouble and morbidity that are out there, and the circumstances that drive a woman to decide — married — she has to terminate her pregnancy for very good medical reasons. Nobody considers that.
Today, Sen. Feinstein said this about the defeat of the Nelson-Hatch amendment:
This is the first thing we’ve won in years. … A majority saw it was not right to say that a woman could not pay for abortion or abortion coverage herself if her insurance company received any federal dollars.”
Among that majority, I am very glad to have seen just now, were Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.
29 Responses to “Dianne Feinstein on Defeat of Anti-Abortion Amendment”
Is it possible that the Nelson-Hatch amendment was just something the right tossed in knowing it would be defeated? The right adds extra pawns to the board while the left pulls them off. In the end, who really wins the game?
I think so. It's just more obstructionism.
Not one moment or amount of anxiety or worse was ever merited by this. And now that it's over, are you really still anxious or worse? (The amendment failed. “Nyaaaa! Stu-pid amendment! Grrrrr”)
I suppose it could have been worse, still, and had Sarah Palin somehow directly associated with it.
And now that it's over, are you really still anxious or worse?
No matter how bad it gets, DLS, as long as you're around, it can always get worse.
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False.
Here is what the amendment actually said:
See no 100% guarentee of death or other such hyperbole, just a doctor certifying that there is a risk to the mother's life. I myself think this is a bit to strict but it is nowhere near as draconian as you try to present.
If your going to criticize it Kathy, at least stick to the actual facts and stop jousting with strawmen.
Additionally there is allowance for purcahses of coverage not using federal funds
So, if it doesn't block the States or other non federal agencies from covering this, its not really preventing a woman from getting coverage if she pays for it herself. Its just making her purchase it outside of the federal government areas. This provides a good chance for federalism, the States making choices that reflect upon their local situations to best serve their residents, without a one size fits all federal smock. The ability of the States to tailor their programs if offered, would have certain advantages, and perhaps some disadvantages. It does bring the decision making closer to the individual communities, and that isn't a bad thing in my book.
Truth has a habit of making things worse for some people. In this case, you risked making things much worse (for health care “reform”). It wouldn't surprise me the obvious was far from being understood — again.
Out of curiosity.
Do readers of this blog have any problem with that in the first paragraph of her example she used the phrase “… the baby she was carrying had anencephaly ..” and then said “… she ended the pregnancy”
Wouldn't a more honest description be that she had the baby killed before it died on its own?
No it most certainly would not be more honest… It would merely be another example of an ignorant somebody (with little or no information of the facts in this specific case) intentionally slapping a vicious label on a woman who was obviously going through enough emotional trauma already.
I see that this is your first post: welcome to the show!
If you click on Kathy's icon (just like I clicked on yours), you'll see she's a very frequent contributor and commenter. These drive by snipes are part of a rather long, disjointed, ongoing discussion here.
I could give you some of our positions, and there are more than two, but the best way to find out anyone's real stance is to click their icon and check their past comments.
What label did I apply to the woman? I did nothing more than describe the actual action.
I was asking if people had a problem with the fact that the Senator's phasing recognized the fact that a baby existed and then described its destruction in passing.
I have no problem with your stance on abortion. I only ask that you are honest about what an abortion is.
Thank you for the welcome. Yes this is my first post.
I have taken the time to read many of the opinions, posts, listed here before deciding to jump in. I hope to participate in many discussions.
The label you applied to the woman jorionsbelt is the label that is used for people who kill… “Killer”.
I have no problem with your stance on abortion either. I do however have a problem of your attempt to ignore and/or minimize Senator Feinstein's point. The point that there are women whose lives would be unnecessarily jeopardized if the Nelson amendment had passed.
Most women, when they want a child and find out they are pregnant, start calling the fetus a “baby” right away. That doesn't mean she is merely a vessel for the baby; she is still a person who is experiencing pregnancy. In this case, she ended that pregnancy. Plus, and you seem to be missing this: the baby had no brain. Is a person with no brain really a person? This may sound crude, but we can keep tissue of people “living” after a person is dead (as we do for organ donors for example), but that does not mean that they are “alive” in any meaningful sense. We can mourn them, but keeping their tissue alive doesn't make them any less dead.
You applied the label not me.
You said, “she had the baby killed” and now you say you didn't label her a killer… I did. O.K. fine.
I'm not missing anything. I fully recognize that the baby had an extremely serious deformity and the women involved was experiencing a very traumatic life experience. I don't minimize it a bit. I content abortion is so traumatic precisely because a pregnancy involves a human life. I had no such trauma when I had my gall bladder removed.
It seems you are OK with the killing of babies that don't meet your definition of having sufficient capabilities to be considered human. What exactly is your criteria for humanity? I contend you have to be very specific in order to justify “terminating” someone else.
In this case the Senator said that the baby wouldn't survive. This statement in itself recognizes that the baby was not yet dead. Words have real meaning and people act on that meaning. You can't be vague and incomplete when you are talking about something as critical as someone else's life.
Abortion requires an exact definition of human life. Exactly what degree of loss of capabilities makes it OK to end another life? As a society we have not defined this but we go on terminating pregnancies as if we have.
Exactly when does a single individual's life begin? You can't say birth because I've been present for the birth of my children and I know (and you know) that it is not a moment but a process. You can't say it is up to the mother because that means that a person becomes human when their mother recognizes them as such. That is nonsense because it implies that different people become human an different times. What if a mother doesn't recognize them as human until 3 months after birth.
The point of my original post is that Senator is using words that don't make sense in conjunction with her actions. Either she recognizes pregnancy involves a baby and thus she is advocating it is OK to kill babies or her statements are not thought out and thus should be discounted accordingly.
Leonidas, if you read my post, you might realize that in practice that language has been interpreted by the Office of Personnel Management very narrowly.
And that supplemental coverage described in your quote is the rider provision, which is what Barbara Mikulski was talking about the other day on the Senate floor, and already discussed here, so you should at *least* know what the objection is to that provision, even if you don't agree with the argument.
Please, Leonidas, don't lecture about “keeping more closely with the facts” when you can't do so yourself.
I honestly can't tell if you're dissing me, or jorionsbelt, lol.
The actual action is that the woman ended the pregnancy. There is nothing inaccurate about that statement.
And if you want honesty, you should practice it yourself. If you were that woman's husband or brother, or close friend, would you want to risk her death to avoid “killing” a baby that would die shortly after birth anyway? If your answer is yes, then you should state that honestly.
You are dishonest. You refuse to take responsibility for your own words. That is even more contemptible than the opinion itself.
It seems you are OK with the killing of babies that don't meet your definition of having sufficient capabilities to be considered human. What exactly is your criteria for humanity? I contend you have to be very specific in order to justify “terminating” someone else.
Your attitude, as illustrated above, is the perfect explanation for why exceptions to anti-abortion laws to save the life of the mother are meaningless. Here we have a textbook case of a woman whose life is threatened by a pregnancy that is not even viable to begin with, and if it were up to you, it's crystal clear that you would not let that woman have an abortion, or you would try to stop her in any way you could. I know what example I will give from now on when so-called “pro-lifers” say that anti-abortion laws don't threaten women's lives because they have exceptions for the life of the mother. The brief life of a fetus with no brain is more valuable to you than the life of the woman carrying that fetus. Shame on you for lecturing anyone here about how to define a human life and when a human life begins, when you don't even see a pregnant woman as a human life.
Edited to add: I was going to ask if you are male or female, but then I saw your statement that you “were present for the birth” of your children, so I am going to assume that means you are male — and thus not in a position to ever know what a woman feels when her life is threatened by a pregnancy (especially one that is wanted) or why having an abortion might or might not be traumatic. You have no way to support your statement that abortion is traumatic because it involves a human life because you have never been pregnant much less had an abortion and you never will.
Having said this, I have no idea why you would believe that abortion is traumatic because it involves terminating a human life. If terminating a human life were something you considered to be traumatic, then you would be traumatized by the death of a woman you had killed by forcing her to continue a life-threatening pregnancy, or by advocating such. But you wouldn't be. You have all but said that straight out.
I am responding to several comments that in one way or another say that I am not considering the view of the women. This couldn't be further from the truth. I haven't lectured, I have asked for your views.
Its interesting to me that no one has been willing to state exactly what level of dimished mental capacity they consider the trigger for loss of humanity.
I am acutely aware of this because I recently suffered an accident damaging my spinal cord leaving me paralyzed below the waist. I have spent a lot of time in hospitals around people with varying degrees of neurological damage to their brain and/or spinal cord. Their capabilities range from extreme to mild.
When I hear language like posters here I get nervous, and even more so when I hear it from a United States Senator. No one is specific about what they consider human. I look around me and wonder if others view these people as humans or bodies with “no brains” in their head.
I haven't lectured, I have asked for your views.
My view is that a woman with a life-threatening pregnancy is a human being.
I look around me and wonder if others view these people as humans or bodies with “no brains” in their head.
Answering for myself:
1. I do not view a person with neurological damage to their brain or spinal cord, either mild or severe, as “humans or bodies with 'no brains' in their heads.”
2. A fetus with anancephaly literally has no brain. Anancephaly does not mean there is neurological damage to the brain or spinal cord; it does not mean that a functioning brain, or any brain, has been injured or damaged in an accident, causing damage to the brain. Anancephaly means that there is, literally, no brain in the fetal skull. That condition is incompatible with life. It is not medically possible for a fetus without any brain at all to live outside the womb.
To require a pregnant woman to go to term with a fetus that cannot possibly survive outside the womb, when that pregnancy threatens her health and/or life, is not morally defensible. It's saying that the impossible life of a doomed fetus is more human than the life of the woman inside whom the doomed fetus resides.
I can understand that the physical damage to your neurological system caused by this accident has increased your sensitivity to, or awareness of, the humanity of disabled people. But there is no legitimate comparison to be made between these situations, and an anancephalic fetus.
As human beings, we are endowed with the ability to make distinctions. And it's really important to do that.
You know why nobody has answered that question? It's because it is, implicitly, not our question to answer. If your parent were on life support with no brain activity and little chance of ever waking up again, it would be horribly wrong for me to tell you whether or not to pull the plug. That would be your decision to make. The decision would be difficult, and would most certainly be traumatic either way; however, the government (or me, or anyone else outside of your family) would be desperately out of place to force you into one decision or the other. If you are implying that there is some sort of moral imperative for you to force your will onto this woman and tell her what to do in a situation like this, when she is already mourning the fact that her wanted soon-to-be child will never see the light of day (either way), you are answering a question that is disgustingly inappropriate for you to answer.
Fair enough.
So if a woman does not discover that a fetus is seriously disabled until after it is born are we, as a society, OK with terminating the baby 10 minutes after birth?
What I am saying is that as a society we have to decide at what point is there 2 people where one cannot choose to destroy the other. Does that change somehow during the birth process? Exactly what change took place in the fetus during that process that changed the options available to the mother? When exactly did that change occur?
You stated that it is disgusting for anyone other than the mother herself to have an influence on that decision. Again when does that change? What changed in the fetus to justify that change?
What is the defninition of human life? Sloppy wording, as demonstrated by the Senator in this article, leads to confusion and bad legislation.
jorionsbelt, it seems that you're not particularly familiar with the law as laid out in Roe v Wade. Essentially, in the first trimester, a woman can get an abortion for any reason. Second trimester, it's more difficult, and near the end of the second trimester, there have to be health reasons. In the third trimester, the only legal abortions are for extreme cases of the mother's life or if the growing fetus is very seriously disabled, like to the point where survival is very unlikely or impossible. There are no legal abortions where there's a baby inside that you can abort or wait a few minutes and then there's a baby outside. Your questions about what happens during the birth process are misdirected, and don't reflect what anyone's advocating.
More to the point, as for your question: “if a woman does not discover that a fetus is seriously disabled until after it is born are we, as a society, OK with terminating the baby 10 minutes after birth?” It really honestly does depend on how severe a disability we're talking about. If the doctor were to say that there is no chance of the newborn living past the next 2 weeks, and the baby will be in a great deal of pain during that time, then would you really deny the parents of that child the option to end the pain of their baby, if that's what they decided?
Just so you don't think that there are no pro-illegal supporters here, try some of these more balanced threads that we've had in the past:
Long one: abortion is a side topic further down:
http://themoderatevoice.com/52777/why-should-pu…
More to the point:
http://themoderatevoice.com/52682/compromise-ne…
With a little religion debate thrown in:
http://themoderatevoice.com/52682/compromise-ne…
Why I used “pro-illegal”:
http://themoderatevoice.com/52779/dont-let-abor…
Another long one:
http://themoderatevoice.com/52201/the-price-for…
Goes all over the map:
http://themoderatevoice.com/52438/house-democra…
More about funding:
http://themoderatevoice.com/52199/republicans-d…
I am familiar with the law as related to Roe v Wade. It proves my point exactly. That decision uses very vague language and that is why it continues to cause the legislature such difficulty in trying to form coherent laws related to abortion.
I understand the fundamental basis of the Roe decision to be based on privacy. Meaning the state can't restrict abortion because it has no right to know whether a women is pregnant. But here we are with Congress debating how to handle abortion coverage in a health insurance regulation bill. If the state can know about an abortion to pa for it then can it then make laws to ban abortion that it knows about. Vague language = bad legislation.
I am glad you included your second paragraph. Now we are getting to closer to the point that makes me nervous about the language being used. Will society get to the point where terminating severely handicapped hours old infants is an acceptable choice for the parents? What about the children of a serverly handicapped parent choosing to terminate their parent because their handicap makes them less than human?
I believe these are valid questions because the Senator in the article uses the fact that the baby in question had a severe handicap as justification for terminating the pregnancy. If that is a justification for terminating a human in utero then is it also a justification for terminating a human life after it is born (at any age)? If it is not a post birth justification then what is the differentiating factor?