Rep. Rosa DeLauro: Obama Can Find Common Ground on Abortion
By Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro
Democratic Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro represents Connecticut's Third Congressional District. She and Rep. Tim Ryan recently reintroduced the Preventing Unintended Pregnancies, Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act. While Dan's away, we've asked a selection of prominent guest bloggers from a variety of perspectives to give their thoughts on religion and public life.
Among the questions Dan asked me to consider for this post was the following: Can President Obama find common ground on—and reduce the need for—abortion? Well, yes, I believe he can. And I believe that, after many years of hard work by, and open dialogue with, advocates on all sides of the abortion issue, we in the House of Representatives have given the administration a template for this common, concerted action with the Ryan-DeLauro bill.
For too long, there has been too much heat and not enough light shed on the question of reducing abortion in this country. And for too long, we have allowed our differences to divide us on this contentious issue.
Now, I have been and will always be a strong and unyielding believer in a woman's fundamental right to choose. This is a belief I share with a majority of the American people, who continue to support Roe v. Wade and who oppose making it harder for women to get an abortion.
Many of my colleagues, including the bill's cosponsor, Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio, have been equally passionate and committed to the opposing view. For all of us, on both sides of the abortion issue, this is not a decision taken lightly but a morally complex matter of conscience that goes to our most basic and fundamental principles.
That is why our bill takes a different approach to the abortion question from what we have seen in the past. We have tried with this legislation to break the stalemate that has impeded forward progress on reducing the abortion rate in this country. At its heart, our bill aims to broker a détente and turn down the volume on the "culture wars" that have plagued our attempts to prevent unplanned pregnancies in the past. And it emphasizes, not the 10 percent of the issue where we continue to differ but the 90 percent where we all agree: We all want to provide support for new parents to strengthen their families and to make difficult life decisions, unconstrained by financial necessity.
Our bill is supported by groups on all sides of the abortion issue, including NARAL, Planned Parenthood, the National Women's Law Center, Catholics for Choice, Sojourners, and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, just to name a few.
This is because—despite legitimate differences—there is much we do agree on. We all want to see fewer unintended pregnancies and abortions. Each year, approximately half of all pregnancies are unintended, and about half of those end in abortions. Approximately 750,000 teenagers become pregnant every year, and 88 percent of births to females ages 15 to 17 are the result of unintended pregnancies.
The Ryan-DeLauro bill aims to stem this troubling tide, with new programs to prevent teen pregnancy, improved access to prenatal care, home visits for first-time mothers, and many other new initiatives.
On the prevention side, it increases funding for Title X of the Public Health Service Act. It also restores the Medicaid entitlement to coverage of family planning services that was repealed in the budget reconciliation bill, and it provides grants to states to reduce teen pregnancy.
But to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, we must also foster an environment that encourages pregnancies to be carried to term and improve access to child care and children's healthcare. This bill increases and expands the adoption tax credit for all children. It also expands postpartum coverage from 60 days to one year for women whose labor and delivery are covered by Medicaid and CHIP.
In providing a comprehensive approach to this issue—from increased funding for child-care assistance to after-school programs to nutritional support through food stamps—this bill promotes real parental responsibility once the child is born. And it does so by reducing the economic pressures that can sometimes cause a woman to decide not to carry a pregnancy to term.
But of all the important goals this bill can help us reach, perhaps the most important is that it helps move us all forward on this issue—beyond the question of the legality of abortion and toward actually reducing the need for abortion.
With this bill, we affirm both our core principles as Democrats and our commitment to promoting life. And I am happy to say that the new administration, while remaining steadfastly pro-choice, has adopted a similar framework in tackling the question.
This middle ground established by the Ryan-DeLauro bill is an excellent step toward making President Obama's goal of achieving common ground a reality. It can help all of us, on all sides of the abortion issue, finally move forward on the principles where we agree. I very much hope it passes and that it lays the groundwork for future legislation along the same lines. On this important, complex, and controversial issue, it is long past time that we stop yelling past each other and start listening.
- Read more about abortion.
- Read more about the Obama administration.
Tags: abortion | Barack Obama | religion
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Reader Comments
Forgive me
Yes, obviously I erred in thinking that Douglas Johnson would put more thought into his comments (But then, of course, he would have time to do research about how much Planned Parenthood does to support women, or to talk to the women who are eternally grateful for Planned Parenthood's support, which does include prenatal care and all kinds of other healthcare. But it is much easier and takes less time to paint them as heartless baby killers) Regardless, I'm glad I brought him mirth.
He says NRLC has no position about contraception. But that's the whole point -- if they really thought terminating a pregnancy is child murder, then they would have a strong position in FAVOR of contraception and would back any legislation that expands access. It just doesn't make any sense for NRLC and the other groups of their kind to not fully and unequivocally back the availability of contraception. Why wouldn't they want women to avoid crisis pregnancies altogether?
It's clear that in countries where contraception is readily available and there is good sex education, abortion rates are low, and in countries where contraception is unavailable, even where women know they risk their lives in getting illegal abortions, the abortion rate is high.
It's simple - we KNOW how to reduce the number of abortions, the evidence is there. The coercive policies that NRLC promotes just don't work - they just make things more difficult for women who have enough to deal with already. But then, punishing women is part of the plan, right?
Responses to your comments
I would have responded sooner, but it took me awhile to recover from the mirth induced by Mary Beth's imagining that my original posts consumed "hours."
The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) is a "single-issue" organization, devoted to protecting the right to life of human beings who already exist. NRLC takes no position for or against contraception, or on federal funding of contraception. We do favor directing any such federal funds to organizations that don't have as their operational doctrine that abortion is just another method of birth control.
As to Karen's comments on the Capps Amendment: The amendment was written artfully by veteran staffers to pro-abortion champion Rep. Henry Waxman. Since we have more than 35 years experience in federal laws and regulatory policy on abortion, I can assure you that we are not misreading it. It is explicitly authorizes the proposed new nationwide government insurance plan to cover all elective abortions, from day one. And Barack Obama has promised that is exactly what they will do (see his quotes below).
This means that every citizen who wants to take advantage of the public plan would be compelled to purchase coverage for abortion on demand. The Capps Amendment explicitly requires every enrollee must be charged an extra fee to cover the abortions; this is not optional. The federal agency will collect the premium money, receive bills from abortionists, and send the abortionists payment checks drawn on a federal account. You wish to rest your case on a semantic distinction that these government-collected, government-expended funds will not be called "taxes," but that won't wash -- it is a sham to pretend that this does not constitute funding of abortion. This is not a Hyde Amendment, but an inversion of the Hyde Amendment.
As Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (who, I am happy to see, also must have spent "hours" composing a comment in this thread) wrote recently, "We all know the abortion stance of the current HHS Secretary; we can reasonably predict that broad abortion coverage will be mandated. And the important word here is 'must': Any American who signs on to the public (federal government-run) plan MUST pay for these abortions through his or her premium. If the government is making you pay for other people's abortions as a condition for getting into your government's health plan, even if you find abortion morally abhorrent, can you really make the moral problem go away by waving your hands and calling it a premium rather than a tax?"
Again, if you're serious about getting to the bottom of this, read the technical memo on our website, and the underlying primary documents.
Douglas Johnson
National Right to Life Committee
Washington, D.C.
Legfederal--at--aol.com
News Flash! Right to Life isn't against abortion!
This really exposes the anti-abortion movement - guess what, they don't actually think abortion is child murder! See, most abortions result from unintended pregnancies and since the vast majority of adults are sexually active, using contraception is a great way to prevent unintended pregnancies (my IUD is something like 98% effective - woo hoo!). So if you really thought something was child murder, wouldn't you go around preaching from the rooftops about the glories of contraception? Wouldn't you stand on the corner all day making sure people had access to contraception and making sure people knew how to use it? Wouldn't you make sure people have access to emergency contraception? (even if you thought it sometime causes the loss of a fertilized egg, which you believed is equivalent to child murder, you would think it's better to prevent ovulation and thus an unintended pregnancy in the majority of those cases).
Wait a minute, they aren't doing that? How can that be? How can they actually oppose any effort to expand access to contraception? Well, they say it's because of that evil Planned Parenthood - that's why they don't support contraceptive access, because Planned Parenthood will get the money! Why then, haven't they started the Pro-Life Network of Contraceptive Providers? It should be across the country and providing birth control like crazy!
Because the truth is, they see something as worse than abortion - worse than what they claim to view as child murder. Having sex without wanting to be pregnant must be worse than abortion, otherwise Douglas Johnson would spend his energy promoting contraceptive access rather than spending hours submitting multiple comments in response to this blog.
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