The Bush Agenda

Attempting to use a spending bill to ban abortions.

U.S. Gag Rule Included in Emergency Spending Bill

Language slipped into the Omnibus spending bill--expected to pass Congress today--permits medical personnel, hospitals and insurers to privately ban abortions and even to bar employees from making referrals.
A behind-the-scenes maneuver by anti-choice adherents in Congress and the White House could result more scenes like the one that confronted a woman in 1998.

The woman, whose identity has been kept confidential, needed an emergency abortion when her water broke only 14 weeks into her pregnancy, but the Manchester, N.H., hospital where her obstetrician, Dr. Wayne Goldner, had privileges refused admission. The hospital said all abortions were banned under a new affiliation with a religious hospital and the woman had to travel in a taxi 80 miles to another facility.

Since then, pressure by the Attorney General of New Hampshire resulted in reversal of the hospital merger and the return of doctors' ability to provide abortions in Manchester. Across the country, states faced with the wholesale expansion of anti-abortion religious healthcare also used their own state laws to prevent summary denial of abortion care to women.

But states may be prevented from taking action in the future.

Because of 104 words slipped into a 3,500 page spending bill that rushed through Congress in the last two weeks, similar stories of abortion service denial may emerge across the country. The add-on language permits doctors, medical personnel, hospitals, insurers and health maintenance organizations to privately ban abortions with impunity, and even to prevent employees from making referrals. No reason need be given for these private bans. No exceptions are required for women who are raped, in emergency need, or facing death or disabling impairment.

We need to get Lorenna Bobbit to become a Congressional lobbyist. Placing her in the company of all those studdy, old white men may make a few of them think twice before slipping provisions like this into spending bills. Or any other bill, for the matter.