What Would a Romney Victory Mean for Reproductive Rights?

My hope is that some of you will share this however you can. I recently had a conversation with women I work with who support Romney; when I mentioned the overturning of Roe v. Wade should Romney win, they thought I was full of it. Trying to keep peace (as I do , I didn't pursue it further. But if those women think that, who else might?

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/11/what-would-romney-mean-reproductive-rights


What Would a Romney Victory Mean for Reproductive Rights?

—By Kate Sheppard
| Sat Nov. 3, 2012 3:03 AM PDT


With Election Day now upon us, it's worth weighing the impacts of a Mitt Romney win on reproductive rights and health care. In general, Romney seems likely to cater to the extreme anti-choice faction of his party. Here's a sneak preview of possible scenarios:

1. The Supreme Court gets more anti-choice. All of the abortion-related decisions on the court in recent history have been a 5-4 (or 4-5) split, with Justice Anthony Kennedy as the swing vote. The court has four justices in their 70s right now, which means that the next president could have one or more opportunities to appoint new members. Romney has made it clear that he would like to see Roe v. Wade overturned, and would appoint federal judges and Supreme Court justices that feel that way, too. Even if those appointees don't get to throw out Roe (at least, not right away), they could still make important decisions on state laws currently caught up in the court system, like laws requiring a sonogram before an abortion and other laws that ban abortions after 20 weeks. A Supreme Court ruling upholding those laws could set new precedents for the burdens states are allowed to impose on women seeking an abortion.

2. Planned Parenthood loses federal funding. One of the first things a new president gets to do is write a budget, and Romney has pledged to eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood providers immediately. "It will not be part of my budget," he has said. And it's not just Planned Parenthood. A Romney-Ryan administration would take away Title X family planning funds from any health care provider that also provides abortions.

3. Health care reform gets overturned. Romney says he wants to toss out "Obamacare"—except for the parts that people like, such as making it illegal to deny coverage to someone because of a preexisting condition. The problem is, the parts Romney doesn't like are required to make the other parts work. There are a lot of provisions in health care reform that are particularly helpful for women. For one, I've known women who were told that heavy periods or cramps qualified as a "pre-existing condition," which the reform bill would outlaw. More broadly, under Obamacare, insurance companies can no longer charge you more just because you're a woman—a practice known as "gender rating." Birth control and other preventative care are now available without a co-payment. You can stay on your parents' health care until you're 26, which is particularly useful for women, who go to the doctor more often than men.

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8. Hospitals are allowed to deny women access to abortion, even if their lives are in danger. Under current law, any hospital accepting Medicare or Medicaid and affiliated with a religious institution that refuses to provide abortion care under any circumstance is legally required to transfer a woman who needs a live-saving abortion to a hospital that will. But last year, the House passed another bill that Ryan cosponsored, the Protect Life Act, which, if passed, would allow hospitals to refuse to "participate in" or "provide referrals" for abortions.