The historic health care bill recently passed in the House is a great first step toward health coverage for every American. However, the Stupak-Pitts amendment to the bill will "
produce industry-wide effects, leading to the elimination of health plan coverage for nearly all medically indicated abortions."
Seems to deflate all the balloons at what otherwise would have been a great party, huh? To appease those socially conservative Democrats in the South and Midwest and to acquire their votes,Stupak-Pitts was intended to prohibit ANY federal funds being used to cover the expense of abortion. Welcome, everyone, to the Great State of Mississippi! I want to use Mississippi as a shining example of women's rights, and come back to the implications of Stupak-Pitts. Mississippi, where the age of legal sexual consent is 16, with a small stipulation: "
If the female is over 12, the status[of 16] applies only to virgins." Previous sexual exposure brings the age of consent down to 12!!! Nowhere in this law does it say "consensual" sexual exposure, mind you. Now on to the abortion laws in Mississippi. Without BOTH parent's consent (in writing from the mother) no woman under the age of 18 may acquire an abortion. Currently, in the state of Mississippi, there is ONE abortion clinic! The fact that the state has the
highest teen birth rate (68.4 per 1000) comes as no surprise.
The state of Mississippi has been lauded by the nation's oldest pro-life organization, Americans United for Life (AUL) as an
example for the nation, where over 10 laws limiting abortion access have been passed in the last decade. The number of teen births in a state seems to be directly connected to the proportion of legal barriers in place in a state barring women from acquiring abortion. In the poorest of states, such as Mississippi, health care coverage that does not allow access to abortion to poor teens and women in the state will perpetuate this trend. As health care coverage becomes more and more realistic, federal restriction against women's rights to abortion, even if only a financial restraint, represents another tedious and treacherous hurdle for Health Care Reform. The bill will now most likely falter in the Senate. Day Two: Bad House of Representatives!
Seems to deflate all the balloons at what otherwise would have been a great party, huh? To appease those socially conservative Democrats in the South and Midwest and to acquire their votes,Stupak-Pitts was intended to prohibit ANY federal funds being used to cover the expense of abortion. Welcome, everyone, to the Great State of Mississippi! I want to use Mississippi as a shining example of women's rights, and come back to the implications of Stupak-Pitts. Mississippi, where the age of legal sexual consent is 16, with a small stipulation: "If the female is over 12, the status[of 16] applies only to virgins." Previous sexual exposure brings the age of consent down to 12!!! Nowhere in this law does it say "consensual" sexual exposure, mind you. Now on to the abortion laws in Mississippi. Without BOTH parent's consent (in writing from the mother) no woman under the age of 18 may acquire an abortion. Currently, in the state of Mississippi, there is ONE abortion clinic! The fact that the state has the highest teen birth rate (68.4 per 1000) comes as no surprise. 
The state of Mississippi has been lauded by the nation's oldest pro-life organization, Americans United for Life (AUL) as an example for the nation, where over 10 laws limiting abortion access have been passed in the last decade. The number of teen births in a state seems to be directly connected to the proportion of legal barriers in place in a state barring women from acquiring abortion. In the poorest of states, such as Mississippi, health care coverage that does not allow access to abortion to poor teens and women in the state will perpetuate this trend. As health care coverage becomes more and more realistic, federal restriction against women's rights to abortion, even if only a financial restraint, represents another tedious and treacherous hurdle for Health Care Reform. The bill will now most likely falter in the Senate. Day Two: Bad House of Representatives! 
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