By Denise Richardson
A Planned Parenthood supporter from Otego joined demonstrators in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to lobby for health care reform and to protect access to abortion that would be banned in the House of Representatives version of legislation.
Stuart Anderson said he was in a Senate caucus room where New York's senators echoed Planned Parenthood's opposition to limits in the Stupak-Pitts Amendment in the House bill passed last month.
``What's really complicating things is that abortion is not the issue that the Congress is supposed to be wrestling with "" the issue is supposed to be health care reform, not a re-hashing of the abortion issue,'' Anderson said. ``This side-issue now threatens to derail the entire reform effort.''
If the Stupak amendment, named for Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., or a similar amendment in the Senate becomes law, women will be prohibited from using their own money to buy private health insurance that includes abortion services through the new "exchange," or marketplace, established by health reform, a media release from Family Planning Advocates of New York State said.
Oneontan Jean Naples, president of Otsego County Right to Life, said government shouldn't be involved in health care at all. But if health reform is passed, the legislation should include language that doesn't allow federal funding for abortions or artificial contraceptives, she said.
``Many family planning techniques are a form of abortion,'' she said. Naples said she supported the Stupak amendment and would be in favor of a similar measure in the Senate.
Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., plans to unveil an anti-abortion amendment that abortion-rights supporters inside the Senate and out say they can't support, The Associated Press reported Wednesday. Hundreds of activists organized by Planned Parenthood and other groups gathered on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to call on senators to keep new abortion restrictions out of the health care bill.
Anderson, who joined a car pool in Albany for the trip to Washington, said the debate is complicated. First, the pro-life lobby threatened approval of health care reform if the Stupak amendment was not allowed to come to a vote, he said, and now the pro-choice lobby is threatening to withhold support for reform that restricts women's right to choose or have access to complete reproductive health services.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand spoke to a group of about 60 demonstrators Wednesday and has been on record opposing the Stupak amendment, her spokeswoman Bethany Lesser said in an e-mail. Last month, Gillibrand issued a statement about the proposed Senate bill, which said:
"While this bill is not perfect, the anti-choice measure that was included in the House bill is not contained in the Senate bill. The House's Stupak amendment would have resulted in grave risk to women and girls, particularly to low-income women. Denying a full range of reproductive services is not only discriminatory, but also dangerous, and puts the lives of women and girls at risk,'' she said.
On Wednesday, Max Young, spokesman for Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the senator believes the health care bill should preserve the present law in which federal funds can't be used for abortion but private funds can. Schumer's position is that ``a right to choose rests with a woman, her family, her doctor, and her religious leaders,'' Young said in an e-mail.
