Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com
I’ll say one thing for Howie Fischer of Arizona Capitol Media Services – he has a long record of thorough coverage on the battle over reproductive rights here and of getting opponents of it on record. Fischer’s report on Wednesday’s Senate Health and Human Services Committee vote on SB1318 contains this interesting nugget from Center for Arizona Policy head Cathi Herrod (italics and emphasis mine):
Five years ago legislators voted to say that policies offered through a state-based health insurance exchange could not include abortion coverage. Instead, women would have to purchase that through a separate rider and pay an additional premium.
As it turned out, Arizona never set up its own exchange. Instead, residents can choose from plans offered elsewhere.
Sen. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, said 41 of the 199 available plans offer insurance coverage (for abortion, I assume). And she said 90 percent of those covered under the Affordable Care Act getting some sort of subsidies.
“So taxpayers are on the hook for elective abortions,” she said.
SB 1318 expands the prohibition to bar abortion coverage in any policy offered by anyone through the Affordable Care Act.
But it actually goes farther: Arizonans would lose the right to even purchase separate coverage. Herrod said she’s convinced that this coverage is also subsidized.
Why does Cathi Herrod presume that women electing to purchase supplemental riders to cover abortion can only do it by being subsidized? Well, it could be related to the sheer amount of commentary I get from anti-choicers on social media who insist they are not opposed to birth control but they just want you stupid lazy women to…wait for it…“pay for it yourselves!”
No amount of my explaining to these dipwads that women do, in fact, work and pay both taxes and insurance premiums seems to sink through their thick skulls. Oh no, they are convinced that millions of American women are lolling about upon millions of couches, scarfing millions of bon bons while fiendishly plotting to have several abortions, and also several babies, and somehow also to participate in constant sex orgies enabled by free birth control. If that seems confusing to you, then you must be a reasonable person and unaware of the bizarro world concocted by anti-choicers to portray women (who are not white, married, and Republican) as a rabid horde of frowzy skanks hellbent on slutting it up while not working and living entirely off your dime.
“So taxpayers are on the hook for elective abortions,” as Senator Nancy Barto (R) claims, presses the false assertion that women who have abortions don’t also pay taxes. Barto further implies that the only taxpayers who matter are those who are anti-choice. Where did this idea come from that only people who object to abortion and birth control get a special carve-out from their obligation to contribute to the common good? After all, I’ve been paying taxes nonstop since 1985, despite my being a woman who has used birth control and has had an abortion. I’m totally fine with subsidizing both those things! Could Senator Barto or Cathi Herrod point me to where I could get my Iraq War refund?