Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com
When President Obama got elected in 2008 and Democrats took over both chambers of Congress I entertained the faint hope that they would overturn the Hyde Amendment. Naturally, I felt it was highly unlikely as the recession needed to be dealt with immediately (and that sense only deepened when Republicans pitched a fit over the stimulus possibly funding birth control programs). The President was also fully in his “post-partisan” honeymoon phase, where he was trying very hard to demonstrate to the country and to the Republicans in Congress that he wanted to work across the aisle. That President Obama would not have signed a repeal of the Hyde Amendment under the slight possibility that such a bill would have gotten a cloture vote through the Blue Dogs in the Senate and reached his desk was a given in my mind. The Affordable Care Act – the most significant reform that was passed by the 2009/10 Congress – needed to have a provision reifying the Hyde Amendment to get enough votes from anti-choice Democrats.
Now that President Obama is a lame duck and clearly done with GOP bullshit, I wonder if this bill just introduced in the House would have a fighting chance if Democrats controlled both houses. Per PRWeb:
Washington, DC (PRWEB) July 08, 2015
Today Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA), along with Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-CO) and 61 other Congressional co-sponsors, introduced the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance (EACH Woman) Act. The bill would ensure health coverage for abortion for every woman however much she earns or however she is insured. The bill is backed by 36 national and state organizations united under the campaign All* Above All.
