| Students Stop Stupak! |
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| Wednesday, 18 November 2009 09:42 |
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by Leah Reis-Dennis, Amplify Front Page Blogger I am a freshman at Harvard University, where, despite the presence of enormous individual student ambition and drive, it’s pretty much impossible to incite enthusiasm from any large-ish group about anything besides upcoming exams. It's hard to imagine mobilizing students to spend time and energy making their voices and anger heard over the recent Stupak-Pitts Amendment to the House healthcare bill (or even provoking their anger in the first place). “Yes!” I thought. “Students care about reproductive health care, women’s right to choose, and the knowledge that women’s health care is health care. We understand that no one plans an unplanned pregnancy, something that both private and public insurance plans will be forced to cast aside if the Stupak amendment makes it into the final version of the healthcare bill. “ The first steps in any advocacy movement are to understand the problem, decide what needs to be change, and establish goals to best effect that change. We reviewed Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s thorough and accessible run-down of the Stupak amendment and what it does to women’s health care coverage, and went over the implications the amendment might have as the healthcare bill progresses to the Senate. Gandy emphasized that the Stupak amendment goes beyond the compromise that CAPP established, which was to prohibit federal funding for abortion. The Stupak amendment would, in addition, restrict women's access to PRIVATE abortion coverage, affecting how we spend our own money out of our own pockets. We established two primary goals in our advocacy: 1) Ensure that the Stupak amendment doesn’t end up in the final health care bill 2) Mobilize college students at Harvard and beyond to start a movement advocating for women’s health care, reproductive rights, etc. Our immediate priority is to convince the Senate to bring a bill to the floor that doesn’t include Stupak or anything like it. If the House and Senate bills differ (which they doubtless will), both bills will go to the Conference Committee, where the committee will mix and match the two bills and come up with a compromise. The Conference Committee will be our next target, and we need to ensure that Stupak is stripped from this final bill. Next, Glantz presented an acronym for urgent organization and planning: UNLOCK (Urgency, Need to plan quickly, Lead and leverage, Organize organize organize, Count real numbers, Kill Stupak Victory). Gandy then briefed us on the Senate, emphasizing that we must focus pressure on states with an anti-choice democrat or a pro-choice democrat in a state that’s pro-life (Louisiana, for example). These states (Pennsylvania, Indiana, Maine, Arkansas, Louisiana, Virginia, North Dakota, Nebraska, Nevada, Missouri) are essential in the fight to stop Stupak. ACTION: if you are from one of these states, or know anyone from these states, it is imperative that you call your senator and urge him or her to oppose any bill that limits abortion funding more than it already has been from the CAPPS compromise.
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