[Dryerase] "Unborn"

[Shawn G]

Asheville Global Report
www.AGRnews.org

Reprinting permitted for non-profit organizations, and members of the 
dry-erase news wire.


Administration extends healthcare to "unborn"

By Shawn Gaynor

Asheville, NC, Oct. 2 (AGR)—A change by the Bush Administration to the State 
Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP)  (a federal block grant to 
states) will, for the first time, classify a woman’s fetus as an “unborn” 
child, extending it healthcare assistance from conception, while ignoring 
comprehensive pre-natal healthcare for pregnant women.
In the administration’s now familiar unilateralism, the new classification 
was passed as an amendment to a Health and Human Services regulation, 
therefore bypassing a legislative process.
Legislation is simultaneously being considered by the US Senate to extend 
S-CHIP coverage to pregnant women, eliminating the need to cover the newly 
classified “unborn.”
The change, announced Friday, has been harshly criticized by women’s groups 
and reproductive health providers across the country, who say the 
administration is attempting to undermine Roe vs Wade.
According to a statement from Planned Parenthood: “The Bush administration 
is attempting to circumvent the legislative process to define at which point 
life begins in law. Establishing fetuses as persons shows that the 
administration’s true intent is not to expand healthcare coverage for 
pregnant women, but to undermine a women’s right to choose.”
The change was first proposed by Bush in January, but, in a last minute 
surprise, coverage to the “unborn” was extended to the fetuses of women who 
are illegal immigrants as well.
“They are going to become citizens in nine months or less,” said Health and 
Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson.  Thompson went on to deny that 
abortion was at issue, despite the regulations language “unborn children” 
originating within pro-life groups.
“Shame on the Bush administration for using immigrant women —a population 
desperately in need of real comprehensive health coverage — to promote an 
anti-choice agenda,” said Judith Lichtman of the National Partnership for 
Women and Families. “We urge the administration to stop its cynical 
manipulation of public health policy.”
The California Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League said the new 
regulation was a “stealth campaign to end abortion rights, and could harm 
women’s health, by making them take a back seat to the program’s ‘patients” 
-- the fetus.
“Under this proposal would a pregnant women with cancer be able to get 
potentially life-saving radiation treatment or chemotherapy, since such 
treatment could harm the fetus? This proposal shows how the Administration 
sees pregnant women: as vessels for carrying a pregnancy rather than as 
people with important personal healthcare needs.”
Operation Rescue, a right-wing anti-abortion group with a history of 
violence against and harassment of healthcare providers, reacted to the new 
regulation by stating, “Tommy Thompson accurately redefined the term ‘health 
care’ and placed one more nail in the coffin of the abortion industry.”
All previous legal and legislative challenges to label a women’s fetus as an 
individual with rights and protections have failed.
The expansion to the S-CHIP program is estimated to cost $330 million for 
the next five years.  States will be given the option of choosing whether or 
not to extend coverage to fetuses.  The expansion does not provide funding 
for any additional healthcare for pregnant women.


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