Schilling to Donate Akin Money to Charity

Talking Points Memo is reporting today that Rep Schilling is donating the $2000 he received from Rep Akin's Leadership PAC to charity. While this looks on the surface to be a noble gesture, remember that Congressman Schilling voted for HR 358, a law that amends the Afordable Care Act, to prohibit the use of any government susbsidy to pay for a healthcare plan that included abortion coverage. The ammendment also, according to RH Reality Check, "...revives the earlier failed Stupak amendment, which would force health plans to drop comprehensive coverage in state health insurance exchanges, cutting off millions of women from the benefits they receive today and prevent women from paying for health insurance with abortion coverage with their own money." The same article goes on to say, "It permits states to enact sweeping refusal laws that would allow health plans to refuse to cover women’s preventive services, including birth control, without cost-sharing — undoing a new protection under health reform supported by 66 percent of Americans. It also codifies and significantly expands an already expansive refusal clause (also known as the Weldon amendment) without any regard for patient rights or protections. Under current law (through the 2004 Weldon amendment), hospitals, health care facilities, and insurance plans can refuse to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions. The Weldon amendment has no protections for patients to ensure they have access to care and information in a timely manner. H.R. 358 codifies this unfair and discriminatory provision. H.R. 358 further allows health care entities--hospitals, clinics--to refuse to "participate in" abortion care. This could mean that a hospital employee with no medical training or role in a patient’s treatment decisions could refuse to process bills, handle medical records, or even set up an examination room for a patient seeking abortion care."

Why this matters. The original version of HR 358, the one co-sponsored by VP nominee Paul Ryan and Rep Todd Akin, tried to redefine the rape exception in the bill to only cover "forceable rape" in the belief that women would claim they were "raped" just to get an abortion. Since, as Rep Akin has reminded us, women can't get pregnant from forceable rape - and Rep Akin is not the only one who believes this btw - the ammendment would close the "rape loophole". (You can't make this stuff up.) Also, the official Republican convention platform includes an anti abortion plank with no exception for rape. In other words, what Rep Todd Akin said the other day was only outrageous in the sense that he just wasn't supposed to say that stuff out loud. It's what the Republican Party is thinking, they just don't want you to realize that.

Spread the word and spread the link: http://bobbyschillingspending.blogspot.com/

HOME