by Samantha Goldman
June 27 It had never happened before exactly like this, but the road here has been paved for decades. Thirteen men gathered in closed-door meetings damning the fate of women in the United States; over 50% of the population. This isn’t a flashback scene in Hulu’s version of The Handmaid’s Tale that you missed while taking a pee break – this is the Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA). It is their response to the House’s passed American Health Care Act which spelled catastrophe and literally death to low-income people, especially women.
Like we can imagine in pre-Gilead times (the theocracy in which The Handmaid’s Tale takes place) women fearful of the reckoning presented by the Trump/Pence fascist regime have come in mass to receive IUDS. Planned Parenthood is reporting a 900 percent increase. There is a real basis for this fear that so many women feel as their bodies and futures rest in peril. In BCRA, women are reduced to breeders with abortion mentioned 11 times. Their identity, the word “women,” is mentioned zero. The codification of the Trump/Pence regime’s war on women is so important to them that Christian Fascist warrior and Vice President Mike Pence is making it his personal mission to get this bill passed, trying to sway those who can’t swallow cutting the care of 22 million people.
It will, like its House predecessor, specifically assail the lives of women and those who are LGBT. This bill is an all-out Christian Fascist war on women. It will make access to abortion and birth control (which are already largely inaccessible in much of the country) extremely difficult. For many women, it will become effectively impossible. Stripping hundreds of billions of Medicaid dollars puts targets on the backs of new mothers (Medicaid covers 50% of births in U.S.), people living with HIV (as Medicaid is the largest source of health insurance for those infected with HIV), and any woman who happens to be low-income (the majority of Medicaid recipients are female).
A centerpiece of BCRA, like AHCA, is the virtual defunding of Planned Parenthood. Putting the fascists’ draconian religious views above the lives and health of women, this bill bars Planned Parenthood from utilizing Medicaid funds for one year. With the Trump/Pence regime in power, they will foreseeably renew this provision annually. More than half of patients at Planned Parenthood utilize Medicaid for accessing medical care. Implementation of this bill will likely force the closure of life-saving clinics provided by Planned Parenthood nationwide. This would further encroach upon women’s access to safe abortion care even though the procedure cannot be paid for through Medicaid as per the Hyde Amendment. If passed, this bill will eliminate the ability of millions to get cancer screenings, birth control, and STI testing. This measure would put the lives of 2.5 million people in jeopardy. It is clear that this is a monumental leap toward theocracy when the only way Planned Parenthood’s doors could stay open is if they stopped offering abortion care.
The Christian Fascist movement in this country has always gone beyond abortion with its attack on contraception. Consistent with that, BCRA imposes severe restrictions on birth control. These Christian Fascists want nothing less than control over women’s reproduction, and this bill aims to do away with no-co-pay birth control and is even worse in rise of cost than what was proposed in AHCA. Bludgeoning access to abortion isn’t limited to those who rely on Medicaid. The Trump Regime’s BCRA contains drastic restrictions on those aiming to use private insurance to access an abortion by preventing those who are receiving insurance tax-credits from using them for abortion services. BCRA doesn’t stop there, this bill also will allow insurance companies to classify sexual assault/rape and domestic abuse as “pre-existing” conditions putting a disproportional burden on women and LGBT individuals.
The Senate Bill will be voted on after their July 4th recess. “Nothing changes instantaneously. In a gradually heating bathtub, you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.” Not just true in the world of Margaret Atwood’s creation but also true of the rise of fascism in the real world. Now is not the time to retreat, dip your head into the tub and hold your breath hoping it will be over soon. Now is the time to rise, not just for ourselves but for all of humanity. Acting boldly and bravely, with great determination, demanding that the Trump/Pence regime must go and not stopping until this whole fascist regime is driven from power.