Senate Republicans have a bit of a problem. They really don’t want to continue the Affordable Care Act subsidies, but 74 percent of the country, including 50 percent of Republicans (44 percent of MAGA Republicans, 72 percent of Original Flavor), wants to keep them. Hell, even their own internal polling shows that if the generic “Republican candidate lets the premium tax credit expire, the Republican trails the Democrat by 15-points.”
So now, some of them have latched on to a plan that they hope will let them get away with not extending them without being held responsible for it. They say they would be willing to renew the subsidies for another year … but only if they get to institute abortion restrictions on ACA plans.
To be clear! Because we have the stupid and cruel Hyde Amendment, there are no federal funds being used to subsidize abortion. However, individual states are allowed to create their own individual, state-funded revenue streams that allow people to pay a surcharge for abortion care. That does not violate the Hyde Amendment, because it’s not federal dollars, it’s state dollars.
Guess they don’t love states’ rights as much as they claim.
“That’s what we’re going to negotiate,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters. “A one-year extension along the lines of what [Democrats] are suggesting, and without Hyde protections — there’s just not even, doesn’t even get close.”
Except, again, that’s not the Hyde Amendment. The Hyde Amendment covers federal funds only. States are free to direct as much of their own tax dollars to abortion as they like.
“Republicans said they might vote to lower Americans’ healthcare costs, but only if we agree to include a backdoor national abortion ban,” Oregon Senator Ron Wyden said on the Senate floor on Saturday, adding that if they got their way on this, “Republicans could weaponize federal funding for any organization that does anything related to women’s reproductive health care. They could also weaponize the tax code by revoking non-profit status for these organizations … The possibilities are endless.”
It will surely shock you to know that this plan comes straight from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which is so pro-life that it would rather see poor people die of treatable illnesses because they couldn’t afford health care than allow states to use their own money to insure abortion care through the ACA.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire told NBC that the issue is a “non-starter” and that Democrats would not even discuss it. Of course, we probably shouldn’t believe a word she says, given that she was one of the Democrats who caved over the weekend after swearing up and down that she would do no such thing.
However, if Republicans are going to play chicken with people’s health care, Democrats ought to play their own games, and say that if they bar this, states will just use their own money to make abortion free for anyone who can show that they are enrolled in an ACA plan (including patients from out-of-state). Seventeen states already cover abortion care for Medicaid enrollees.
Republicans don’t want to extend the subsidies — but they would prefer people blame Democrats for losing them instead. They want to be able to say “Gee, we would have loved to have kept your premiums down, but the Democrats just wouldn’t allow it unless they got to keep their precious abortions!”
That being said, there are still a lot of Republicans out there who are firm on not wanting to support it no matter what, while all Democrats, even the ones who caved, support extending them, so it might not be as easy to pull of as they think.
Just when you think the anti-abortion-rights crowd has grasped every possible straw, the state of Florida has decided to pursue racketeering charges against Planned Parenthood.
Florida’s Republican attorney general James Uthmeier filed a lawsuit claiming that the nonprofit organization has “misrepresented the safety” of abortion pills (they haven’t!) by claiming that they are safer than Tylenol.
They are, in fact, extremely safe. Over 100 scientific studies over 30 years have determined that, on average, there is only a 0.31 percent chance of serious complications when taking abortion medication. Not only is this rate far lower than many medications that are on the market today, but it is far lower than the rate of serious complications for actual childbirth, which stands at about 1.4 percent.
Uthmeier’s source for his claim that the pills are unsafe is one singular and extremely flawed “study” published earlier this year by a conservative think tank, which absurdly claimed that there is a 10 percent chance of complications with abortion medication.
The lawsuit states:
The results of Planned Parenthood’s deception-fueled sales have been disastrous. An analysis released earlier this year found that 11% of women experience a serious adverse event like sepsis or hemorrhaging within 45 days of a chemical abortion. Other studies estimate the incidence of serious adverse events to be as high as 20%, with over 15% of women experiencing hemorrhaging and 2% experiencing infection.
A charge of racketeering basically means that a group of people (usually the mob!) are running some kind of scam or fraud for the primary goal of turning a profit. For example, running an illegal gambling ring or money laundering would be examples of racketeering.
Uthmeier claims that Planned Parenthood — a nonprofit — is falsely claiming that abortion medication is more safe than it is so that women will take it and they can rake in the profits. As absurd as this is, were a court to take it seriously and give him what he wants, it could possibly be the end of the 110-year-old organization. He wants $350 million for deceptive trade practices ($10,000 per patient), $1 million for every individual person he believes “deceived” someone into taking abortion medication, and for Planned Parenthood to be barred from saying the medication is safer than Tylenol.
He also has some suggestions for the court, should they feel like issuing any “additional relief”:
• Ordering any Defendant to divest itself of any interest in any enterprise, including real property;
• Imposing reasonable restrictions upon the future activities or investments of any Defendant, including, but not limited to, prohibiting any Defendant from advertising or selling chemical abortions;
• Ordering the dissolution or reorganization of any or all of Defendants’ enterprises; • Ordering the suspension or revocation of all licenses, permits, or prior approvals granted to Defendants by any agency of the State; and
• Ordering the forfeiture of the charters of Planned Parenthood of Florida Inc. and Planned Parenthood Florida Action Inc. and the revocation of certificates authorizing Planned Parenthood Federation of America Inc. and Planned Parenthood Action Fund Inc. to conduct business within Florida.
So, basically, were all of his dreams to come true, Planned Parenthood would be eliminated from Florida entirely, and possibly from the whole country.
It would be an uphill battle to get this to go anywhere, even with Florida’s very conservative state supreme court. There are commercial speech and free speech laws at issue, not to mention the fact that the medication has been deemed safe by the FDA. However! Even if this doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean that the anti-abortion lobby isn’t going to keep trying it, if only to troll Planned Parenthood and waste their time and money. They are determined to claim that a perfectly safe medication is unsafe because they don’t like what it does and are only going to get increasingly creative and hysterical as time goes on.
I’d point out the implications this would have for every other medication on earth, were it not for the fact that the only medication Florida Republicans think is safe now is Ivermectin.
Billionaires shouldn’t exist, but if they must, it’s great when they use their money for good instead of evil. In that spirit, Melinda French Gates, who previously pledged to donate $1 billion to support women’s rights, has donated $250 million to more than 80 women’s health organizations across the globe — many of which are focused on reproductive rights, and none of which involve putting microchips in vaccines that would track people and also bring about the antichrist.
Hey! Do you want a bunch of right-wing conservatives to know when you’re menstruating? Or even to know when you’re ovulating, what you’re eating, and when you’re sleeping? Probably not! But apparently there may be a market for this.
Evie, the extra-creepy conservative women’s website attempting to be some kind of anti-sex Cosmo, is launching a wearable period tracker that will keep track of all this data and definitely not use it in any unscrupulous way. Are you wondering “Hey! How Handmaid’s Tale-y would that be, exactly?” Then let’s take a look at the current articles in their “culture” section.
But wait! It gets wors!
Via Abortion, Every Day:
This true nightmare fuel is a project of Brittany Hugoboom, the conservative influencer who created Evie and a period-tracking app with her husband, Gabriel. It gets worse: the Hugobooms are funded by none other than pronatalist Trump ally, Peter Thiel.
That’s right, the billionaire behind Palantir and the rise of JD Vance is very interested in women’s pregnancies: Thiel bankrolled Hugoboom’s “28” app, which has raised all sorts of questions about data-collection and privacy in post-Roe America.
What could possibly go wrong?
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Ezra Klein Committed To The Bit That Abortion Rights Are Unpopular
We’ve Got Some Good News And Some Bad News About Abortion Rights
Abortion Ban States Now Free To Just Let Pregnant Women Die
www.wonkette.com (Article Sourced Website)
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