House Rethugs Propose New Tax as Punishment

The misogynist rethuglicans have been warning you for 38 years: if Americans didn't outlaw abortion and force women back to the Dark Ages of forced childbirth, terrible things would happen.

Now they're making good on that threat: House Rethugs want to make you pay a tax if your health insurance company covers abortion. Note that is not a tax on abortion. It's not a tax on women of child-bearing age who might possibly consider the idea of possibly having an abortion. It's not even a tax on people who purchase health insurance that includes coverage for abortion. It's a tax on everyone whose insurance company offers policies that cover abortion.

Everybody. Even if you do not have a uterus. Even if no one in your family has a uterus. Even if you are fanatic anti-choice freakazoid who protests abortion clinics. If your health insurance company - the only one your employer offers and the one you have no choice but to accept - offers policies that cover abortion - even if you don't buy one of those policies - you must pay this tax.

The only way you can avoid paying the tax is to make your insurance company stop covering abortion. Or make your members of Congress outlaw abortion once and for all.

This is fucking brilliant.

And don't think rethuglicans can't get it just through their House majority, but also through the Democratic Senate. And either signed by an intimidated, appeasing president, or passed with veto-overturning majorities.

Activist groups are calling this bill "Stupak on Steroids" and not just because it doubles-down on Stupak's anti-abortion amendment to health care reform.

Remember how Stupak got passed in the huge-majority-Democratic House last year? The deal was that anti-choice Blue Dogs could vote for Stupak as a gesture, and in return they'd vote for the main health reform bill. Because everybody was sure that Stupak would never get a majority. It would be a symbolic vote that Blue Dogs could point to while running for re-election.

Oops. To the horror of the House Democratic leadership, Stupak passed. The most horrifically anti-choice legislation in a generation was part of health care reform.

And most of those Blue Dog betrayers voted against health care reform anyway. Like Ben "Wire Hangar" Chandler (repug-cocksucker, KY-6).

So don't think this is another joke bill like health care repeal last week. The House rethugs know the Democratic caucus is riddled with cowards and appeasers who will vote for this bill out of terror that repug voters will look at them cross-eyed.

Jessica Arons at the Center for American Progress:

No one should be fooled by the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, or H.R. 3, which was introduced today in the House of Representatives. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), the main sponsor, claims that his bill would “only” codify, or make permanent, the Hyde Amendment, which is the annual appropriations rider that restricts Medicaid funding for abortion. But it would do much more than that. Rep. Smith’s bill would go far beyond current law, seriously compromise women’s access to reproductive health care, and hamstring government operations.

SNIP

Make no mistake: Each of these provisions represents an expansion, not simply a codification, of the abortion funding restrictions that exist in current federal law.

From Nancy Keenan at NARAL Pro-Choice America:

The news from Capitol Hill yesterday was astounding.

We're two weeks into the new Congress, and one of the first legislative priorities from the anti-choice leadership was to introduce an abortion-coverage ban we call "Stupak on Steroids." This is one of the most far-reaching anti-choice measures I have seen.

If you thought that the Stupak abortion-coverage ban in health-care reform was bad, this new bill is even worse. And anti-choice speaker of the House, John Boehner, has said that this bill is "one of our highest legislative priorities."

If enacted, the "Stupak on Steroids" bill would:

• Impose the Stupak abortion ban on the entire new health-care system.
  
  
• Impose tax penalties on millions of Americans , effectively raising the price of health insurance if the plan covers abortion care. This is outrageous, considering 87 percent of private insurance plans offer abortion care.
  
• Make it more difficult for survivors of incest and rape to access abortion care.
  
• Permanently ban abortion access for women in the military.
  

If the "Stupak on Steroids" bill passes in the House, our anti-choice opponents have a strategy to ram it through the Senate, where we only have 40 pro-choice allies we can count on. According to CQ Weekly, anti-choice activists "want the House to quickly pass Smith's bill and later attach it as an amendment to a must-pass measure needing Senate action."

Everybody who thinks President Obama would veto this bill, stand on your head.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....