Health care reform compromises hinder women's access to elective abortions

BY ERIN K. O'NEILL

There was cheering in the bar on Saturday night among my friends when word came via iPhone that health care reform had passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. I run with a predominantly liberal and young crowd, soon to be seeking media jobs that hardly exist anymore and even fewer with benefits. Health care reform is important.

“The bill that the House has produced will provide stability and security for Americans who have insurance; quality, affordable options for those who don't; and lower costs for American families and American businesses,” President Barack Obama said in the Rose Garden Saturday. “This bill is change that the American people urgently need.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Which is why I was so very disappointed to read about the “compromise” on abortion rights that made it in late Saturday: suddenly, the Hyde Amendment ban on using federal funds for abortion, a very legal medical procedure, was not enough to mollify “pro-life” politicians (Democrat and Republican) in the House.

For one thing, I take issue with the term “pro-life.”  It sets up the false dichotomy that if you are in favor of abortion rights for women, you are in some way “pro-death.” That’s ridiculous and unfair.

But I digress: the addition to H.R.3200, also called “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009,” made Saturday would stop federal subsidies for health insurance plans that cover elective abortions. This goes much further than the intent of the Hyde Amendment, and would most likely have the most effect on low- and middle-income women.

Should America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 be signed into law with these provisions, it will put an even larger burden on women seeking abortions. Private health insurance companies, wanting their insurance plans to be eligible for the federal subsidies, will eliminate elective abortion coverage from their plans. The government-run insurance plans, to be created by the legislation, would not be able to cover elective abortions at all (even though people who purchase health insurance through the public option would be paying premiums just like in private insurance).

The supposed solution to this is that women will pay, out of pocket, for “riders” to specifically cover abortions. This is absurd. No woman expects to have an abortion; there is a reason it’s called an unplanned pregnancy. Even if such a rider becomes available from private insurance companies, I opine that it would be prohibitively expensive because so few women would actually purchase it. This supposed solution is essentially worthless.

I have written before that denying federal funds to help women pay for abortions is unfair — it penalizes women who are already economically vulnerable and denies them access to a medical procedure the Supreme Court has ruled they have every right to have. But the so-called compromises of  H.R.3200 are beyond the pale. They have the potential to limit not only women on Medicare’s access to abortion, but women who pay for their own insurance or are covered through their employers.

Obama is right: America needs health care reform. But this cost is unfair to women.

Erin K. O'Neill is a former assistant director of photography and current page designer for the Missourian. She is a master's degree candidate at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Published in the Columbia Missourian on November 11, 2009.

If Obama gets a Nobel ... then maybe other dreams can come true, too

BY ERIN K. O'NEILL

So, our young and new president, Barack Obama, just won a Nobel Peace Prize. That’s so nice, to be so recognized for being elected to the highest office of the United States and to not be George W. Bush. Actually, the Nobel Foundation recognized Mr. Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," which sounds really nice, too.

Don’t get me wrong: My criticism is not of Obama. It’s not his fault he won, and he was a class act at his Friday press conference where he was charmingly self-deprecating and humble. “To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize — men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace,” Obama said.

Nobel Foundation, or, to be more precise, the five committee members selected by Norwegian Parliament to pick the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, I’m talking to you. Barack Obama? Seriously? The timetable is absurd. He had to have been nominated before Feb. 1 (scant weeks after he took office, mind you) and then short-listed for the prize by March.

What “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” could Obama have actually put forth by March 2009? The news release from the Nobel Foundation says: “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future.”

I know I was pretty enamored with Obama in February, all swept up in the romance and hope of the first black president and a new mandate of change. But never did it cross my mind that all that was worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. Couldn’t the Nobel committee have waited a bit, so that there were more than two months of presidency under Obama’s belt? Or, you know, we could have found out if all this promise of hope and change actually amounts to something. It’s just premature.

Maybe Obama could have been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature? After all, he won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album, respectively, for each of his two memoirs.

I mean, if Obama is now a Nobel Laureate, then maybe I should win a Pulitzer for my columns. I think after 17 columns (this is number 18, dear reader), I could be honored for “distinguished commentary.”  Or, even better, the Missouri School of Journalism could just give me that Master of Arts degree now. After all, I am about a semester and a half away from really finishing. I would argue that I’ve already put “extraordinary efforts” for this master's degree already.

Considering the undertone of all the criticism of Obama’s candidacy for president was that he was more rock star than world leader, winning a Nobel Peace Prize for which he was nominated weeks after taking office is really not helping things. To be so unduly recognized unfortunately undermines Obama’s credibility.

So, Nobel Peace Prize committee, I’m really happy that you’re really happy about Obama. You know, we’re pretty excited about him on this side of the pond, too. But, wasn’t Bono due for one of these things about now?

Erin K. O'Neill is a former assistant director of photography and current page designer for the Missourian. She is also a master's degree candidate at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Published in the Columbia Missourian on Wednesday, October 14, 2009.

Show me the photos!

BY ERIN K. O'NEILL

While the news cycle has moved on to President Barack Obama’s trip to Cairo and family vacation in Paris, the executive branch of our government stopped the release of photographs showing prisoner abuse by American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan last month and the public has yet to see hide or hair of those photos.

In his speech at the National Archives in Washington on May 21, Obama said, “It was my judgment — informed by my national security team — that releasing these photos would inflame anti-American opinion and allow our enemies to paint U.S. troops with a broad, damning, and inaccurate brush, thereby endangering them in theaters of war.”  That’s a fine sentiment: We do have a national interest in protecting our military men and women serving in active combat duty. But I’m not so sure they’d thank us for this favor.

Considering the poor reputation that the United States has gained in our dalliances abroad in the past eight years, how could these particular photos make it any worse for our troops? It is a larger shame that our nation’s military asked the troops to perpetrate in such a way as to betray the moral high ground on which this nation was founded. As a nation we cannot truly understand and overcome the specter of prisoner abuses unless we face the images that those abuses created.

Seeing is believing, as the saying goes, and there is nothing like confronting photographs of atrocities to crystallize truth. The role of the photograph is to provide evidence of a moment in time and to challenge the status quo in ways worded documents fall short.

America faced a similar crisis in 2004, when photographs of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came to light. Susan Sontag, the author and critic wrote in “Regarding the Pain of Others:” “The meaning of these pictures is not just that these acts were performed, but that their perpetrators apparently had no sense that there was anything wrong in what the pictures show.” Americans were quicker to condemn such actions in light of photographic evidence.

In the same May 21 speech, the president spoke of his decision to uphold the rule of law and release memos detailing the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” (read: torture) used at Guantanamo Bay. Obama said: “There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world.” This highlights a dichotomy in the perception of media: Why are the memos acceptable for public discussion and debate, while photographs of prisoner abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan are not? How are the memos less dangerous to our troops than the photographs?

In the end, the danger of inflaming anti-American opinion abroad and increasing the danger of American military personnel already in perilous situations is more theoretical than imminent. It is far more dangerous to let the photographs of whatever happened at prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan lie in darkness than to let them come to light.

“We uphold our most cherished values not only because doing so is right, but because it strengthens our country and it keeps us safe,” President Obama said. Attempting to hold back these photographs – these potentially damning photographs – from public scrutiny is a betrayal of America’s professed cherished values. To shield the public from knowledge that would increase understanding of a war that has been muddled from the beginning is a shame. Show us the photos, Mr. President, and we will be a better country for it.

Erin K. O'Neill is an assistant director of photography for the Missourian and a master's degree candidate at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Published in the Columbia Missourian on Monday, June 10, 2009.