Many of the answers in last night’s Democratic Senate debate defy fact-checking — not because the candidates ducked questions, but because the questions themselves invited subjective replies. Candidates were asked whether they considered themselves “like-able,” whether they thought politicians should be subject to Tiger-Woods-like media scrutiny, and whether there was anything about their private life that they wouldn’t want to be made public.
The most heated disagreement was between Rep. Michael Capuano and Stephen Pagluica on abortion — and it was a disagreement as much about characterization as substance. Capuano and Pagluica are both pro-choice, but they disagree over whether the House bill’s abortion restrictions (now commonly known as the Stupak amendment) are problematic enough to sink the bill. Capuano says they are; Pagluica says no. But when Capuano claimed the amendment could condemn poor women to “back-alley abortions,” Pagluica equated that remark to a scare tactic, much like Sarah Palin’s comments on “death panels.”
To many, the phrase “back-alley abortion” connotes the unsafe, illegal procedures common before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. Women risked their lives — and sometimes lost their lives — getting abortions from people without the ability to perform the procedure safely. Pagluica is correct in saying Stupak is “just about funding” and would not make abortion illegal. To the extent that “back-alley” connotes illegality, he’s right to challenge Capuano’s rhetoric.
But “back-alley” also connotes unsafe abortions, and in that light, Pagluica’s dismissal of Capuano’s statement isn’t entirely justified. How much the Stupak amendment would change abortion access isn’t entirely clear, in part because nobody knows how private insurers will behave as insurance coverage is expanded. Federal subsidies already cannot be used to pay for an abortion, and supporters of the Stupak amendment — which prevents anyone receiving a federal subsidy from buying a plan with abortion coverage — say the language will keep things as they are now. Opponents, such as Planned Parenthood, fear Stupak could result in private insurers dropping abortion coverage rather than lose out on federally subsidized customers. In that scenario, all insured women would have to pay for abortions out of their own pockets.
So insured lower-income women who can’t easily afford a medical abortion ($350-$900 in the first trimester) may seek out less safe, less effective options, like any number of the “recipes” for self-induced miscarriages floating around on the Internet. To the extent that “back alley” connotes unsafe, rather than illegal, Capuano’s use of the phrase may indeed be more than inflammatory rhetoric.
In a piece about Tuesday’s debate, CommonWealth’s Jack Sullivan and Bruce Mohl examined other angles of the Stupak amendment.