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Just got an email from Organizing For America *DNC* asking me to thank my representative (Nancy Pelosi) for passing health care last night, and asking me to write a letter to the editor thanking her and Obama for passing health care in the House. Here’s what I wrote:
It is shocking that in order to pass a Health Care Reform bill in the House of Representatives, with a 60% majority, our Democratic leadership allowed a vote on an amendment that will eliminate choice for any women enrolled in plans offered on the national exchange.
When we worked to elect Democrats to Congress and to the White House, activists never expected to see women’s rights go backwards in America. This is a horrifying development.
I hope the United States Senate will not take up this loathsome Stupak Amendment and that conferees will remove it before health care reform goes to President Obama to sign.
Saturday was a bitter, hollow victory for our sisters, daughters, and mothers whose health care was bargained away needlessly so that Rahm Emanuel could have a "W" in the health care column.
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Please take an opportunity to write to your Congresscritter, to your local papers, and to OFA if you get an email like I did. We can’t let them think we aren’t watching.
Thanks, Teddy. I was so offended by the OFA e-mail right after the vote. That’s not victory – that’s caving in.
I’ve asked this question on another thread, but it seems relevant here, too, and I’d like to make sure I’m characterizing it correctly:
In general terms, would it be correct to say that the legislation we got last night – H R 3962 with the Stupak Amendment – creates a public health insurance option that will be available to some, but only few years from now, and that it creates a new health insurance exchange to force greater competition among private plans so as to bring costs down, but that none of these will be available to women unless they voluntarily give up their constitutional right in a matter of conscience?
thanks for that.
if you live in rabidly republican district, like i do, the ofa asks you to write a letter exhorting your congresscritter to support the bill when it comes back to the house for a final vote.
Didn’t keep a copy of what I wrote, but it was a lift from the conclusion of this diary, directed at every newspaper in the DC area, and tailored to say that rather thanking Jim Moran for voting for this bill, I was condemning him for voting for an immoral bill, instead. I also gave John Garamendi a wake up call, about his vote for HR 3962.
Yup.
Thanks teddy. We all should be writing those letters and let them know how we feel.
I’m afraid if we think this is bad, what will come out of the Senate will be even worse. Now is the time if we ever spoke out to do it.
It was informative but disheartening to see that the shameless proponents of the Stupak amendment made their contempt for women so clear. http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/07/gop-gone-wild/
Remember the ERA? Haven’t heard anyone even mention it in decades. It’s clear that the people who said a law declaring equal rights for women wasn’t necessary were very very wrong.
I received the same from OFA and responded that I hope Kathy Dahlkemper’s bishop could afford her campaign and the ladies axillary can manage all the leg work and phone calls (I informed her of same Sunday). Then I added the no coat hangers graphic – not that I think those oafs get it.
Mitch Stewart is a lunkhead a**hat. So is his boss.
Do like I do and hit reply, then tell them what you think, it may do no good but one of the dum-dums must read it to delete it.
@9 Regarding Mitch, would you believe I got a similar email asking me to send a “Thank you” to Lipinski? I clicked the link to unsubscribe from OFA emails and explained why in the box provided.
Good response, Teddy. It’s sad that the best they thought they could do was to foist a lousy plan on us, and then add an anti-choice provision on top of it, and that we should thank them for the royal screwing they gave us.