Women behaving badly

More news this week confirmed that to be poor and female in the United States means that your womb is public enemy No. 1. Don't get pregnant, but don't try to prevent pregnancy either. And abortion? You're on your own. Wait, why, exactly, are you having sex in the first place?

The Sun-Times reported Thursday that Amerigroup Illinois, a Chicago-based insurance company, is in federal court facing charges that it denied insurance to pregnant women. The company received state and federal funds based on its pledge to cover low-income individuals who could not afford health insurance. Company emails admitted into evidence are sickening in their clarity. Amerigroup's director of medical management Jeanne Hollis stressed to a colleague: "We have trained the marketing staff constantly to not even approach a pregnant female about joining the plan..." and that colleague, following orders, passed on the message: "We...want to keep emphasizing...that they shouldn't sign up third-trimester pregnant members."

Meanwhile, San Francisco's Bay City Times reported earlier this week that Northeast Michigan's health department, also receiving federal grants and tax money to provide discounted contraceptives to the counties' poorest women, instead charged patients full price for two years running. The abuses were covered up by falsifying records for over 1,000 of the most disenfranchised clients in the four-county region.

The Guttmacher Institute reports that one in five U.S. women of reproductive age was uninsured in 2003 and that nearly 17 million women are in need of subsidized family planning services. As government services-ostensibly filling in the gap for needy populations-are found out to be corrupt, it's more important than ever to support community health organizations that have proven their worth and commitment to women's health. Chicago organizations like Erie Family Health Center pledge to provide services for low-income Latinas; Chicago Women's Health Center has provided donation-based reproductive health services and counseling on the North side for over 30 years, it is the longest-running women's health collective in the United States.

Neither of those organizations, however, offer abortion services. Though there are plenty of for-profit abortion clinics in the Chicago area, the only non-profit service available is at Planned Parenthood. This is simply not enough. As an employee of Planned Parenthood for over three years, I found myself advising women on public aid to pawn jewelry, televisions and CDs to come up with money to apply toward our procedure fees, already heavily subsidized. These women faced the indignity of repeatedly answering questions about whether they'd asked their partners, their friends and their family for money; as a clinic that offered some of the lowest fees for second-trimester abortion, it was not feasible to offer full subsidy for everyone that expressed a need. We struggled to see up to 65 patients a day at times, serving not only women from Illinois, but women traveling from Indiana, Missouri and Wisconsin.

The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health has recently launched a campaign to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which restricts Medicaid funds for abortion. This is just one initiative among many more needed for a full overhaul of the shameful slapdashery that operates as reproductive health care in the United States. Women unable to afford insurance, forced to enroll in under-funded public aid programs to feed and clothe themselves and their children, face nearly insurmountable challenges in exercising responsibility for their childbearing and reproductive health.

Women can no longer be punished for being sexual. The scandals reported this week further challenge us to make radical changes to our sickly healthcare system and to demand adequate reproductive healthcare free from greed and moralizing.