To the Editor:

Re: “Women: Bearing the Brunt Of Health Care Reform,” Opinion, Nov. 11

The Stupak Amendment to the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 is inaccurately characterized and described in this column. First, Hyde Amendment would not apply to AAHCA. The Hyde Amendment, which has been in place since 1976, only applies to appropriations from the Health and Human Services budget. On the most basic level, Hyde protects tax dollars that fund Medicaid from going to abortion — and politicians understood that this amendment was limited to the HHS budget, and that’s why they bothered drafting the Stupak Amendment in the first place.

The author’s more general argument — which has also been the very vocal argument of pro-abortion groups, including those on our campus — is that the Stupak Amendment significantly hinders women’s health. What is extremely detrimental to women’s health is abortion. Post-abortive women have higher rates of suicide and attempted suicide, psychiatric admissions and are at high risk for permanent infertility and ectopic pregnancy. Stupak would allow for funding of abortion in cases where “a woman suffers form a physical disorder, physical injury or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death unless an abortion is performed.”

After a number of poorly supported, scattered arguments, the reader is left wondering whether the author’s argument is for the non-divisive engagement of health care reform or is actually just a thinly-veiled pro-abortion reaction to the Stupak amendment.

Moira Ceconi ’10, president of Cornell Coalition for Life