The Stupak Opportunity

Think of this as Volume 12, Number 45 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

The Stupak Amendment, which analysts are calling the worst thing ever for the women's movement — it prohibits coverage for abortions even in private contracts written on the health exchange — may in fact be an enormous opportunity.

And that opportunity holds big lessons for other political movements as well.

First, want to know why the AARP is  so powerful? Cash flow. 

Thanks to a deal with UnitedHealth, AARP draws millions of dollars per year in insurance kickbacks from its members. Thus it's not just an interest group, but an institution. The AARP's endorsement of the House measure went a long way toward assuring its passage last night.

Planned Parenthood, by contrast, is financially weak. It has been burdened with the call of "choice" for a generation, against the stronger frame of "life." It is constantly on the defensive, where if it looked at history and changed its frame to working "against slavery" (a woman's independent life can today be ended by any guy's sperm, and even a rapist's baby brought to the world at the point of a gun, according to the other side) things can be turned around.

But this post is not just about politics. It's about money.

The aim of Stupak is to make abortion not only beyond the pale of federal funds, but also in time to exclude it from private insurance coverage.

So go with it. Form an insurance company (with a financial partner) called, say, the Womens Health Alliance. (A nice, bland, but definite name.) This company sells policies covering women's health, to women. Old, young, and in-between.

The WHA policy covers all costs on any procedure involving lady parts. All costs. In the case of procedures covered by conventional policies, this picks up all the deductibles and co-pays. It is first dollar insurance. So when an older woman needs an hysterectomy, the costs won't burden her grandchildren. When a middle-aged woman needs a cancer screening, it's covered — you owe nothing. When a young woman needs birth control, her family pays nothing for the pills. (Most birth control pills today are still name brand drugs carrying a hefty co-pay.)

And, if you need an abortion, it covers that as well. From the first dollar.

By covering a broad range of procedures, you assure broad interest. Even if only women whose politics are aligned with Planned Parenthood sign up, you're still talking about millions of policies. Because you're paying for the first dollar of care, those policies carry a hefty premium.

What happens to the profits? They go back to Planned Parenthood.

And here's where it gets political again. The profits go into a fund that will pay for the costs of a poor woman needing an abortion. You set up a toll-free number, you advertise it on billboards. A poor woman calls, you verify her need, you pick her up and get it done, and you don't even think about the money. You think about the woman. My suggestion is to call the people doing this work the Harriet Tubman brigade. An underground railroad for the freedom of women.

And, yes, you can expand this to all women in need. Women in states where there are no doctors. Women in abusive marriages. Catholic women and girls whose priests are seeking to hold their lives forfeit because they had "teh sex."

Now you have three things that any cause needs to succeed:

1. Cash flow.
2. An aggressive political frame.
3. Direct, heroic action.

Remember, all the violence of the last decades has come from the anti-choice crowd. We want to frame the issue so that those people become the filibusters of another century, the southerners who came north to do violence against anti-slavery agitators, the people who created "Bloody Kansas" and who took Dred Scott under the Fujitive Slave Law.

And you want to do God's work.

God's work? How is that possible. Before science made pregnancy and childbirth safe, a sizable percentage of pregnancies miscarried. Before the 20th century pregnancy was a very, very risky thing. Spontaneous miscarriages were common. That's why the population did not explode until pregnancy and childbirth were made safe.

Anyone who thinks God was "killing" all those millions of babies is crazy. God is merciful. Babies do not acquire the brains to think, or the lungs to scream, until the third trimester. Spontaneously aborted fetuses were not babies before the point called viability. Before viability they have no thoughts, they can't survive outside their mothers, and while they are alive they are not human. (Unless you define humanity as being brainless.)

Choice is necessary in order to redress the balance God created but science unmade. Those who oppose choice as "godless science" need to take the next step and reject the work of science — drugs, Lister, the lot. That's "God's world."

If you are to accept science for its ability to make pregnancy safe, then you must redress the balance by giving women the freedom of their own bodies. It's not a complete solution, but it is justice. Science enables justice in ways religion does not. The Roman Catholic position in choice is, in the end, just like the Southern Baptists' position was on slavery in the 19th century — a cover for the absolute power of one group over another.

Start to see the frame? The new cause? And the new way forward?

Oh, and a little thought will let you use this method of thought on any cause that interests you. Cash flow, frame, direct action. That's how you win.