Abortion Access in Uniform

Bad:

For military women, who lack all rights to medical privacy, facing an unplanned pregnancy is a daunting obstacle. Thanks to anti-abortion forces in Congress, military hospitals are banned from providing abortion services, except in cases of life endangerment, rape, or incest (and for the latter two, only if the patient pays for the service herself). Amy says her options were “like being given a choice between swimming in a pond full of crocodiles or piranhas.”

“I have long been aware of the stigma surrounding this circumstance and knew my career would likely be over, though I have received exceptional performance reviews in the past,” Amy explains. Although Fallujah has a surgical unit, and abortion is one of the most common surgical procedures, Amy knew that if her pregnancy were discovered, she would be sent back to her home base at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune, where she would then have to seek a private abortion off-base, or she could request leave in Iraq and try her luck at a local hospital. She also knew she could face reprimands from her commanding officers for having had sex in Iraq (part of a broader prohibition on sex in war zones), and that she might not be promoted as a result: a potentially career-ending situation in the Marines, where failure to obtain regular promotions results in being discharged. Moreover, as a woman in the military, accustomed to proving herself to her male peers over her six-year career, Amy was wary of appearing a “weak female.”

It's not just about the dominance of the religious right in the US military; it's also about Congressional cowardice and inane bureaucratic politics.

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Next British Election May Not Comply With European Court of Human Rights Law

and not because the Tories may win, or even that the election may result in a hung parliament.

Rather, the EUCouncil of Europe is upset that the UK has been delaying the enactment of a 2005 European Court of Human Rights judgment that it is inconsistent with human rights law to disenfranchise convicted prisoners.

Come on, Britain, if Maine, Vermont, and even Canada can do this, so too can you.

Seriously, this places the lifetime voting ban of convicted felons, a grotesque anti-democratic practice of 14 U.S. states (according to Wikipedia . . . 11 of which, shockingly, are located in the South; I'm certain race does not factor into this policy whatsoever) in context. Of course, as this is state jurisprudence, felon enfranchisement law varies; I am having a difficult time confirming the wiki numbers. However, let it be duly noted that a resident of Mississippi convicted of timber larceny (whatever the hell that is) permanently banned from voting. This heinous crime doesn't appear to be on the Alabama list, so I'd recommend crossing the border and setting up home in Alabama after release . . . but beware of committing treason (against the U.S.A.? The C.S.A.? The State of Alabama?) because that will blacklist you there.

A number of states require the convicted, and released, felon to appeal to the governor for a full pardon or clemency in order to enjoy the restoration of their voting rights. I guess that's because in a number of states the governor doesn't have anything better to do than determine, on a case-by-case basis, the fitness of his or her citizens to cast a ballot.

In attempting to understand how prisoners are treated for apportionment purposes, I found no clear guidelines, but I did find this observation:

"The American incarcerated population, 2,212,475 persons strong, is larger than the population of the fourth-largest city in the United States, commands a greater population than fifteen individual states, and contains more people than the three smallest states combined. If the incarcerated population of the United States were a state of its own, it would qualify for five Electoral College votes."

And two U.S. Senators!

According to this source, 5.3 million Americans are denied the franchise due to past or current felony status. Again I'm stunned to note that there's a race element involved:

African-Americans in particular were disproportionately disenfranchised and living in states where disenfranchisement is permanent even after a felon completes their sentence. Today, an estimated thirteen percent of black men are unable to vote due to a felony conviction.

13%. This is bonkers.

But at least the Europeans (and Canadians!) have a handle on the issue. Those wacky Europeans. What the hell will they dream up next as a human right, I wonder?

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What percentage of abortion costs are reimbursed by insurance companies?

It turns out this is a difficult question to answer. Two recent studies came to quite different conclusions in regard to the related issue of how many employer-based private insurance plans offer coverage for abortion. The first study concluded that 87% of "typical" employer-based insurance plans cover abortion. The second concluded that 46% of covered workers had abortion coverage.

Obviously part of the explanation for the difference may be that the two questions aren't identical. The first study tried to determine what was offered by typical plans, and increasingly workers are being pushed into high-deductible/limited coverge plans that don't offer the same benefits as the supposedly "typical" plan. The second study surveyed HR people, who often may have not been familiar with their employers' insurance coverage at this level of detail.

Of course the question of whether abortion is theoretically a reimbursable medical expense is different from the question of how much reimbursement takes place. A 2003 study found that in 2001 the costs of 13% of abortions were directly billed to private insurance companies. This number reflects, among other things, that lots of people are uninsured or under-insured, that some state Medicaid programs cover abortion, and that it's likely a significant percentage of women who are covered by private insurance plans that reimburse abortion expenses choose not to seek reimbursement.

Relatedly, the median cost of an abortion in the U.S. is around $400, which itself indicates that private insurance plays a limited role. By way of comparison, simple outpatient procedures that are usually reinbursed by private insurance, such as ear tubes and tonsil removal, are billed out at thousands of dollars per surgery.

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