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NATIONAL NEWS
Overriding Hyde:
Court Upholds Abortion Rights
By Sara Bennett & Joan Gibbs
New York (LNS)-The longest legal battle in the struggle for poor women's rights to abortions came to a successful temporary halt January 15 when Brooklyn Federal District Court Judge John Dooling ruled the government's denial of medicaid funding for abortions unconstitutional. The decision handed down in a nationwide class action suit, McCrae v. Harris (formerly McCrae v. Califano) is expected to have a significant impact on the reproductive rights movement.
Dooling's decision declared exclusion of abortions from otherwise comprehensive medicaid coverage a violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of conscience and Fifth Amendment rights to privacy, equal protection and due process. If upheld, it would apply nationwide. But government attorneys are appealing the decision.
The case started more than three years ago, in September 1976, when Cora McCrae, then a 24-yearold Brooklyn resident, sought an abortion at a Planned Parenthood office in New York City. When told that the Hyde Amendment was about to go into effect and that Medicaid would not pay for her abortion, McCrae decided to go to court. And Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights decided to back her with legal assistance. Women from Connecticut and Minnesota and the Women's Division of the Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church later joined with McCrae, as did six doctors from several states who contended that the restriction on abortion funding interfered with their services.
A suit was filed against the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and its then head Joseph Califano. Several anti-abortion intervenors promptly entered the case in defense of the Hyde Amendment, including Rep. Henry Hyde himself, Sen. Jesse A. Helms (R-N.C.), and former New York Sen. James Buckley, who all claimed they were acting on behalf of taxpayers opposed to federal funding of abortions. Isabella M. Pernicone, a lawyer and member of the National Right-to-Life Committee, was granted standing in the case as a guardian for unborn children. A companion suit was filed simultaneously by the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation.
Though 15 suits challenging state policies restricting Medicaid payments for medically necessary abortions have been filed since that time and over 13 federal and state courts have held that these restrictions are illegal, McCrae v. Harris was the only suit directly challenging restrictions on Medicaid reimbursement for abortion imposed by Congress through riders to the Labor, Health, Education and Welfare Appropriation Act.
Filed the same day the first Hyde Amendment went into effect, McCrae v. Harris challenged Congress's restrictions on the grounds that they denied equal protection and due process, and did not separate church and state.
As a result of the Supreme Court decision of 1973 legalizing abortion, the federal government reimbursed states for all abortions performed on patients covered under its Medicaid programs until 1976. Then came the Hyde Amendment, named for its sponsor and one of the defendants in the McCrae case, Henry Hyde (R-Ill.). Attached as a rider to the Appropriations Bill in 1976, it has been passed in slightly varying forms every year since.
The original Hyde Amendment for fiscal year 1977 allowed funding for abortion only when the woman's
Page 4/What She Wants/February, 1980
life was endangered. The 1978 and 1979 riders modified the "life endangerment" clause a little, by allowing funding when two doctors certified that severe and long-lasting physical damage would result if the pregnancy were carried to term. The 1978 and 1979 versions also provided funding for abortions in cases where pregnancy was due to rape or incest and had been reported within 60 days. The 1980 rider, enacted in November 1979, returned to the original,
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Workers' Educational Assn. Women's Studies Newsletter/oob
more restrictive "life endangerment" clause but maintained the exception for rape and incest.
Judge Dooling ruled all these enactments unconstitutional. He dismissed the "life endangerment" requirement as being "so uncertain of meaning in terms of medical content that it operates to restrict the use of the abortion procedure
in medicaid to the narrowest clauses to cases, to crisis intervention.”
The opinion also describes in detail the conse quences for poor women when there is no federal funding for abortion. "The evidence warrants the finding that poverty entrains enhanced health risks, nutritional deficiencies, and limitations on access to health care that make the incidence of medically necessary abortion markedly higher among the poor than among those who have the means to maintain well-nourished life and regular health care. Unwantedness itself is a factor deranging the management of pregnancy, and aggravating the risks from otherwise controllable complications."
Since the first Hyde Amendment rider went into effect, ten states have voluntarily covered the cost of abortion through state-funded medical care. Seven more have been funding abortion pursuant to statedirected court orders. But in 22 states which have adopted the Hyde Amendment in its entirety, the number of Medicaid-funded abortions has decreased by 98.2 percent since 1975. At the same time, the federal government is providing 90 percent of the funds for sterilization procedures.
While excited about the decision, abortion rights activists nevertheless emphasized the need for continued support for the reproductive rights movement and all it entails-from keeping federal funding for abortion available, to the need to fight sterilization abuse and population control programs aimed primarily at Third World women and the need to have affordable day care for all women.
Survey Shows Voters Favor Abortion
A telephone survey, conducted in August 1979 for the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) and released January 1980 by its Political Action Committee (NARAL-PAC), shows that more than three-quarters of the 1,000 registered voters i questioned believe abortion should remain legal in all or some circumstances. The New York-based firm of
Sexism:
It's Academic
(HerSay)-Women are still getting the short end of the academic stick according to Suzanne Howard, Program Director for the American Association of University Women. Howard kept tabs over the past decade on the numbers of women in universities who are professors, college presidents, lecturers, instructors and librarians.
In Howard's view, the ten years from 1970 to the present are a decade of "change without progress". She reports that today only 7 percent of the nation's colleges and universities are headed by women; only 8 percent of the tenured professors on college campuses are women; and a scant 12 percent of the chief academic officers at universities across the United States are women.
Conversely, Howard found that the percentages of women holding traditionally female positions at universities are higher. For example, 34 percent of the librarians in academia are women; 43 percent of the student health officers are female; women hold 37 percent of entry-level positions as lecturers at colleges; and 49 percent of university instructors are
women.
Howard has written a book titled We Shall Prevail, outlining the reasons why so few women hold leadership positions in the academic world.
Dresner and Tortorello Research contacted 1,000 registered voters, using multi-state, stratified sampling technique, to get a reading on pro-choice sentiments for the 1980 campaign year.
bc:
The sample voters say they believe abortion should
Legal under all ci cumstances
19 percent
Legal only in some circumstances
64 percent
13 percent
4 percent
Illegal in all circumstances
Not sure
To determine political ramifications, the voters in the groups favoring abortion in some or all circumstances were asked:
How important is it to you that the congressional candidate you vote for stands for keeping abortion legal-is it very important, somewhat important, hardly important, or is it not important at all?
Very important Somewhat important Hardly important Not important at all Not sure
20 perccnt
47 percent
16 percent
14 percent
4 percent
Similarly, the voters already identified as opposing abortion in all circumstances were asked:
How important is it to you that the congressional candidate you vote for stands for inaking abortion illegal-is it very important, somewhat important, hardly important, or is it not important at all?
Very important Somewhat important Hardly important Not important at all Not sure
61 percent
16 percent
5 percent
12 percent
6 percent
Translated into percentages of the entire electorate, 17 percent rate a pro-choice stance as very important, while only 8 percent rate an anti-choice stance as very important.