Part 1

It was Oct. 3, 1977, when the first reported death from the cutoff of federal funds for abortion known as the Hyde Amendment occurred. Rosie Jimenez, a single mother and college student in the border town of McAllen, Texas, had sought an abortion from her gynecologist. The gynecologist turned her down because Medicaid would no longer pay for abortions. Rosie went to an unlicensed midwife instead, who for $120 inserted a catheter in her uterus and sent her home.

Fever, nausea, cramps and bleeding resulted and 12 hours later Rosie was admitted to the hospital in septic shock. She denied having an abortion, but the evidence was clear. Seven days later she died -- bleeding from every orifice in her body and green from gas gangrene, according to her friends.

I thought about Rosie as I read a letter sent in late June to Speaker Nancy Pelosi by 19 "pro-life" House Democrats affiliated with the organization Democrats for Life in America. Led by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., the representatives laid down the first major antiabortion challenge to healthcare reform, saying that "Plans to mandate coverage for abortions, either directly or indirectly, are unacceptable." They warned Pelosi "we cannot support any healthcare reform proposal unless it explicitly excludes abortion from the scope of any government-defined or subsidized health insurance plan."

The signers of the letter pointed approvingly to the effect that the Hyde Amendment, which prohibited the use of federal funds for abortions, has had in denying abortions to poor women. They claim that "about one-third of women who would have had an abortion if support were available carried their pregnancies to term."

The Guttmacher Institute study they cited has since been updated; Guttmacher now believes that only a quarter of low-income women seeking abortions end up carrying the pregnancies to term because funds are not available. But regardless of the statistics, consider the strategy: forcing poor women to give birth because they can't afford to do otherwise.

The Hyde ban is now 32 years old. The current debate about government funding for abortion in the healthcare plan is a reminder of how we have failed poor women. Restoring those funds has not been a top priority for pro-choice advocates, who sadly concluded that because the public does not care about poor women and is actually hostile to poor women who have sex and become pregnant, it would be futile to put too much capital into reversing Hyde.

Remember, there was little public outcry when the Clinton administration enacted welfare reform policies that denied additional coverage to women for children they had while they were on welfare. The "you made your bed, now lie in it" mentality seems to dominate public reactions to poor women's pregnancies, whether carried to term or not.