Scarlet Letter and health reform: Can we fight for women's health without abandoning abortion?

The women's health movement made progress during the health reform campaign, but also confronted compelling evidence of the need to refocus our efforts. Mainstream health advocacy groups were reluctant to address any aspect of women's health in early planning for the health care reform campaign, believing that women were not a key constituency, and that our inclusion would inevitably engender a divisive battle over reproductive rights. Women's health and women's rights groups nevertheless were important leaders for health reform and made significant gains in the final law, including eliminating gender rating in insurance premiums and expanding access to reproductive health services to many women previously excluded due to high costs or pre-existing conditions. Savvy messaging, building respectful partnerships and demonstrating the power of mobilizing across movements were all successful strategies for making progress. However, reproductive choice and abortion coverage were compromised -- at least in part because of our long-standing failure to defeat the Hyde Amendment and other restrictions on abortion funding. Why were our voices insufficient at a time of great opportunity to create change, and what can we do about it?