By: Amanda Mazur
Pronouns: She, her, hers
As a volunteer who put much effort into trying to get Proposal 3 on the ballot and passed last year, as well as someone who experienced a crisis pregnancy that ended in abortion, I can tell you with certainty that our work to make a common medical procedure available to everyone who needs it is far from over.
A long list of harmful laws put in place by anti-abortion politicians over the past two decades remain in place, making abortion access in Michigan unnecessarily difficult despite the fact that voters across our state have voiced clear support for the right of people to have an abortion, whatever their need for doing so.
In 2017, with my husband and I expecting our second child, we learned that genetic abnormalities discovered at about 20 weeks meant the pregnancy was doomed. Rather than give birth to a child who had no chance of survival, we opted for an abortion. Because of state laws that prohibit Medicaid from covering the cost of any abortion in Michigan, and because I did not have a special rider from my private insurance – state laws prohibit abortion coverage in general public plans – we were stuck with a hospital bill that topped $26,000. Even with some financial assistance from the hospital, it took years of belt-tightening for us to pay it off.
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If the fetal heartbeat had stopped at any time before the procedure was performed, it would have been considered a miscarriage and covered by insurance. Instead, an emotionally wrought experience was made even more difficult because of the incredible stress created by a massive medical bill.
The current law is both punitive and cruel. And your help is needed to have it – and a host of other dangerous laws – removed. To learn about all the barriers to abortion access and what you can do to have them removed, sign up for a trio of virtual webinars being held to provide volunteers like you all the tools needed to help understand the scope of the problem and then help convince legislators that these harmful laws must be repealed. The first such webinar will be on Wednesday, May 10, from 6 - 8 p.m.
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I hope to see you there.
Amanda Mazur is a volunteer with the ACLU of Michigan.