Many of those disrupting meetings on health care to trample by folding, spindling and mutilating Godwin’s Law are the same ones who are virulently against a woman’s right to control her own body. How ironic then that by campaigning against health care for all they are also making it more difficult for women who choose to have babies.

“Women must keep their voices loud and strong, so that the angry people who disrupted the congressional town hall meetings won’t succeed in sabotaging the proposed reforms,” said Cindy Pearson, executive director of the Washington-based National Women’s Health Network, an organization of 8,000 individuals and organizations founded in 1975 to give women greater support within the health care system.

Paying for maternal care after an insurance carrier denies benefits requires ingenuity. Some women whose employer-paid or individual policies do not cover prenatal care and childbirth tap their savings. Others put the expenses on their credit cards or take out loans or borrow from friends and relatives. Still others rely upon public programs or charity care.

It is difficult to say how many women go through this.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a 53,000-member organization of physicians and other clinicians, estimates that 13 percent of all pregnant women are uninsured.

www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/4122