The Healthcare Issue Most Candidates Completely Skipped Over

Soon after candidates discussed about impeachment for a good 20 minutes throughout the fourth Democratic presidential primary debate on October 15, moderators moved the conversation over to health care. For most of that healthcare-focused debate, candidates lobbed attacks against Sen. Elizabeth Warren for her Medicare for All plan, and specifically, if such a plan would raise taxes for middle-class Residents of the
U.S., Although several have already pointed out that such a talking point is by and large a case of oversimplified math and false equivalencies.


It was familiar — almost like we had heard the exact same argument for the past three debates! (Oh wait, we have.)  Although the back-and-forth continued apace, plus it wasn’t up until Sen. Kamala Harris stepped up to talk about the healthcare supply we’ve largely been missing from the healthcare discussion: reproductive rights and abortion.


“This is the sixth debate we have had in this presidential cycle and not nearly one word, with all of those discussions on health care, on women’s access to reproductive health care which is under full-on attack In the United States today. Plus it is outrageous,” Harris mentioned. If she referred to ladies primarily, access to reproductive health care also effects trans and nonbinary people — their reproductive rights have been under attack for years.


“There are states that have passed laws that will virtually prevent ladies from having access to reproductive healthcare,” Harris continued. “And it isn't an exaggeration to mention [that] females will perish. Poor females [and] ladies of color will die.”


furthermore to the slate of anti-abortion laws that conservative lawmakers have tried to push as a means to undermine Roe v. Wade, people who can become pregnant often must navigate a byzantine healthcare system if they pick to be able to see their pregnancies through to term. Furthermore, the maternal mortality crisis currently affects Black mothers three to four times more often than any other counterparts, and the Trump administration has gutted Title X funding and also pregnancy prevention programs in favor of abstinence-only education that has never been proven to be effective.


“These Republican legislators in these various states who are out of touch with America are telling girls what to do with our bodies,” Harris added. “Women are most of them of the population in this nation. People need to keep their hands off of women’s bodies and let ladies make the decision about their own lives.”


You’ll never guess what happened right after that! Other candidates moved directly past abortion access so that candidates could continue focusing on Medicare For All. That is, up until Sen. Cory Booker had his time.


“I’m having deja vu all over again because we have another healthcare debate and we’re not talking about the clear and existential threat In America that we are in a state that has [seen] two Proposed Parenthoods close,” Booker mentioned, noting that in early September two Offered Parenthood clinics in Cincinnati, Ohio, closed as a result of undue regulations on abortion providers, according to ABC News. “We are seeing all over this nation women’s reproductive rights under attack. And God bless Kamala. Although you know what? Ladies should not be the only ones taking up this cause and this fight. And boys? It isn't just because girls are our daughters and our companions and our wives, it is because females are people and people deserve to control their own bodies.”


A majority of Residents of the United States support the landmark Supreme Court ruling, Roe v. Wade, that made abortion legal in the U.S., according to a NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll.