Right to Health

Scott (over at Lawyers, Guns and Money) has up an excellent piece about the Constitutionality of the Hyde Amendment:

Given the recent death of Henry Hyde, allow me to point out again that the constitutionality of the Hyde Admendment is a much more difficult question than it might seem on first glance. It is true that Americans don't have to right to health care spending per se, but this doesn't end the dispute. As Justice Stevens noted in his dissent in Harris v. McRae -- which upheld the Hyde Amendment -- "When the sovereign provides a special benefit or a special protection for a class of persons, it must define the membership in the class by neutral criteria; it may not make special exceptions for reasons that are constitutionally insufficient." To take an obvious example, Americans also don't have the constitutional right to a state-funded education, but when the state provides one it cannot provide one to white people but not black people. And as the fact that the feds are willing to shell out for dick pumps at $450 a throw makes clear, abortions are not excluded from Medicaid funding for a legitimate neutral reason, such as the procedure being insufficiently important or too expensive. It can't be because it's too dangerous, because 1)an abortion performed by a trained professional is safer than carrying a pregnancy to term and 2)the Hyde Amendment makes the procurement of unsafe abortions more likely. The Hyde Amendment does not have a justification related to the criteria of the program; its sole purpose is to obstruct the exercise of a fundamental right.

(his post was prompted by this post linked from Feministing, which would definitely be funny if it weren't just so damn infuriating - "But $450 penis pumps for old guys is totally good use of our government’s money. Erections for all, abortions for none!")