IN HER OWN WORDS….MELINDA SPEAKS…..
I will fight to preserve a woman’s right to choose consistent with the precedent set in Roe v. Wade. I will work to repeal the Hyde Amendment; this ban on federal funds for abortion services impacts Native American women, low-income women, and women serving in the military.
American women are still denied full equity in health care, even under the new bill. I believe Montana women deserve leadership in the U.S. House that will act on their interests instead of engaging in “broken-record ideology of the right”–as does my opponent Rep. Rehberg. My opponent has been a supporter of H.R. 3400: the Empowering Patients First Act which is anti-choice of legislation. One provision of this dangerous bill enables and protects gender-based, anti-choice, hate speech. To Montana women, Rep. Rehberg is a dangerous person.
I will work toward ensuring affordable reproductive care for all Montana women, and I will ensure that women cannot be discriminated by the health care industry. I will combat discriminatory definitions of pre-existing conditions such as c-sections, and I will work to ban health insurance companies from using computer algorithyms to deny breast cancer patients coverage–as was recently done by Well Point, who is the former employer of Liz Fowler, who wrote the Baucus bill.
I believe in modernization of the WIC nutritional program; and that this program is expanded to families in high economic distress areas, as well as military families. The WIC program staffers continuously work with budget cuts; I will fight to keep and expand this vital nutritional program. I would like to see this program geared toward fresher, more nutritional foods that lead to life-long healthy eating.
I would like to see educational stipends for military women and spouses of veterans who are non-traditional students to complete their educations. Many families lives are disrupted by military service, or the effects of military service, for a variety of reasons. These families deserve this nation’s commitment to ensure they attain their educational goals.