November 18, 2016

This Is the Only Recent Time Jeff Sessions Voted to Expand Health Care Coverage

It was to cover fetuses at the expense of their mothers.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

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President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), has voted numerous times against expanded access to health care. He has cast just one vote in recent years to expand health care access. The group he believed deserved better access to coverage? Fetuses.

In 2008, Sessions voted yes on an amendment to remove pregnant women from the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and instead give coverage to the fetus. At the time of the vote, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) described the amendment as follows: “It takes it away from the woman and gives it to the fetus. Now, if the woman is pregnant in an accident, loses the child, she does not get coverage, the child gets coverage.” The amendment failed, with 46 senators voting for it and 52 against it.

It’s the only time in recent years that Sessions has voted in favor of expanding health care coverage—if you can call it that. He voted against expanding access to care for low-income people under Medicare and Medicaid in 2008, against expanding SCHIP to four million children in 2009, and against the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The clear difference, of course, is that Sessions’ vote for fetuses wasn’t really a health care vote; it was an anti-abortion vote.

If confirmed as attorney general, Sessions would have a huge say on the issues of abortion and women’s reproductive health care. Sessions could choose to investigate Planned Parenthood, for example, and defend state and federal policies that make it harder for women to access an abortion or reproductive care.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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