Stories I’d like to see

In the wake of the Todd Akin firestorm, Mitt Romney and a flip-flopping Paul Ryan have emphasized that their anti-choice stance excludes rape. In a Romney administration, abortions would be outlawed except in the case of women who have been raped, the Republican ticket has promised.

So here’s an idea, first suggested by my daughter and one of her friends: Who’s going to be the first reporter to ask Romney or Ryan how that would work? How would they implement that exception?

Would a woman’s rapist have to be convicted in court? How would that work, given that in most criminal cases it takes longer than nine months from when the crime is committed to catch the criminal (assuming the criminal is caught), prepare charges and reach a verdict. In fact, the window would be significantly less than nine months; it would start from when the pregnancy is discovered and end somewhere around the 16 to 20 weeks left during which abortions can be performed most safely.

Or would the exception be triggered just on the woman’s say-so? (Maybe that’s part of what the mentally challenged Akin was talking about when he referred to “legitimate” rape.)

Or would there be some kind of new quasi-judicial process falling somewhere between a full-fledged trial and a simple statement of victimization? Would each state have to set up a new tribunal to handle these “cases”? Who would be the judges or juries? What evidence would be admissible? Would there be an adversary engaged to challenge the woman’s claim and whatever evidence she offers? Who would that be? Could those challenges include references to her prior sexual history? Would there be criminal penalties for perjury? And, if as the Republican platform decrees, the outlawing of abortion should be implemented via a “human life” amendment to the Constitution, would Romney suggest that language defining rape and how it would qualify for the exception also be written into the Constitution? How would he craft language establishing that a fetus that is the product of rape is not a human life?

If each of these scenarios seems so absurd that it leaves Romney or Ryan tongue-tied when asked these simple, practical questions, maybe that says something about getting the state involved in these decisions, let alone rewriting the Constitution to codify them.

Beginning in 1976, a federal statute known as the Hyde Amendment inserted government into a sliver of this issue, with results that cannot be satisfying to either side. The Hyde Amendment generally forbids federal funding for abortions except in cases of rape or incest or when the woman’s life is in danger. The blog post last week by the Washington Post’s Dylan Matthews found that states generally require a doctor’s certificate or a police report for women to qualify for the rape exception. However, Matthews reported, quoting from a study from Ibis Reproductive Health, that “over half of eligible abortions — that is, of pregnancies due to rape or incest or in cases where continuing the pregnancy would threaten the mother’s life — conducted for Medicaid beneficiaries were not reimbursed by the program. By and large, hospitals and doctors who did not get Medicaid reimbursements said that the paperwork for getting the money was too onerous, and it was easier to fund the procedures from nonprofit groups that focus on assisting low-income women with abortion funding.” In other words, the abortions happened anyway, but the exception provided for in the law was typically not implemented. In other cases, Matthews reported, women seeking coverage under the exception could not meet the paperwork requirements and, because they were not able to pay for an abortion, gave birth to babies they claimed were the product of rape.

Matthews concluded by quoting Stephanie Poggi, the executive director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, as saying: “Basically these exceptions don’t work. It’s really a myth that there is coverage that is still provided.”

The Romney-Ryan exception presents far greater challenges because it is not simply about insurance coverage. The only issue under the Hyde Amendment is who pays for an abortion for a woman on Medicaid, not whether any abortion for any woman can happen. Thus, women are exponentially more likely to seek the exception under the Romney-Ryan plan than they have under the Hyde Amendment. And those opposing abortions would be equally more likely to contest those exceptions to prevent what they view as murder.

So these are hardly tongue-in-cheek questions. Nor is the broader question, which only the late Tim Russert ever regularly asked anti-choice politicians: With Romney and Ryan planning to make any abortions that are not subject to their rape or incest exceptions a federal crime, what is the specific prison term they would impose on offending women? And if they would penalize only doctors, wouldn’t that undermine the enforceability of the law as well as their stated principle that abortion is murder?

1. Mitt’s tax bracket:

Note to television producers or editors about to do interviews with Mitt Romney on the campaign trail: The tax rate for the lower-middle class and middle class (joint filers earning roughly $17,000 to $70,000) is 15%. So any of your reporters doing an interview with Romney should ask him if he paid more than 15% of his total income in federal income taxes last year, or more than 25% — the bracket for income from $70,001 to $142,700.

Because of preferential treatment of capital gains, of “carried interest” income earned by people in the private equity business, and of money derived from offshore investments, as well as other tax breaks, there’s a good chance that Romney didn’t pay at a rate of 25% or even 15%. Be sure to use “total income” in the question, which would be Romney’s income before taking deductions for many of the tax breaks not available to average wage earners. Update: Shortly after this column was published, Romney was asked precisely this question, and told reporters that he paid “closer to the 15% rate than anything.”

Romney’s likely answer, based on what he has said so far, will be that he has not decided to release his tax returns but that he may do so later.

To which your reporter should respond: “Yes, I know, but don’t you know – or can’t you check your tax return and tell us – simply what your tax rate was? Or just tell us what it says on line 22 on your IRS form 1040 tax return (“total income”) and line 44 (“tax’”) or line 45 (“alternative minimum tax”). We’ll calculate the percentage and spare you giving us all the details that you fear will invade your privacy. Won’t you at least tell us that? With all the debate about tax reform, don’t you think voters should want to know if you’re paying taxes at least at the same rate that Americans with average incomes are?”

This is going to be an increasingly big issue; why not have one of your people take the lead?

2. How many years up the river for an abortion?

While we’re on the subject of questions reporters might ask on the campaign trail, here’s another that I can only remember NBC’s Tim Russert asking various anti-choice candidates: “Once you outlaw abortion, how much prison time would you sentence a woman to who has an abortion? What about her doctor? If abortion is murder, then isn’t the woman guilty, at least, of conspiracy to commit murder, and isn’t the doctor a murderer?”

With the Republicans candidates competing to be the most anti-choice, their answers ought to be interesting.

One final question for Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry: “You’re adamantly against activist federal judges interfering with the will of the people by overturning laws passed by state legislatures, right? So why did you go to a federal judge (unsuccessfully) seeking to have Virginia’s laws about getting on the ballot in the state’s Republican primary be declared unconstitutional?”

3. Do Cuomo and Christie run the world’s worst public agency?

Lining up on the long and hideously inconvenient taxi line at JFK Airport a few weeks ago reminded me of a story I’ve wanted to see for years: The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey might be the world’s worst public agency this side of Afghanistan. The PA runs JFK, Newark Liberty and LaGuardia airports, and all three perennially rate among the worst in the world when it comes to on-time performance, restaurants and other concessions, transportation services, and general cleanliness and convenience. (Update: This week, travel Web site Frommer’s included all three in its list of the ten worst terminals in the world.) Being responsible for what may be the world’s three lousiest major airports (at least the worst 3 out of 5 or 10) is an amazing hat trick for an agency that is also jaw-droppingly over-funded, largely through ever-escalating airport landing and gate fees and sky-high tolls on the metropolitan area’s bridges and tunnels.

Then there are the perpetual cost overruns and execution failures for just about everything else the PA does, such as the new commuter rail terminal at the old World Trade Center site. It’s now years behind schedule and likely to cost a billion dollars above its original estimates. Or there are the six-figure pensions routinely paid to PA police officers, many of which result, according to the New York Post, from officers piling up overtime in the years just before they retire. There’s also a policy that allows officers who have been suspended for alleged misconduct or crimes to collect overtime while they are not even working. Another example of PA follies: Its staff – and even its retired staff – get lifetime E-Z Passes so that they don’t have to pay the $12 it now costs to go over the George Washington Bridge or through the Holland or Lincoln tunnels. Such is the sense of entitlement at the PA that when the agency moved recently to revoke these lifetime passes for retirees, it was hit with a barrage of lawsuits from the freeloaders.

New York’s Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey’s Chris Christie – the two superstar governors of their respective political parties – are jointly responsible for appointing the PA’s board and executives. Some newspaper, magazine or television network ought to devote a whole series of reports to how the PA became the poster child for government that doesn’t work and what the two celebrated governors in charge are doing about it.

4. Lobbying over prostate cancer, medical imaging and other healthcare expenses:

In the last few months there’s been a renewed debate over whether men should get tested for prostate cancer. It began with the release of a federal task force study in December that recommended that men not get the now-routine PSA blood test that looks for warning signs of the disease, because it could result in patients undergoing arduous treatments for a cancer that advances so slowly they’re likely to die of something else long before it will take its toll.

There has been lots written since about the pros and cons of testing, but not enough about the flurry of lobbying the controversy has unleashed as interest groups, such as the push by the Washington-based American Urological Association (prostate cancer is a mainstay of urologists’ work) to make sure that the tests and the resulting treatment continue to be a mainstay of acceptable – and insurable – patient care.

Similarly, as questions continue to be raised about alleged over-testing and over-treatment for other cancers, trade groups like the Medical Imaging and Technology Alliance, or “MITA” – whose Washington work is quarterbacked by Powell Tate, the powerhouse “strategic communication and public affairs” firm – are working to preserve the status quo.

Fights over these kinds of multibillion-dollar issues that affect millions of people but are hidden from public view are bonanzas for lobbyists and great grist for reporters who dig into them.

(PHOTO: MoneyBlogNewz via Flickr.)