Yesterday CWC, College Dems, and the Public Affairs Coordinator from Planned Parenthood teamed up to phonebank for health care reform. More specifically, to make sure comprehensive reproductive health care for women isn’t left out. Conservatives in Congress are – surprise, surprise – aiming for reduced abortion coverage. They want, at minimum, to make sure the public option doesn’t cover women needing abortions, but their goal is to require that no insurance plans are allowed to cover it. That’s right – women who already have abortion coverage could have it taken away.

And then there’s Senator Kyl from Arizona. He’s perfectly ok with 60% of insurance companies not providing maternity care because he “doesn’t need maternity care.” I don’t need prostate exams or testicular cancer coverage, either, Senator, but I’d definitely support improved access to them for the sake of the other half of the population. Some people are actually willing to spend a little more on insurance premiums or taxes to make sure the right to healthcare – a basic source of life, liberty, and happiness – is protected. It’s called compassion and generosity, Senator Kyl.

Fighting all of these anti-women attitudes with phonebanking is pretty important. We targeted reform and PP supporters whose congresspeople have a mixed record on supporting women’s health issues. Our aim? To make them stop sitting on the fence. To get them on our side. Women are more than half the population. Our health care is not a special interest issue. They need to see that.

I think we were pretty successful in that aim. We patched through a total of 81 people to their senator! Even better? The entire squad of volunteers across the country was able to patch a total of 169 people… So, of those 169 nearly half came from us. SDSU had more patch-throughs than any other affiliate phone banking yesterday We beat out Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Washington! Because there wasn’t enough proof that CWC at SDSU is awesome.

Phone banking happens every Tuesday from 12:30-3pm until real health care reform is passed, so let me know if you want to help out.