The proposed ban on covering abortion, part of the House health care reform bill, has drawn predictable reaction. But one of the most dismaying responses is from those who think it won’t really happen. I understand hoping and wishing that that is the case but that’s not how the anti-choice people work. They think they have conquered the House of Representatives. Now, on to the Senate.

Each restriction on abortion, and this would be a big one, is one step closer to making abortion illegal. And then it’s Tijuana, here we come. Right back to where we started from.

“You never know when unintended pregnancy will strike. Be prepared. Buy our abortion plan today.”

Were Congress to somehow boot the Stupak anti-abortion amendment from a final health care delivery plan, which would be a great relief, do we really think the anti-choice crowd will shrug and slink away? Look how much they’ve already won. They managed to hijack the health care debate and turn it into an abortion battle. They interrupted a complicated national conversation on how to provide health care to all Americans including the millions without health insurance and put the focus on their single cause.

Opponents of abortion said, “You want choice? Here’s your choice.” And then they had their way with a Democrat-controlled House over the objection of its Speaker, who also happens to be a pro-choice mother and grandmother.

The Stupak amendment will apply to only those women who buy health insurance in a government subsidized insurance plan, but why are these women expendable? Plus, their numbers are just going to grow as people change or lose jobs and employers dump their group coverage. Some day there might be no insurance coverage at all for abortion and what would that mean to the hospitals, clinics and doctors who provide them? Would they disappear too? And then?

We know that one. The rich would find a way to get abortions, and low and middle income women would be stuck. And on their way to Tijuana.

You call that health care reform? No, it sounds more like a triumph for the Catholic bishops, the radical religious right, the good old boys in Washington and your basic patriarchal rule.

Of course there is a provision that a woman could buy a separate insurance rider to cover abortion, like you can add earthquake coverage to your basic home and property insurance. And how might that advertisement be written? “You never know when unintended pregnancy will strike. Be prepared. Buy our abortion plan today.”

Maybe the anti-abortion amendment was a ruse to temporarily placate abortion foes. Maybe fair and equitable thinking will prevail.

Then again, people said California would never vote against gay marriage.

I’d like to speak for the grandma camp, the people some fear will be doomed if the president and health reformers have their way. Which grandmas are they trying to scare? Are the fear-mongers so out of the loop they don’t know anything about today’s grandmothers? Grandmas have come a long way since the old Saturday Evening Post Norman Rockwell image, although despite their sweet smiles and homey aprons, I doubt even they would have let anyone push them around.

The modern day grandmas I know, including myself, do not scare easily. President Obama understands the value of grandmas. In dispelling this notion about death panels he spoke of his own grandmother who helped raise him. Does anyone really think that he became president so he could pull the plug on grandmas?

Remember too, that he’s got a grandmother at home right now, his mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, who put her career on hold to help run the household so Barack and Michelle can do their jobs. You think this man is going to mess with grandmas?

The grandmothers I know are much more into living than dying. They tango dance, move to Mexico to teach English, go sea kayaking and run marathons, not to mention their own businesses. And, like grandmas always have, they find time to help raise their kids’ kids.

They have lived their lives as independent take-charge women, but they are also realists and know they won’t live forever. They’re not squeamish about discussing end-of-life decisions. They don’t worry about someone pulling the plug. Rather, they worry about someone some day putting in the plug when there’s no earthly reason to keep them going.

As for advance health directives or living wills, which some have twisted into a death panel, many grandmas are already doing it for themselves.

We realized long before the cruel circus that gathered around Terry Schiavo back in the George W. years that you don’t want religion, politics or family grandstanding their beliefs if you become a long-gone human in a vegetative body. You want your desires written down.

Our family doctor talked to my husband and me about filling out a durable power of attorney for health care the same time she urged us to get a colonoscopy. She didn’t insist on either but suggested that after age 50, both are unwise to ignore.

I am grateful for the part in my directive that says I intend to control my own medical care and if I can’t, it will be up to those who love me most and who understand my wishes. It states that I prefer to die at home and please spare me any futile medical treatment.

Some people would choose a different way. But for me having an end of life understanding feels empowering, like signing the organ donation form so that if I get hit by a bus and there’s anything left the hospital can give my cornea or kidneys to someone who can use them.

I was relieved when the president finally talked back to the ghouls and said their death panel scare tactic was “simply dishonest.” If that’s the best argument they have they’re pitching to the wrong crowd. You can’t pull the pashmina over our eyes.

Grandmas are too tough to be victimized and too busy to be targets. Do you think we spend every morning at the gym and popping fish oil to let someone off us at their convenience? Besides, trying to scare a population of aging boomers, on the cusp of Medicare, who will remain the loudest and most powerful generation for years to come, is not only insulting but politically stupid.

And one more bit of grandmotherly advice. If you look ugly and tell lies and keep interrupting with your tantrums you’re going to end up on YouTube and your face will freeze like that.

I’ve been thinking about this one in six figure which divides America into who has health care coverage and who doesn’t. According to a Gallup Poll, 16 percent or one in six Americans over age 18 do not have health insurance. That number is a product of the current system, the broken one, the one that grows more inequitable and expensive the longer we wait to change it.

It’s a shameful statistic. It means that under the American health system, one in six can’t get into the lifeboat. One in six Americans - expendable.

You may not be the unfortunate person out of six, but you probably know one, especially in these tough times. A friend just lost her consulting job in San Francisco when her position was eliminated because of funding. The job’s gone and so is her health insurance. “You’re either part of one statistic or another,” she said.

My husband has a friend with a prostate problem and no health insurance. He’s hoping his body waits until he turns 65 and qualifies for Medicare. I know a woman in her 30s who’s been having chest pains but says she’ll wait until they get really bad and then drive herself to the ER.

Members of Congress who are deciding what to do about the one-in-six problem not only have a seat in the lifeboat, it comes with their name on a brass plaque. They have their own exclusive government-run public plan. In relating to the uninsured and underinsured population, they quite possibly suffer from an empathy deficit disorder.

Conservatives aren’t always big on empathy, the quality of relating in a visceral way to another person’s need, declaring it was not appropriate for a Supreme Court justice. But I think just a little empathy might be useful if you’re deciding on health coverage for all - including yourself.

What if one out of every six members of Congress was suddenly dropped from the government’s insurance plan? That would be 89 newly uninsured people who as members of Congress deciding on the health care bill, would be thinking about how to pay for their kid’s MRI and their own sudden heart surgery. Stripped of their government perk, 89 uninsured members of Congress might be very much in favor of having a public plan rather than be at the mercy of profit-minded insurance companies.

They’d have to think like real people, the ones without insurance and the ones who fear it losing it. Including people who stay with lousy jobs just for the insurance. Who worry about being laid off and having to shop for individual coverage. Who fear being denied because they once had a strange mole on their shoulder.

Critics say health care reform is too costly and we need to worry about the debt our children and grandchildren will face in the future. Future? The kids are here now. The future is this afternoon and tomorrow. If those kids don’t have a healthy beginning they’re not going to grow up and be able to pay anyone’s bills.

California’s new budget includes cutting health insurance for poor kids. Ten thousand kids in Sonoma County alone are going to lose medical insurance through the Healthy Families program for children in low income families, causing one health expert to call it a public health nightmare. Kids go back to school, flu season hits, the uninsured kids who before might have been going to their doctor with symptoms end up in class with the insured kids. Now, everyone gets sick.

It could be the same for Mr. and Ms. Congress Person sitting next to someone on a plane who’s afraid she has swine flu but can’t afford a doctor.

We all sneeze on each other. There’s your empathy.