Health Reform Should Include Abortion Coverage, Opinion Piece Says

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Article Date: 29 Sep 2009 - 2:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions  

In his recent address to Congress on health reform, President Obama "made it clear that under his proposal, when it comes to the current ban on using federal funding for abortions, nothing will change," Sylvia Law -- a professor of law, medicine and psychiatry at New York University Law School and a board member of the Center for Reproductive Rights -- writes in an opinion piece in The Nation. To explain what it "mean[s] for nothing to change," Law provides what she calls "a picture of the state of funding for abortion care."

Law explains that abortion "is one of the most common surgical procedures" in the country. Nearly 50% of U.S. pregnancies are unintended, and "four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion," according to Law. "Abortion rates are much higher in the United States than in any other developed country because the antiabortion movement has successfully opposed fact-based sexuality education and access to contraception," she adds.

Most employer-sponsored health insurance plans cover abortion services, Law reports, adding, "Private insurers and employers appreciate that by paying for abortions for women who want them, they respect patient choice, promote the health of women and children, and conserve resources." Congress, on the other hand, "has sharply limited the use of federal funds for abortion" by banning the use of federal Medicaid funding for the procedure since the late 1970s "with narrow, virtually irrelevant exceptions for women whose life is threatened or who are pregnant as a result of 'reported' rape or incest." Congress has extended this ban to other groups, including military personnel and their dependents; federal employees and their dependents; participants in the Children's Health Insurance Program; low-income Washington, D.C., residents; Medicare beneficiaries; federal prison inmates; and Native Americans with federally subsidized health care, Law writes. She adds that female military personnel cannot obtain a federally funded abortion even if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, and military health providers cannot provide the procedure even if the woman is able to pay out-of-pocket.

"Health reform promises support for comprehensive care that makes financial sense and promotes health," but "that promise plainly does not extend to the many women who depend on public funds and seek abortions," Law continues. The current debate in Congress involves "whether the discriminatory exclusion of abortion will extend to women who purchase private insurance, or to the new public option or health co-ops, if those are created," Law writes. A compromise amendment adopted by the House Energy and Commerce Committee requires that "tax dollars used to subsidize private health insurance be kept separate from private funds to avoid any public subsidy for abortion, and that there should be one plan in each region that covers abortion and one that does not," according to Law, who adds that Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-Mont.) included similar language in his panel's health reform bill. "This 'compromise' did not satisfy anti-choice activists, despite unmistakably extending segregation requirements into the private insurance sector, which has only rarely been asked, by a few states, to treat abortion as distinct from other aspects of women's reproductive health care," Law says. According to Law, "no compromise will satisfy the opposition forces," many of which "are using the abortion issue to whip up opposition when the real agenda is merely to block reform." She concludes, "Health care reform should extend to one of the most common surgical procedures and should cover the women who need it most" (Law, The Nation, 9/24).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Women's Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women's Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.

© 2009 The Advisory Board Company. All rights reserved.

• Additional
• References
• Citations