Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), opponent of federal subsidies for abortion coverage. Photo: AP/Stan Honda
The Sept 28 NYTimes.com describes amendments to health-care reform bills under consideration in both the House and Senate that pro-choice advocates fear could result in the elimination of insurance coverage for abortions throughout the country.
Currently, all the versions of health-care reform bills in both houses of Congress already deny the use of federal subsidies to directly pay for abortion procedures, but a coalition of pro-life Democrats and Republicans don’t think this ban goes far enough: Lower- and middle-income Americans who would qualify for federal health insurance subsidies could still use those subsidies to help them afford insurance plans that cover abortions, even though they would have to pay the premiums for those services out-of-pocket.
Led by Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) in the Senate and Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) in the House, the pro-life Congressional group supports amendments that would bar federal subsidies from being used to help purchase any insurance policy that covers abortions, including those with provisions for separate, privately-paid premiums.
Pro-choice organizations like Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America argue that if the federal government blocks the use of subsidies for any insurance plans that include abortion coverage, private insurance companies will simply drop such coverage from all of their policies, so as not to have any of their plans excluded from federal subsidies. This could have the drastic effect of denying access to legal abortions for all but the wealthiest Americans, forcing less affluent women to seek cheaper, but unsafe, illegal “back-alley” procedures.
Based on the number of backers of these amendments on both sides of the aisle in both the House and the Senate, the Times reports that the outcome of this issue is “too close to call.”
It may then fall to President Obama to decide whether his much-coveted bill to reform health care is worth the price of a back-door reversal of Roe v. Wade for poorer American women.
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