Antiabortion-Rights Lawmakers Using Health Reform To Interfere With Private Insurance Coverage, Slate Opinion Piece Says

November 6, 2009 — Although there "is very little to like about private health insurance as it exists today," it "does have one advantage over health insurance funded by the federal government" in that women can "use it to pay for an abortion," according to Slate senior writer Timothy Noah. "Now antiabortion groups and their allies in Congress want to whittle away at that distinction," he continues.

According to Noah, abortion-rights opponents have a "desire to use health reform as a crowbar to pry abortion coverage from private health insurance plans" that would be offered through a proposed health insurance exchange. "Their vehicle for doing this is an amendment" that Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) introduced to the original House bill (HR 3200) during the mark-up process in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The Stupak amendment stated, "'No funds authorized under this Act ... may be used to pay for any abortion or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion,' with exceptions for rape, incest or a threat to the mother's life," Noah writes. The amendment failed in committee, "but Stupak is fighting to incorporate it" into the final bill (HR 3962), he adds.

"Stupak claims that all he was doing was repeating the language" of the 1976 Hyde Amendment, which prohibits state Medicaid programs from using federal funding for abortion, Noah writes. However, he notes that the part in Stupak's amendment that says "or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan" does not appear in the Hyde Amendment.

Noah concludes that "maintaining for private insurers the ability to offer coverage for abortions should be a matter of no small urgency to anyone who believes abortion ought to remain widely available" (Noah, Slate, 11/4).

St. Petersburg Times Praises Capps Amendment

In related coverage, the St. Petersburg Times recently included an editorial calling the abortion-related compromise language sponsored Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) "probably as good as it gets" because the amendment "responds to the concerns of all but the most hardened antiabortion lawmakers while ensuring that health care reform does not become an opportunity for new limits to be forced on women's reproductive choices" (St. Petersburg Times, 11/5).