Efforts To Exclude Abortion Coverage From Health Reform 'Ignore' Women, Columnist Writes

"It is becoming obvious that just having a female reproductive system is a pre-existing condition in the health care debate," with abortion as the "up-and-coming sticking point," syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman writes in the Boston Globe. "We were told that the health care legislation would be 'abortion neutral,' that it wouldn't change the shaky status quo or rile the troops in the abortion wars," Goodman says. However, "it turns out that finding neutrality in the abortion wars is elusive," as antiabortion-rights House members from both political parties are "demanding that any health plan offering abortion be banned from the newly created health care exchange," she continues. Although "[m]ore than 80% of private insurance plans cover abortions, ... any insurance plan that wants to be eligible for the huge wave of new clients would have to drop the abortion coverage it offers" if the opponents have their way, Goodman writes.

Goodman writes, "After Roe, abortion opponents regrouped and went looking for a restriction that would appeal to the ambivalent middle. They latched onto the idea that taxpayer money shouldn't be used to pay for abortions. This not only stigmatized abortion, separating it from legitimate health care, it reintroduced a two-tier health care system for poor women on Medicaid." Goodman continues, "Today, those tiers have expanded." Existing restrictions already block abortion coverage under Medicaid, as well as for women in the military and federal employees. Goodman writes that under proposals from Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and other antiabortion-rights lawmakers, the next group to lose access to coverage for abortion services would be "women needing subsidized plans." If they succeed in enacting a ban for plans in the exchange, the next target would be the millions of women with private insurance who currently have abortion coverage, according to NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan.

"No woman expects to have an abortion," but "one in every three women has one by the age of 45," Goodman writes, adding, "That's a whole lot of women to stigmatize ... or ignore." She concludes, "The irony is that this attempt to enforce a federal moral rule over everyone's health comes from precisely the people who are most angry at the idea of a government takeover of health care" (Goodman, Boston Globe, 10/2).


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