Take Action Now! Protect Women’s Access to Abortion Care in Health Care Reform.
The House of Representatives is preparing to vote on HR 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, on Saturday, November 7th. Unfortunately, one of the issues that has roiled the Congress is access to abortion care in health care reform.
From day one, women’s rights advocates asked members of Congress not to treat reproductive health care, including abortion, differently than any other health care service. Throughout their lives, women access a broad continuum of reproductive health care services, including contraceptive services, prenatal care, and abortion, and we asked for a principled approach to health care reform that would reflect that reality.
But politics and ideology have made that impossible. Instead, lawmakers have fashioned a compromise position, often referred to as the Capps Amendment, that would maintain the status quo and advance neither a pro-choice nor anti-choice agenda. According to the Capps Amendment:
- There would be no public funding for abortion except in cases of rape, incest and life endangerment;
- Abortion could not be included in the basic, standard health benefit package that insurance companies would have to make available under the legislation;
- Private insurance plans that provide abortion would have to keep private funds (i.e., premium payments and co-pays) separate from federal subsidy dollars and payment could only come from the private funds;
- Individuals and plans would be protected from discrimination if they did or did not want to provide abortions;
- The Exchanges would have to offer one plan that does provide abortion and one plan that doesn’t;
- The public plan would cover abortion only in the case of rape, incest and life endangerment and if the Secretary of Health and Human Services decided to cover abortion in additional circumstances in the public plan s/he would have to separate federal and private funds.
Additional language is now being considered that would make it even clearer that no public funds can pay for abortion. Yet anti-choice Democrats and Republicans continue to find these provisions unacceptable. That is no surprise. They will never be satisfied until abortion is banned.
Call right now! Tell your member of Congress to oppose any attacks on abortion in the House health care reform bill.
Anti-choice lawmakers say they only want to prohibit federal funding of abortions. That is simply untrue. By attempting to ban plans from covering abortion, they would ban access to abortion services even when a woman pays for her insurance with private funds and receives no federal subsidy!! This is not a continuation of the status quo; it is an unprecedented restriction and intrusion in women’s access to a health care service that they would otherwise have. It would significantly roll back coverage American women currently have.
Call right now! Tell your representative to keep politics and ideology out of women’s health care and to say no to any attempt to undermine access to services women need.
The anti-choice attacks will continue until the last moment and they will use any number of procedural maneuvers to impose their anti-choice agenda. For example, anti-choice lawmakers have threatened to actually prevent a vote on the health care legislation if their anti-abortion demands are not met. Or they may offer a “motion to recommit” on abortion that, if passed, would prohibit insurance companies in the new “insurance plan bazaar or marketplace” from providing abortion coverage even if they want to. Anti-choice lawmakers must not be allowed to succeed!
Call right now! Tell your representative to vote to protect women’s access to reproductive health care, including abortion, and to stop the anti-choice agenda from derailing much-need health care reform.
