On the Stupak Amendment
By Leola Reis
Women around the country are keenly watching the emerging health care reform activities on Capitol Hill, but we are seriously concerned and very disappointed with those who are abusing this historic debate as a way to effectively ban abortion.
The “Stupak” provisions of the House-passed health care bill prohibits millions of women from using their own money to buy private health insurance that provides comprehensive reproductive health care benefits. If this provision stays in the bill, middle-class women will be prohibited from purchasing private insurance that covers abortion, a benefit that is widely available to those covered by most employer-sponsored health plans. It is this kind of unfairness in the marketplace that the health reform effort is trying to end.
The House approved the ban in order to move the reform effort forward and with the reluctant approval of several dozen members who vow to reverse their vote if the provision isn’t removed from the final legislation. Like the bill under debate now in the Senate, the House version of health reform establishes a new exchange or marketplace through which tens of millions of Americans would purchase health care coverage – a major step forward in reducing the ranks of the nation’s uninsured. Many of the people who would buy coverage through the exchange would receive financial assistance from the federal government. However, in the House bill health insurance plans offered through the exchange would be prohibited from covering abortion care, if even one person who purchased that plan was receiving a federal subsidy.
Supporters of Stupak claim that this amendment simply extends the 32-year-old Hyde amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for abortion care in most cases. The truth is that the Stupak ban goes far beyond the Hyde amendment – it would effectively restrict abortion coverage by private health insurance plans in an unprecedented and dangerous manner.
Further, the Stupak ban violates the central tenet of health care reform as articulated by President Obama: If you are happy with your health coverage, you can keep it. The Stupak ban will force women to lose private insurance coverage for reproductive health that they currently have if they purchase health insurance in the exchange. This is particularly true for women who work for small employers or women who are self-employed. These women will more than likely need to get their health insurance through the exchange.
Proponents of the Stupak ban claim that women who purchase health insurance through the exchange will be allowed to buy a single procedure insurance policy or “rider” that will provide coverage for abortion. This is a phony proposal – women do not plan to have unplanned pregnancies or to have severe complications late in pregnancies they have very much wanted. Plus, many experts believe the private plans will simply refuse to offer the rider in the first place.
Currently, a majority of private health insurance plans cover abortion care. But if your employer obtains your insurance in the future through the new exchange or marketplace, you will lose that coverage. By keeping this provision in the bill, the House relegates women to some of the same barriers to reproductive health coverage that existed before U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973.
The battle now turns to the Senate, which has before it a health reform bill that is more responsible in protecting comprehensive reproductive health care benefits than the one approved by the House. Still, there will be attempts on the floor to add
Stupak-like language to the Senate version. We are hopeful that in the Senate cooler heads prevail. Women should not be worse off after health care reform, especially when the intention is to increase access, affordability and care.
Leola Reis is vice president, external affairs of Planned Parenthood Of Georgia, Inc.
