http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2010/04/12/the-new-health-care-fight-abortion-coverage-in-state-exchanges.aspxWhile the congressional fight over health-care reform has wrapped up and legislators moved on, a new, state-level battle over abortion coverage has just begun.
The fight comes courtesy of Section 1303 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (page 779 here), which reiterates states’ rights to regulate abortion coverage among their insurers. The key sentence: “A state may elect to prohibit abortion coverage in qualified health plans offered through an Exchange in such State if such State enacts a law to provide for such a prohibition.”
...This sentence in Section 1303 didn’t change the existing law—but in the world of abortion politics and policy it was important for two main reasons. First, it drew scrutiny to a relatively dormant area of the abortion debate: insurance coverage (remember that, up until this past November, even the Republican National Committee’s insurance policy covered abortion). Second,
...for an anti-abortion rights groups, its not a particularly bad deal: a reiteration of existing law that catalyzed a new wave of activism. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-14/abortion-foes-slam-shut-all-openings-ann-woolner-correct-.html"...Regardless of who pays for what coverage, access to abortion is already shrinking. States keep enacting more and more barriers. Waiting periods. Mandated counseling. Parental involvement. Additional requirements for physicians and hospitals.
“Their real plan is to ban abortion,” says Elizabeth Nash, who oversees state actions for the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights.
Until they can win an outright ban, the anti-abortion rights people keep hammering away at access.
They know that a right isn’t much good if people can’t actually use it."
abortion opponents are not satisfied with the restrictions on abortion already in the measure, particularly those on abortion coverage in private plans that will be sold in the new marketplaces known as health “exchanges.” So they are pushing one particular aspect of the new law. It lets states ban all abortion coverage in the exchanges.
Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of anti-abortion group Americans United for Life, said her group wasted no time drawing up a model state law to that effect. They sent it out the day after Congress approved the health bill.
via NPR-
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126000118
From the anti-woman perverts:
“It was a part of the legislation that states could opt out, and so we had a heads-up that this would be a window for us,” she said. “So we moved right in to make sure that we could equip states with the tools that they need to have the most effective opt-out possible.”If you think Stupak and Nelson weren't aware of this planned action, you're lying to yourself.
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