Recently, there has been a flurry of debate over health care reform and reproductive rights, especially the issue of abortion. Opponents of health care reform are using anti-abortion politics as a way to derail real change.
NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts, our National organization NARAL Pro-Choice America, and other pro-choice groups are working to stop an anti-choice push to impose a new nationwide ban on abortion coverage in private health-insurance plans. Decisions regarding coverage should be made by medical experts and women in need – not anti-choice groups and lawmakers pushing their own agenda.
Many anti-choice lawmakers claim there is an abortion mandate in the health care reform bill, and began a misinformation campaign to depict the legislation as such.
Nothing in any of the current bills mandate abortion coverage, and taxpayer money would not be used to pay for abortions in the public plan.
The organization Factcheck.org has publicly refuted claims from anti-choice groups like the Family Research Council that the health care reform bills will secretly “mandate” abortion. The new health system will not expand abortion coverage beyond where it is now. Currently more than 80% of private insurance plans cover abortion care, and under the new plan consumers could choose a plan that does not offer abortion care.
Opponents of health care reform are using abortion to undermine real solutions to our health care crisis. We cannot allow anti-choice lawmakers to use health care reform as a way to advance their agenda and infringe on our rights.
Politifact (a non-partisan watchdog group associated with the St. Petersburg Times (FL)) called out House Minority Leader John Boehner’s claims about abortion in health care as false.
http://www.politifact.org/trut…
This is the first I’ve heard of a proposed ban on private insurance covering abortions, but now the question becomes which form of “right” will prevail – the free-market right which I assumed would be opposed to telling private companies what to do, or the religious right which seeks any and all ways to restrict access to abortions?
National NARAL’s health care reform coverage http://www.prochoiceamerica.or…