Central Illinois Right to Life opposes a stealth amendment to a health care reform bill that could be interpreted as mandating insurance coverage of abortion services.
The amendment was approved 12-11 on Thursday, July 9, by the U.S. Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee. The panel was working on the Affordable Health Choices Act health care bill, one of several proposed in Congress.
Sponsored by Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., the amendment’s wording would require insurers, both public and private, to cover “essential community providers ... that serve predominantly low-income, medically under-served individuals.”
Planned Parenthood, which performs abortions at many of its clinics, is typically considered one such “community provider.”
Mikulski denied that the language was a mandate to cover abortions, but said, "It would provide for any service deemed medically necessary or medically appropriate."
The language is nothing but an attempt to use “health care reform” as a vehicle to make abortion even easier to obtain than it already is by forcing private insurers and taxpayers to fund it.
In the current climate of legal interpretation, “any service deemed medically necessary or medically appropriate” could easily be understood as referring to abortion, which has been defined by court rulings to be a private medical matter between a woman and her doctor.
Mikulski said that the language could be “sharpened in the future” to satisfy the concerns of senators who objected.
If that’s the case, why not sharpen it now — by deleting it so it couldn’t be misinterpreted at all?
Central Illinois Right to Life is a nonprofit organization that exists to educate, convince, and mobilize citizens to take responsible action in defense and support of innocent human life.
For more information, call us at 309-645-8000.
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