Virginia Governor McDonnell Monday night added a ban on insurance coverage of abortion to a health care bill passed by the Virginia legislature. The underlying bill was meant to bring the state into compliance with the federal health care law – in other words, to help ensure affordable and comprehensive coverage for people, not take benefits away. But that’s exactly what Governor McDonnell’s amendment would do. And he’s not the only one.
Oh no he didn’t! Virginia Governor McDonnell Monday night added a ban on insurance coverage of abortion to a health care bill passed by the Virginia legislature. The underlying bill was meant to bring the state into compliance with the federal health care law – in other words, to help ensure affordable and comprehensive coverage for people, not take benefits away. But that’s exactly what Governor McDonnell’s amendment would do. And he’s not the only one.
Abortion insurance coverage bans have been introduced so far this year in at least 10 states. Some of these states are already among the 21 states that have such bans. But this year abortion opponents in those states want to prohibit even more women from obtaining abortion insurance coverage. Like Alabama, where a bill has been introduced to expand their exchange ban to all private plans and to take coverage away from survivors of rape and incest.
In others – like Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Texas – legislators want their state to join those that prohibit women from purchasing insurance coverage of abortion. The good news is that one effort in Minnesota failed. And in Texas, after a hearing showed how broadly the abortion insurance coverage ban would apply and how it would harm women’s health, legislators are rethinking it. But advocates in Pennsylvania still have a fight ahead.
Governor McDonnell and other abortion opponents are doing everything they can to make abortion unaffordable and interfere with a woman’s ability to make her own health care decisions.