Washington and Lee law professor Timothy Jost has conducted a thorough review of both the House and Senate health care reform bills with a careful eye on how each would impact abortion coverage. If you recall, 12 Democrats, including Arkansas Rep. Marion Berry, stated they were opposed to the Senate version of the bill because it didn’t contain enough protections against the federal funding of abortion. I debunked that myth in a previous post, and Mr. Jost, in his review, takes it one step further:
Section 1330(a) permits states to totally outlaw abortion coverage in policies issued through the exchange . . . The Senate provision would allow states with strong anti-abortion policies to ban coverage for these people as well as those who receive federal subsidies. The House bill does not explicitly permit this.
The Senate bill is also stronger than the House bill from a pro-life perspective in that it expands the adoption tax credit and the adoption assistance programs to make adoption a more attractive and available alternative.
Still, Mr. Berry expressed concern that the Senate version of the bill would do a poor job of preventing government funds that pay for health care and private funds that pay for abortion coverage separate. Mr. Jost replies:
The 1334 OMB program is intended to broaden the options that are available to enrollees through the exchanges, making local insurance markets more competitive. In effect it builds on the exchanges themselves to assure that individuals in the small and non-group market have a variety of tax-subsidized options available. If there is any change here, it is a change that will make abortion less available.
While employee-benefit plans (including small employer plans), currently subsidized by tax deductions and exclusions, often provide abortion coverage, the Senate bill, like the House bill, assures that federal tax credit will never pay for abortions, whether coverage is purchase through an OMB plan or otherwise through the exchange.
And as for the concern about the lack of the Stupack Amendment in the Senate, Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post notes that the language used by Sen. Ben Nelson in the Senate bill accomplishes the same thing but by referencing the existing Hyde Amendment which has been included in every health care bill since 1976.
Taken all together, the Senate bill is stronger from a pro-life perspective. Which makes rationalizing Mr. Berry’s position practically impossible.
UPDATE: Jason Tolbert of The Tolbert Report has a thoughtful response. Read it.
[...] and the importance of creating a world in which there are no “unwanted babies.” But today he makes an argument that the current health care proposal passed by the Senate is more pro-life than the House health [...]
Pro-lifers suggest, by being against abortion, that man can stop God. The problem with their argument is that it’s virtually impossible to stop God. The spirit of the fetus, will simply go to another physical body to be born. God is king, not man.