Via Kay Steiger, the Guttmacher Institute rounds up the ways in which states are curbing access to abortion in advance of the establishment of health-care exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act. Many states already restrict the ways in which private insurers can cover abortion, but some states are banning abortion coverage in the exchanges altogether rather than just banning the use of federal subsidies for those plans in ways that would conform with the Hyde Amendment.
The fight caused by the blatantly false claim, perpetuated by anti-abortion advocates, that the health care bill allows taxpayer-funded abortions is likely to never end. My bigget concern, though, is the extent to which it's spilling over to the rule-making process that could allow contraceptives to fall under preventative care services that are free to patients under the new law. As anyone whose ever had a discussion with a strident anti-abortion advocate knows, limiting abortion isn't their real goal. The problem is that, for so many years, Congresses and presidents have ceded so much ground on abortion that it allows anti-feminist rhetoric to enter the debate on women's care services that should be uncontroversial.
-- Monica Potts
