A month ago, during the Democratic Senate primary, Attorney General Martha Coakley said she would hold up national health-care reform rather than vote for the House bill, which could result in most private insurance companies dropping abortion coverage. Yesterday, Coakley said in a statement that she would “reluctantly” support the Senate’s health care bill even though, according to the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, the version is not significantly less restrictive.
“It’s shades of gray as to which one is more horrendous,” said PPLM spokeswoman Jesse Mermell.
Current federal law – sometimes referred to as the Hyde Amendment – prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for an abortion. The House bill includes language that prohibits any insurer accepting public subsidies from offering abortion coverage, even to subscribers who don’t receive any subsidies; critics say the measure would effectively mean no women will have abortion coverage, since all insurers will want to compete for subsidized clients under the new system. So Coakley said during the Democratic primary that she’d vote against a bill that contained that provision.
The bill she says she would now support, the Senate version, also contains restrictions on abortion coverage. It essentially requires insurers who offer a plan covering abortion to bill women twice. Female subscribers of all income levels who wanted abortion coverage would need to pay for it with two separate checks: one in the event they might need an abortion and not want to pay for it out of pocket, and one for the rest of their health care plan.
Coakley campaign spokesman Corey Welford said the fact that women could still get abortion coverage is a”key distinction” and the reason the attorney general would not vote against a bill that contained the Senate’s language. “The House version would have outright barred any insurers that accepted federal subsidies from covering abortion. The Senate version does not do that,” said Welford.
But Mermell said the Senate bill, like the House, is likely to result in insurers dropping abortion coverage entirely to avoid creating two separate accounting systems. She sees the provision as nonsensical, and an attempt to further stigmatize women who choose to end their pregnancies. “It’s baffling,” said Mermell. “It creates enormous hurdles for insurers and women for no reason other than to provide a stigma. Women would need to anticipate the need for abortion, which is not something a woman usually anticipates. It completely defies logic.”
Still, Mermell said her organization continues to support Coakley’s candidacy and hopes the Senate’s current language will not be in any bill that reaches President Obama’s desk.
“We continue to believe very strongly that Martha Coakley is the best choice to protect women’s health. It’s really unfortunate she’s been put in this position by people who insist on using the abortion issue as a wedge issue at every turn.”
But a spokesman for Coakley’s opponent, state Sen. Scott Brown, questioned the attorney general’s motivations. “During the Democratic primary Martha Coakley took what she said was a principled stand on this issue and has now changed her mind for the general election,” said spokesman Felix Browne. “This shows that she’s already taking her orders from Harry Reid and the Washington tax-and-spend crowd and not from the people of Massachusetts.”