Targeting Women

Excerpt from Targeting Woman from the New York Times, September 8, 2011-- A lawsuit filed in Kansas this month has opened a new front in the legal war over women’s reproductive rights. Since last year, 13 states, including Kansas, have enacted laws banning insurance coverage of abortion in the health insurance exchanges created by the federal healthcare reform law. Some states have gone even further, aggressively restricting abortion coverage even in private insurance plans sold outside the exchanges.

The Kansas statute forbids abortion coverage (except to save a woman’s life) in comprehensive insurance plans sold in the state, but permits companies to sell a separate rider covering abortion care for an additional cost. It also bars abortion services in policies sold after 2014 in the new exchanges. That part of the law, which also contains only a single exception limited to life endangerment, does not allow for a separate rider for broader abortion coverage.

The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in Federal District Court in Kansas, argues persuasively that the law is unconstitutional because it essentially levies a tax on a constitutionally protected procedure. It also charges that the ban on abortion coverage amounts to sex discrimination because it prevents women from buying plans covering all of their health care needs while imposing no limitations on men’s medical needs.

The suit comes amid a flurry of court decisions on other abortion-related restrictions. In recent weeks, federal judges in Indiana, Kansas and North Carolina have granted preliminary injunctions against state measures barring the use of Medicaid and federal family-planning money at Planned Parenthood clinics serving low-income women. In late June, a federal district judge in South Dakota blocked as unconstitutional a state law imposing a 72-hour waiting period for abortion services, the longest in the country. The same law also subjects women seeking abortions to counseling at so-called pregnancy help centers run by antiabortion activists.

In July, a federal judge in Kansas preliminarily enjoined a new licensing law that imposes onerous and medically unnecessary requirements on the state’s three remaining abortion providers. Unfortunately, an Arizona state court refused this month to block several bad provisions enacted in 2009, including one limiting the work of nurse practitioners, which has caused Planned Parenthood to scale back its services. These cases, some of which are being appealed, are testing whether the antiabortion movement will get its way. It shouldn’t. Click here for full story from The New York Times.


Mailee R. Smith Staff Counsel, Americans United for Life (AUL): "When pro-life candidates won landslide victories in the 2010 election cycle, we knew that the 2011 state legislative sessions would be successful and exciting. Indeed, more than 70 life-affirming, abortion-related measures were enacted in 2011. And with those successes, we expected the typical knee-jerk reaction from abortion advocates: litigation.

"While the litigation front has been fairly quiet over the last few years, the legislative successes of 2011 dealt a significant financial blow to the abortion industry. Recent lawsuits filed by abortion advocates demonstrate what really motivates their agenda: money. At the prospect of losing millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates are fighting back. Of the dozen cases filed in the last several months, half of them involve funding, including state laws 'de-funding' abortion providers.

"Abortion advocates are also targeting 'informed consent' laws—those laws directing abortion providers to give women information about risks and alternatives. A recent study by Priscilla K. Coleman and published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that women with a history of abortion had an 81 percent higher risk of subsequent mental health problems. Yet abortion advocates continue to hide this information from women and insist that taxpayer funding is necessary because abortion is critical part of women’s 'health care.'

"What women really need is informed, compassionate care that allows them to walk away from abortion. But the abortion industry wants to protect its bottom-line—at the expense of women’s health and lives."

CMDA Ethics Statement: Abortion