PoliticalAction.com Blog

by the ACLU

Some legislators in Harrisburg will stop at nothing to bar women from accessing safe, legal abortion – even if it means endangering their health.

Their latest efforts, Senate Bill 3, House Bill 742, and House Bill 818, would ban private insurance companies from covering abortion services for patients in Pennsylvania’s new health care exchanges. The bill is so narrowly tailored with so few exceptions that even a woman with a serious health complication like cancer could not get insurance coverage of abortion.

A simple amendment to these bills would provide women in the most desperate of circumstances – facing cancer, serious illness, or fetal defects – with an opportunity to use her private insurance coverage to pay for an abortion.

Tell your legislators: Protect women with serious health complications.

I walk the halls of our state capitol almost every day, and I have to tell you – some of our legislators don’t understand why an amendment like this is so critical to women’s health.

Too many women in Pennsylvania face heartbreaking circumstances that make pregnancy dangerous. Politicians are trying to withhold comprehensive health insurance coverage, just to make a difficult situation even more difficult.

For a woman whose health is in danger, access to abortion isn’t about political partisanship. It’s about the right to make a profoundly private decision on her own. Politicians in Harrisburg must protect a woman’s ability to get the health care she needs. But without your legislators’ support, an amendment to protect women’s health could fail – closing off access for women who need it the most.

Urge your legislators to support an amendment to these bills that allows a woman with major health complications access to comprehensive insurance coverage.

Texas Straight Talk – A Weekly Column
Rep. Ron Paul (R) – TX 14

Healthcare continues to dominate the agenda on Capitol Hill as House leadership and the administration try to ram through their big government healthcare plan. Fortunately, they have been unsuccessful so far, as there are many horrifying provisions tucked into this massive piece of legislation. One major issue is the public funding of elective abortions. The administration has already removed many longstanding restrictions on abortion, and is unwilling to provide straight answers to questions regarding the public funding of abortion in their plan. This is deeply troubling for those of us who do not want taxpayer dollars funding abortions.

Forcing pro-life taxpayers to subsidize abortion is evil and tyrannical. I have introduced the Taxpayer’s Freedom of Conscience Act (HR 1233) which forbids the use of any taxpayer funds for abortion, both here and overseas.

The most basic function of government is to protect life. It is unconscionable that government would enable the taking of it. However this is to be expected when government oversteps its constitutional bounds instead of protecting rights. When government supercedes this very limited role, it cannot help but advance the moral agenda of whoever is in power at the time, at the expense of the rights of others.

Free people should be left alone to follow their conscience and determine their own lifestyle as long as they do not interfere with other people doing the same. If morality is dictated by government, morality will change with every election. Even if you agree with the morality of the current politicians and think their ideas should be advanced, someday different people will inherit that power and use it for their own agendas. The wisdom of the constitution is that it keeps government out of these issues altogether.

Many say we must reform healthcare and treat it as a right, because that is the moral thing to do. Poor people should not go without healthcare in a just society. But too many forget the immorality of stealing from others in order to make this so. They also forget the morality and compassion that naturally exists in communities when government is not fomenting class warfare with wealth redistribution programs.

Many doctors willingly volunteer, accept barter or reduced payment from patients who can’t pay, or give away services for free. Many charities help the poor with food, housing and healthcare. These charities are much more responsive and accountable for helping people in need than government ever could be. This is the moral way that private individuals voluntarily deal with access to healthcare, but government intervention threatens to pull the rug out from this sort of volunteerism and replace it with mandates, taxes, red tape, wealth redistribution, and force.

The fact that the national healthcare overhaul could force taxpayers to subsidize abortions and may even force private insurers to cover abortions is more reason that this bill and the ideas behind it, are neither constitutional, moral, nor in the American people’s best interest.