21 States Ban Insurance Coverage for Abortion, Does Yours?

National   |   Jill Stanek   |   Sep 6, 2013   |   11:14AM   |   Washington, DC

What they’re trying to do make abortion more difficult to access and unaffordable for women, and this is one of the ways they can do that….

2013_09_AbortionCoverageIt’s part and parcel of the larger effort to make abortion harder for women to get….

Abortion should just be part of the comprehensive plan that women get because they don’t necessarily look for that or think, ‘Oh, I might need an abortion’….

They’re not going to ever predict a situation in which they’re going to have an unplanned pregnancy or a problem pregnancy or a sexual assault leading to pregnancy.

It’s not something that you plan for.

~ Gretchen Borchelt, director of state reproductive health policy at the National Women’s Law Center, responding to reports that 21 states have now banned private health insurers from providing abortion coverage, as quoted by Jeffrey Young in the Huffington Post, September 3

Also noted in the article:

Thirty-three percent of women who had abortions in 2008 were uninsured, 30 percent had private health insurance and 31 percent were enrolled in Medicaid, according to a 2010 Guttmacher Institute report.

Nevertheless, 57 percent of these women paid for their abortions out of pocket, including 63 percent of those with private insurance. Women with insurance coverage pay for abortions for several reasons, including having plans that won’t cover it, not knowing what their insurance benefits are, or wanting to keep an abortion secret from family members….

(Click image to enlarge.)

LifeNews.com Note: Jill Stanek fought to stop “live birth abortions” after witnessing one as an RN at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois. That led to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act legislation, signed by President Bush, that would ensure that proper medical care be given to unborn children who survive botched abortion attempts.