Since 1976, the Hyde Amendment has been used to ban the federal government from spending money on abortion. Now the Stupak-Pitts and Nelson-Hatch amendments are trying to expand Hyde into the private insurance marketplace for the first time ever.
The bottom line is simple: Stupak-Pitts would make it nearly impossible for private insurance companies that participate in the new healthcare reform to offer abortion services coverage to women, even when those women use their own money to purchase coverage. Nelson-Hatch would require women to pay separately for abortion coverage and piles on administrative requirements that one of the leading health policy experts, George Washington University Professor Sara Rosenbaum, has said will likely ‘chill’ insurers from providing abortion coverage at all. These measures, both punitive and unnecessary, go too far.
Learn more about why these amendments threaten to seriously compromise women’s privacy and safety:
