Lawmakers in Texas are seeking to ban abortion coverage from health insurance plans, the latest in a series of restrictions meant to curtail abortion access in the state.
A new bill, which passed a state senate committee on Monday, would prohibit private health insurance plans and plans offered through the state’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace from providing default coverage for abortion. Women in Texas would instead have the option to buy separate, supplemental insurance for abortion – or pay for the medical procedure out of pocket.
Touting the language of choice, the bill’s author, state senator Larry Taylor, told the Texas senate affairs committee: “Under this bill, you can choose to pay for abortions or you can choose not to pay for the abortions of others.”
The bill allows insurers to pay for abortion only in the case of “life-threatening” medical emergency, but offers no exceptions for cases of rape or incest.
Reproductive rights proponents worry that the added financial burdens from lack of insurance coverage could result in women delaying abortion or seeking cheaper and more dangerous methods to terminate their pregnancy.
“Abortion isn’t something people plan for,” Elizabeth Nash, senior state issues associate of the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights thinktank, told the Guardian. “That makes is important that the coverage is there if and when women need it.”
Twenty-five states have enacted similar coverage restrictions on insurance plans sold through healthcare exchanges since the ACA was signed into law in 2010. In 10 states, the coverage restrictions extend to all private insurers. Like the proposed Texas bill, most of these laws only offer exceptions in the most extreme circumstances.
These laws “take abortion out of the medical context and isolate it off to the side when it should be part of the continuum of healthcare”, Nash said.
“We don’t see this in other aspects of healthcare,” she added. “Can you imagine what a mess it would create out of insurance if we had people opting out of all sorts of coverage? ‘I don’t believe in vaccines, so I’m not going to pay into the insurance fund for vaccines.’ We need to leave those decisions up to the physicians and the patients.”
Texas’s abortion coverage ban still has a ways to go before becoming law. It will face a full senate vote before going to the house and, if it passes both, the governor’s office.
