Pennsylvania Senate Committee Votes to Ban Abortion Coverage in Private Insurance Plans

From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

HARRISBURG - A state Senate committee is advancing a bill to ban abortion coverage from policies obtained through health-insurance exchanges that are to begin in 2014. The bill passed the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee on Tuesday, 12-2. No public hearing was held.

Last year's landmark federal health-care law requires states to set up the exchanges to provide a marketplace where small businesses and individuals can buy coverage.

However, some abortion-rights proponents say that federal law already restricts taxpayer funding for abortion coverage and that this bill goes further than federal law by restricting abortion coverage in private policies.

For more on yesterday's vote, let's go to Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania Advocates:

Senate Committee Votes to Further Endanger Women’s Health and Safety in Pennsylvania

January 25, 2011
Author: Sari Stevens

HARRISBURG – Two days after the November 2nd election, President Pro Tempore Senator Scarnati was quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette cautioning his colleagues to focus on statewide fiscal matters and avoid divisive fights over abortion rights. On just the second day of legislative session, that commitment to Pennsylvania voters was broken when the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee voted to ban private insurance plans sold in the Pennsylvania health insurance exchange from covering even medically necessary abortion services.
“Rather than focusing on job creation and stimulating the economy, the State Senate is pulling a bait and switch and has made clear that government interference in private medical decisions is their top priority,” said Sari Stevens, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania Advocates. “Pennsylvania voters are not interested in reopening the debate around abortion. Our lawmakers should focus on improving our health care system and stop using women’s health as a divisive issue.”
The debate over private insurance coverage of abortion in the health insurance exchanges was settled by U.S. Senator Ben Nelson, a staunch opponent of abortion. The Nelson amendment stipulates that women who want to use their own money to purchase a health insurance plan that covers abortion services must send a separate payment so the funding for abortion coverage is completely separate and paid entirely by the individual.

Read the whole thing.

This vote comes just after the Kermit Gosnell case broke. Last week, Melissa wrote,

This case is already being used by anti-choice advocates as evidence for why abortion should be criminalized. But, in fact, the opposite is true: It is because of the increasingly limited access to safe, affordable, first-term abortion, as well as safe, affordable, late-term therapeutic abortion, that a heinous anomaly like Gosnell exists. He is an unethical opportunist who made lots of money exploiting desperate women without a better alternative.

And now the PA State Senate is acting opportunistically to limit women's reproductive freedom.

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H/T to Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania Advocates