What health-care 'status quo' means to pro-aborts

The numbers don't jibe.

Time magazine reported July 8:

Nearly 90 percent of insurers cover abortion procedures, according to a 2002 survey by the Guttmacher Institute. …

While U.S. News & World Report reported July 23:

[A] Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 46 percent of insured workers had coverage for abortions.

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But Department of Health & Human Services secretary nominee Kathleen Sebelius testified before the Senate Finance Committee on April 9:

Most private plans do not cover abortion services except in limited instances. …

And the New York Times reported Nov. 8:

A 2003 study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute found that 13 percent of abortions were billed directly to insurance companies.

What gives?

It is important to get to the bottom of those discrepant statistics.

The Stupak/Pitts pro-life amendment to the just-passed House socialized health-care bill mirrors the Hyde Amendment, which bans public funds from financing the abortion of a pregnant mother except when her life is endangered or she is the victim of rape or incest.

The other side maintains Stupak/Pitts goes further by banning private insurance companies from covering abortion that would accept government subsidies.

They claim that since the vast majority of private carriers cover abortion, most participating in a socialized health-care program would be forced to drop that coverage.

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Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards wrote that Stupak/Pitts would "tak[e] away benefits from women that they have today" because it "would result in the elimination of abortion coverage in the new insurance market created under health-care reform."

National Organization for Women–New York State President Marcia Pappas claimed Stupak/Pitts "throws women under the bus, as it will block even private insurance plans from funding abortion care."

NARAL wrote that Stupak/Pitts "makes it virtually impossible for private insurance companies that participate in the new system to offer abortion coverage to women … a radical departure from the status quo. Presently, more than 85 percent of private insurance plans cover abortion services."

And President Obama told ABC on Monday:

"There are strong feelings on both sides" about an amendment passed Saturday and added to the legislation, "and what that tells me is that there needs to be some more work before we get to the point where we're not changing the status quo."

Obama was inferring that Stupak/Pitts changes the status quo by penalizing abortion-covering insurance companies.

As the other side gears up to scrub any and every pro-life amendment from socialized health care, they are, as usual, using false information and scare tactics.

About that "87 percent" Guttmacher statistic, National Right to Life's Doug Johnson told the Weekly Standard:

We have now looked at the [Alan Guttmacher Institute] paper that provided the basis for the claim that "nearly 90 percent of insurers cover abortion procedures." This report was based on voluntary responses sent to AGI by insurers who were selected by AGI to be surveyed by complicated criteria described in the report. Moreover, the report itself said that "some of the insurers reporting that abortion was covered narrowly interpreted this to mean when a pregnancy threatens a woman's health." Clearly, then, AGI arrived at the 87 percent figure by counting any respondent in its sample that covered abortion even to save the life of the mother. Thus, this report is essentially useless in estimating the extent of private insurance coverage of elective abortion.

The Weekly Standard added:

If the NRA sends out a questionnaire, most pro-gun-control candidates simply won't respond. The same phenomenon surely occurred with health insurance companies that do not provide abortions not responding to the Guttmacher Institute, which was once formally connected to Planned Parenthood and remains ideologically committed to legalized and taxpayer-subsidized abortion.

So the statistic pro-aborts cite is grossly inflated. The key is Guttmacher's other finding, "that 13 percent of all abortions … were directly billed by abortion providers to private insurance companies."

About that statistic Guttmacher conjectured first that some pregnant mothers may not know they have abortion coverage. Then it got to the truth:

Given the stigma that still surrounds abortion, these women might not have wanted their insurer or employer, or the primary policyholder (like a spouse or parent), to learn that they had obtained an abortion.

If there were a federal private insurance subsidy plan, Planned Parenthood et al. would maintain a list of insurers participating, similar to an HMO list, and handle the billing themselves.

This would not only entice more women to abort, it would enable the industry to jack up its prices.

And that would definitely change the status quo.