Saturday evening, the House of Representatives passed an Amendment, sponsored by Democratic Representatives Bart Stupak (MI) and Joe Pitts (PA), to the House Health Care bill. This Amendment, which passed by a vote of 240-194, will result in the elimination of insurance coverage (both public and private) for any abortion other than those done to save the mother's life, or as a result of rape or incest.
This amendment, if it remains in full or in large part in the final bill, will hit those women who terminate for medical reasons particularly hard.
Prenatal testing has made great advances over the past 30 years, with women sometimes being able to find out as soon as 11 or 12 weeks that something is seriously wrong with their unborn baby. However, most women don't find out something is seriously wrong with their baby until they are well into their 2nd trimester. Add onto that the time it takes to get second and third opinions, definitive diagnostic testing, and the agonizing process of decision-making and you are looking at many women not knowing they will be terminating until they are close to 24 weeks (if not later). Terminations at this late stage can cost anywhere from $2000 to over $10,000, depending on the gestation and the type of procedure.
I've come across several women over the years who, for one reason or another, didn't have insurance coverage for their terminations. Making the decision to terminate is tortuous enough, but having to then re-tell one's devastating story over and over again, usually to complete strangers, in order to arrange for payment is insulting. Most women were able to scrounge up the money needed by asking friends and family members for loans, by calling their credit card companies to ask for credit limit increases, by searching out other medical facilities with the hope that one of them would be less expensive, and by having to negotiate a billing schedule with hospital billing clerks.
Asking women, who are already heartbroken and devastated by having to say goodbye too soon to their much-wanted and much-loved babies, to also magically come up with thousands of dollars out-of-pocket in order to obtain a legal and common medical procedure, one which has been covered by many insurance companies for YEARS, is just adding insult to injury. The Stupak Amendment is completely unneccesary and needs to go.
