The House leadership continues to harm women’s health by restricting women’s access to reproductive health services. Tomorrow they’re going even further by bringing up H.R. 3 to the floor for a vote, a bill that places dangerous restrictions on insurance coverage for abortion.
H.R. 3 is a dangerous and extreme bill that threatens women’s health by aiming to deny access to health insurance that includes coverage for abortion services, whether that insurance is public or private. The bill catapults from the fact that the federal government provides a tax break on most employer-provided health insurance most women rely on, to assert that the government can dictate that this workplace-based insurance cannot cover abortion.
HR 3 allows no health exception: it would leave women whose health is seriously threatened by their pregnancies without access to the care their doctors recommend to protect their health. This would especially endanger the health of underserved women and those with greater health care needs. Women with illnesses like cancer and heart disease sometimes face severe, permanent health damage if they don’t have access to abortion care.
H.R. 3 would invite an unprecedented, radical level of government intrusion into deeply private and personal health care decisions. While there is an exception in cases of rape or incest, incredibly, a rape or incest survivor seeking to include the cost of an abortion in her medical expense deductions or to use tax-advantaged savings to pay for the service could have to provide evidence of the rape or incest in the event of an IRS audit in order to prove herself eligible under longstanding exceptions for those circumstances. Clearly this level of government intrusiveness into an individual’s private and personal life is unacceptable.
The legislation would also codify harmful riders that deny women access to abortion care, including the recently reinstated interference with the District of Columbia’s use of its own local funds and the restriction on federal Medicaid, both of which disproportionately affect women of color and low-income women.
By banning abortion coverage for millions of women in the new health exchanges and imposing tax penalties on small businesses that offer comprehensive insurance plans, H.R. 3 would rob women of insurance coverage for abortion. According to the Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation, the bill would likely take away health insurance coverage that women have today and would impose new tax penalties on millions of families and small businesses.
Contact Congress or Call 888-907-9762 TODAY and tell your Representative to oppose this harmful bill and protect women’s health.
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