What is it that makes pro-aborts think nothing of holding everyone else to rules they don’t follow themselves?
Planned Parenthood of Southern New England is blasting language proposed for the Rhode Island state budget that requires HealthSource RI, the state’s health insurance exchange, to offer plans that don’t cover elective abortions. Providence Journal reports:
Not only could these employers deny their employees a choice, they wouldn’t even have to inform their employees that their health plan only pays for abortion in the cases of rape or incest or when a pregnancy threaten’s [sic.] a mother’s life, according to Jamie Rhodes, director of public policy and government relations for Planned Parenthood.
“The first time they might realize it is when they get a bill,” said Jamie Rhodes, director of public policy and government relations for Planned Parenthood, which offers abortion and other reproductive and family planning services […]
Rhodes said the legislation is particularly concerning because it makes such antiabortion plans available broadly to any employer with a “religious exemption variation.” In contrast, he said, state law only permits employers to restrict health plan contraception coverage if they are “a church or a qualified church-controlled organization.”
Once again, we see that pro-choicers aren’t so wild about people having choices—health care choices, no less!—that don’t kill babies or line Big Abortion’s pockets. All the preening and posturing about personal freedom and not having anyone’s morality imposed on anyone else is a façade; these people really are out to force everyone in the country to conform to their ideals, not only of how society should work, but what every individual conscience should be comfortable with.
Indeed, implicit in the lip service to “a church or a qualified church-controlled organization” deserving conscience rights—unlike secular objectors, which are apparently pro-life for no other reason that evil’s sake—is the arrogant presumption that consciences can be segregated into “permissible” and “impermissible” categories that exempt the state from having to respect some at all, defeating the point of the entire concept. (It’s also insincere, since abortion supporters think nothing of drafting churches into abortion, just as much as they do any other entity.)
Regarding Rhodes’ talk of not informing customers what they’re getting in advance, no pro-lifer is against clearly stating a plan’s abortion status upfront—in fact, that’s what we want! Does it really not occur to Planned Parenthood that pro-lifers want to know a plan is abortion-free at least as much as pro-choicers want to know they’re getting abortion coverage? Which brings us to the greatest hypocrisy in this complaint: where was this commitment to transparency when ObamaCare was enacted? Let’s review:
The insurer who covers elective abortions may list abortion in its usual summary of covered benefits, but may not take any further step to warn enrollees that they are buying a plan with abortions. Moreover, even at the time of enrollment, they may not inform enrollees how much of their premium payment is to be separated out and used solely to pay for abortions (Id., §1303 (b)(3)). This seems designed to make it difficult or impossible for enrollees even to try to withhold that part of their premium – they will never know how much of the premium is involved, so cannot attempt to withhold that amount to protest against the legal requirement.
While many private health plans now cover abortions, then, what is new about the Affordable Care Act is this:
– These plans will receive federal tax subsidies;
– The federal government will explicitly forbid the insurer to:
(a) allow any enrollee to opt out of the abortion coverage on conscience grounds;
(b) give enrollees an explicit warning as to what they are buying;
(c) tell enrollees how much of their money will go toward other people’s abortions.
To this day, it takes the work of outside researchers, such as the Family Research Council and Charlotte Lozier Institute’s Abortion in ObamaCare website, for Americans to know their odds of paying for abortion if they venture into their exchanges. Yet that didn’t stop Planned Parenthood—including the supposedly truth-in-advertising-obsessed Southern New England affiliate.
It’s not about health insurance, it’s not about transparency, it’s not about religion— and it’s not even about choice. It’s about abortion. How long do we have to indulge their pretending otherwise?
