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House Subcommittee Examines Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Bill

On January 9, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice held a hearing on the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” (H.R. 7).

Speaking in support of H.R. 7, Helen Alvaré, professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law, argued that taxpayer support of abortions is unwarranted: “[I]t is no longer contestable that women embrace the pro-life label and positions as much or more than men, and that poor women are somewhat more pro-life than the wealthier. A terrific and quite detailed study issued by the Rand Corporation, in cooperation with the Packard, Hewlett, and Rockefeller Foundations – after calling abortion an ‘enduringly divisive issue’ in the American political landscape – reported stable attitudes on abortion over decades. According to their crosstabs, females survey a few percentage points more pro-life than men – a figure within the margin of error, but persistent over decades and therefore significant. Also the less educationally privileged are more pro-life than the privileged, sometimes by margins of 33 or even 45 percent. And the poor are more pro-life than the wealthy by 16 to 25 percent. These differences persist on the question of abortion funding. To wit: a majority of the public opposes government funding for abortion; women oppose funding by a few percentage points more than men, the more educationally privileged support funding more than the less privileged; and the well-off support abortion funding for the poor more than the poor favor it for themselves, this last a particularly unpleasant fact.”

Dr. Susan Wood, associate professor of Health Policy and director, Jacobs Institute of Women’s Health, School of Public Health and Health Services, The George Washington University, testified about the impact of the bill on the private insurance market. “Historically, the vast majority of insurance plans have typically covered abortion services…In our analysis of both the [former Rep. Bart] Stupak [(D-MI)] and [former Sen. Ben] Nelson [(D-NE)] amendments [to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) (P.L. 111-148)], we raised the concern that Congress would create a chilling effect on plans by creating burdensome accounting requirements and would lead many more women to lose abortion coverage. Adding to the restrictions already in place in the ACA, further changing the tax credits for individuals and for small employers providing health care coverage could lead to significant changes in the health insurance coverage that women have had, potentially creating a ‘tipping point’ in the nature of health insurance whereby women lose abortion coverage entirely. It is the nature of health insurance that insurers may no longer provide plans that include coverage which would come with burdensome regulatory requirements such as proposed in H.R. 7. Since approximately 60 percent of women of reproductive age, or 37 million women, get their health coverage through private insurance, this legislation could have a profound effect.”

Richard Doerflinger, associate director, secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, also testified.