The measure denies a range of federal funding to any federal agency and state or local government that penalizes health-care institutions—such as hospitals, clinics, and insurance companies—for violating state laws that require them to give women full information about abortion and other reproductive services. This means that any physician, hospital, or health insurer can refuse to perform or pay for abortions. They can also refuse to tell pregnant women that the option exists.

States like California that mandate hospitals with no-abortion policies to offer that service to women would risk losing millions of dollars from the federal Medicaid program if they continue enforcing such a policy. Under ANDA, health-care providers participating in Medicaid programs would no longer be compelled to provide abortion referral services, nor a full range of medical services to women. Health-care administrators who oppose abortion could impose policies that restrict doctors, nurses, and other personnel employed in their facilities from informing patients about reproductive services like abortion. In rural areas with few hospitals and health-plan choices the measure could virtually end access to abortion in wider parts of the territory.

“This amendment’s name makes it sound like it protects women who are seeking abortions from discrimination,” said Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Instead the measure “intrudes on private, personal, medical decision-making” and allows “any health care provider or institution… to refuse to provide a much-needed health-care service.”

ANDA is the latest government measure aimed at chipping away at a woman’s right to choose abortion. Opponents of the right to choose, unable to reverse the decriminalization of abortion that was codified in the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling, have championed other piecemeal measures such as the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, signed into law by Bush earlier this year, which imposes additional penalties for killing an “unborn baby” on anyone convicted of killing a pregnant woman. The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act was approved in Congress last year with broad bipartisan support, outlawing a procedure used in late-term abortions.
 
 
Related articles:
Defend a woman’s right to choose!  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home