By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
State legislators in more than a dozen states are looking to pass legislation that will enable them to opt-out of the abortion funding mandate in the recently passed health care reform bill.
LifeSiteNews.com is reporting that the legislation, developed by the pro-life legal group, Americans United for Life (AUL) exploits a provision in the Senate health care bill that allows the state-run health insurance exchanges to prevent tax payer money from subsidizing plans that offer co-pays for abortion.
Called the “Federal Abortion-Mandate Opt-Out Act,” AUL says the language can be tailored to meet the needs of individual states.
“The states are very interested in this, we are getting inundated with requests for the language,” Mary Harned, a health care expert on AUL’s legal team, told LifeSite in a telephone interview.
“This legislation is explicitly allowed in the language of the health care reform bill. So it is definitely something that is appropriate and that can be done,” she said, but adds, “We will certainly see some opposition to the bill in the state legislatures.”
Thus far, AUL has been contacted by state legislators from Kansas, Georgia, Delaware, Kentucky, California, Oregon, South Carolina, New Mexico, Ohio, Maine, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Maryland. They are still sorting through hundreds of other requests for more information.
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