Obama won’t protect repro rights in health reform

As you may have noticed, right now there’s some major political wrangling going on over health reform. Not only has the public option been jettisoned, but news broke today that anti-choice Democrats are really upset
at the prospect of low- and moderate-income women receiving federal subsidies to access insurance plans that cover abortion.

Rather than declare his support reproductive health coverage, Obama is basically telling congressional Democrats, “Hey, work it out amongst yourselves.”

Meanwhile,

Abortion-rights supporters say such a restriction would all but
eliminate from the marketplace private plans that cover the procedure,
pushing women who have such coverage to give it up. Nearly half of
those with employer-sponsored health plans now have policies that cover
abortion, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Needless to say, this would be a really bad scene.

NARAL and Planned Parenthood have action alerts to keep Congress from using health reform to decrease women’s reproductive health access.

For more on why abortion rights are important in health reform, read my colleague Dana Goldstein.

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