Commentary

We recently talked with an Idaho Legislator who wanted to know if the state insurance exchange was carrying policies which provided for elective abortions. The answer is, we don’t know for sure.

Two specific Idaho laws forbid the coverage of elective abortions. The most recent was enacted by the Legislature two years ago as we faced the threat of ObamaCare in one form or another. That “opt-out” bill took advantage of a specific provision of the federal law, and it stated that states could protect preborn children and taxpayers if they enacted legislation prohibiting such coverage in either the federal or state exchanges. Idaho Chooses Life brought that bill and succeeded in getting passed.

That would seem to settle the matter.

However, there is another provision of ObamaCare which requires that an elective abortion rider be available in all the states – though not necessarily at taxpayer expense. It has always been unclear how these two seeming contradictory provisions of the ACA would work out in real life.

Congressman Chris Smith (R-CT) took to the House floor this week and urged Americans looking at buying policies through the various exchanges to beware that they might be sucked into providing money to cover elective abortions. There is a surcharge buried in the fine print of insurance policies which gives the client the option to contribute to an “abortion fund”. Only by positively opting-out at the time of initial sign-up can a person be protected from aiding and abetting in the destruction of another human being.

In fact, Smith and some 60 other members of Congress have introduced legislation called the “Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act” to force insurance exchanges to plainly and clearly inform potential customers whether the policies they might purchase include either abortion coverage or an abortion surcharge designed to finance the abortions of others.

This complex funding scheme is but a symptom of the evil being perpetrated upon the American people by President Obama through his health-care take over.

Only time will tell whether the Idaho Exchange is a participant in this particular outrage.

And even if elective abortions – or its indirect funding – is prohibited by the Idaho version of the Obama Exchange – it is clear that they are participating in the destruction of human life by requiring policy holders to pay for coverage of abortion-causing drugs like the “Morning After Pill”, now available to children of any age without adult supervision.

Dr. Bryon Calhoun, an OB-GYN at West Virginia University, was recently interviewed by Operation Rescue about the state of health care for women who submit to abortions. He told their reporter that he sees women suffering from botched abortions on a regular basis at the emergency room in Charleston; an average of once a week.

“These people [ post-abortive women] are told to come to our hospital because the abortion clinic providers do not have hospital privileges to care for their patients, so we must treat them as emergency ‘drop-ins’,” Calhoun said. He adds,

“No other medical providers are allowed to care for patients, have no backup coverage, and then abandon them to the emergency room. … The fantasy of women’s reproductive health seems to allow these individuals who perform abortions some special dispensation to provide substandard care.”

The “fantasy” he refers to is the media-fueled notion that the Abortion Industry is committed to protecting women and their health. Like drug dealers who peddle drugs on street corners, abortionists are only interested in their clients for as long as the money is good. Once they meet the demand, collect the money, they are done with the people they claim to serve.

All across the nation, in various states, Planned Parenthood and their abortion colleagues are fighting attempts to hold them accountable to decent standards of medical care. In California, they are pressing the Legislature to make it legal for nurses to perform abortions as a strategy to improve profit margins.

It is striking that the Death Industry would be so brazen with the profound moral and health scandal of Kermit Gosnell just months old. It is a reflection, we believe, of the national atmospherics engendered by President Obama and his unwavering loyalty to the Abortion Industry. They clearly believe he is big enough to protect them.