TresSugar

Abortion Coverage: Missing What Many Never Knew They Had

TresSugar — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:00:03 -0800

One of the most convincing arguments for passing the public health plan without abortion coverage is that very few women use insurance to cover abortions to begin with. But if you've heard the statistic that only 13 percent of abortions are billed to insurers, that's not exactly the whole truth.

The Guttmacher Institute, the pro-choice organization responsible for the study the stats were pulled from, contests the 13 percent statistic has been taken out of context and widely used through the media - like, say, in the Wall Street Journal article we linked to yesterday.

While the study does say only 13 percent of first-term abortions are billed to private insurers, that figure is skewed because it looked at all women who had abortions and not just those who had insurance. You can't bill an insurer if you don't have one! The study also did not include women who paid for abortions up front and were later reimbursed.

So what's a realistic number? Nobody really knows because of the private nature of abortions. Another Guttmacher study found that 87 percent of employer-based insurance plans covered abortions, but a Kaiser Family Foundation study found that only 46 percent of covered workers reported coverage. Why such a big a difference? Many women just don't know their insurance covers abortion.

As Congress continues to debate the public health plan, do you care if it includes abortion coverage? Can we miss something so many women never knew they had?

Source: Flickr User amypritchizzle

If Women Have to Pay For Abortion, What Does It Cost?

TresSugar — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:00:52 -0800

The initial reaction to the Stupak amendment - which forbids coverage for abortion from a public insurance plan and prevents private insurers from covering abortions for anyone getting a tax credit - was not anger for many women, but "What? Health insurance covers abortions?!"

Looking into the issue, the Wall Street Journal found that eliminating abortion coverage would have almost no effect because so few women use insurance for the procedure. Women often pay out of pocket because they don't realize insurance covers abortion, or because they choose to keep it private from employer-provided plans or other subscribers, like parents and husbands.

So since many women are paying for their abortions now - and, unfortunately, more may be soon - what do they cost? Take this quiz to find out.

Take the quiz

Women Worry That Obama Is Throwing Them Under the Bus

TresSugar — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:42:32 -0800

Back in January, feminist magazine Ms. hailed Barack Obama as a super feminist. But the president's recent tepid response to protecting abortion rights might mean that the love affair with Obama is about to end for many women. Over at the Daily Beast, women's rights activist Amy Siskind argues that the Stupak amendment, which treats women's rights as a political bargaining chip that can be traded for healthcare reform, is just one more example of how Obama couldn't care less about women . . . except when he's trying to win their votes of course. She writes:

He appointed fewer women into his cabinet than President Bill Clinton. He surrounded himself with czars, more than 90 percent of whom are male. He appointed Larry Summers, of "girls are inferior in math and science" fame, to a key economic post. He played basketball, golfed and fished with men and men only. He had beers with Skip Gates, but ignored it when Rihanna was almost strangled to death. And so on.

Of course it's not all bad. Ms. released a report chronicling the giant strides Obama made for women during his first 100 days in office. These actions included: signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, instituting a new ambassador-at-large for global women's issues, establishing the White House Council on Women and Girls, and overturning the "global gag rule" in order to re-fund global family planning organizations.

Has the Obama administration let you down when it comes to women's rights?

Front Page: Obama Wants Healthcare Bill, Not Abortion Bill

TresSugar — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:00:11 -0800

President Obama is asking Congress to drop the clause in the House healthcare bill that puts new restrictions on abortion coverage. - ABC News
Virginia will execute John Allen Muhammad (aka "The DC Sniper") today. - CNN
RNC leader Michael Steele says some white Republicans are scared of him. - Politico
Fans apparently walked out of Tracy Morgan's Carnegie Hall performance last night because it was too raunchy. - New York Daily News
Former Miss California Carrie Prejean says she has been "Palinized." - MSNBC

Healthcare Bill Restricts Coverage For Abortions

TresSugar — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:00:00 -0800

If you thought Democrats were pro-choice, you might want to think again. The recently passed healthcare bill coming out of the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives could significantly decrease access to abortion even for Americans on private insurance plans.

After a 290-194 vote, the House passed an amendment Saturday that bans the use of federal funds to cover abortion for anyone using the public healthcare plan. The amendment also prevents private insurers from covering abortions for anyone getting a tax credit to help pay premiums. The amendment is being called the biggest victory in years for abortion opponents.

Under the bill, there will be many more Americans receiving tax credits to help pay for insurance - any family of four making less than $88,000 a year will be eligible for the subsidies, and if they take the credits, they will not be allowed to use them to purchase a plan that covers abortion. Pro-choice advocates argue that the new legislation will lower access to abortion coverage even for those receiving no tax aide because private insurance companies will have an incentive to drop abortion coverage from their plans so they can compete for customers receiving federal subsidies. The implications could be substantial since right now 90 percent of insurers cover abortion to some extent.

Pressure from conservative Democrats and the pro-life lobby helped get the amendment passed. While I'm not surprised abortion isn't being treated like every other legal medical procedure, I am a little shocked that the bill's implications go so far to limit abortion coverage for women who are not receiving any federal funding. Do you think the House did the right thing?

70,000 Women a Year Die From Unsafe Abortions

TresSugar — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:00:00 -0700

After three years of research, the New York-based Guttmacher Institute has concluded that although contraceptive use has lowered the number of abortions worldwide, unsafe abortions still account for a staggering 70,000 deaths a year, particularly in the developing world. More than half the deaths are in sub-Saharan Africa, a region with the lowest rates of contraceptive use and the highest rates of unintended pregnancies.

"In much of the developing world," said the Institute's president Sharon Camp, "abortion remains highly restricted, and unsafe abortion is common and continues to damage women's health and threaten their survival."

The report calls for easing developing nations' abortion laws, citing that laws banning or restricting abortion don't keep it from happening, they just make abortion unsafe and either self-induced or performed by unskilled people in any unhygienic conditions.

The Guttmacher Institute's recommendations: expand access to family planning and modern contraceptives and to legal and safe abortion, and improve the coverage and quality of post-abortion care.

Their recommendations have been criticized by Deirdre McQuade, a policy director for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat for Pro-life Activities who also castigates priests or nuns who make referrals to family planning services, which she says veers from church policy. "We need to be much more creative in assisting women with supportive services," she said, "so they don't need to resort to the unnatural act of abortion."

Oklahoma Prepares to Put Abortion Details Online

TresSugar — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:00:00 -0700

Starting Nov. 1, any woman who has an abortion in Oklahoma will have to fill out an extensive questionnaire that will subsequently be posted online. Supporters of the law say that the information will help healthcare officials reduce the number of abortions. They also reason that the answers must be posted online so academic researchers can access the data.

As you can imagine, the logic behind these assumed advantages, along with the entire premise of posting extensive information about individual abortions online, is flawed for various reasons. Here are a few:

Even though the questionnaire does not ask for name or address, the first eight questions alone most likely would be enough to identify a woman in a town of 200 or less.
The data will not be suitable for academic research because of the way it is collected. Since a woman could fill out a questionnaire each time she sees a doctor about seeking an abortion, her data could appear to represent more than one patient.
The questionnaire contains loaded language, such as: "Was there an infant born alive as a result of the abortion?"

Luckily, those opposed to the questionnaire and database have filed a lawsuit that will hopefully prevent the dubious law from going into force. What do you make of all this?

Dominican Republic Bans Abortion, No Exceptions

TresSugar — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:00:00 -0700

As support for legal access to abortion in the US drops (with only 47 percent of Americans thinking it should be legal), the Dominican Republican has decided to go one better: they want to constitutionally ban the procedure altogether.

With support for the Catholic Church and the country's Catholic population, lawmakers recently ratified an amendment that makes it illegal for women to terminate pregnancy in all cases. Abortion is now constitutionally forbidden even if the mother or fetus's life is at risk. And there is no exception for incest or rape.

It is very taboo to discuss abortion in the Dominican Republic, but some bloggers are speaking out against the new amendment. One such blogger writes:

A string of hypocrisy, and those that think they voted for life, when a woman needs to abort because her life is in danger and they do not, THE WOMAN AND THE FETUS DIES. What ignorance! Death will now be 2 for 1 in the Dominican Republic.

Could you imagine something like this happening in the US?

Tweeting Your Miscarriage or Abortion: Good For Women?

TresSugar — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:00:00 -0700

When Penelope Trunk, a blogger who shares almost every detail of her life over the Internet, had a miscarriage, she decided to tweet about it. She wrote:

I'm in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there's a f**ked-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin.

Writer KJ Dell'Antonia over at Double X thinks Trunk did women a favor with this TMI tweet. She reasons that Trunk should not give her miscarriage, or would-be abortion, different treatment than other events that happen to her. In fact, Dell'Antonia thinks all women should be more open to talking about these issues because pretending that they never happen reserves "a special layer or shame and condemnation for the bodily functions that happen only to women."

So Dell'Antonia says: "go ahead, tweet your abortion" because it's good for womankind. Do you agree?

E-Health Records Raise Privacy Concerns About Sexual Health

TresSugar — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:00:00 -0700

In February, the US government mandated that doctors and healthcare providers create an Electronic Health Record (EHR) for every American by 2014. This new system, which healthcare providers and government officials can access when authorized, promises to make health care more efficient and less expensive. But there's a growing concern that the adoption of a central, online system could compromise patient privacy.

Some people worry that private information, such as someone's sexual health history, could get in the hands of the wrong people if health information becomes too centralized. One congressman, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, was recently asked specifically if information about STDs and abortion would be included in a person's record. He said that patients would be able to opt out of including such personal information in the electronic file.

Life is always easier when you swap out a paper-intensive system for searchable, sortable electronic databases. But when it comes to health records, there are risks to consider. Would you choose not to include sensitive information about your sexual health in your official e-file?