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Nearly 100 pro-life groups are urging Congress to ensure that if they choose to extend subsidies in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) they need to also include specific provisions ensuring that those subsidies do not get used to pay for elective abortions.
The letter, spearheaded by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (formerly Susan B. Anthony List), argues that pro-choice Democrats “craftily” authored the ACA to avoid protections from the Hyde Amendment, passed in the late 70s to prevent tax dollars from going toward elective abortions. Coverage for elective abortions through ACA insurance plans, the letter says, comes from cost-sharing reduction payments and premium tax credits set to expire at the end of the year.
Under Republicans’ “one big, beautiful” spending package passed in early July, federal Medicaid payments were prohibited to entities that provided abortions beyond the Hyde Amendment’s exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. But, according to the 88 different pro-life groups who signed the SBA’s letter to Congress, that progress could be lost if Americans become compelled to pay for abortion services through the ACA, also known as “Obamacare.”
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“The American people clearly don’t want to be in the business of subsidizing the violence of abortion,” SBA President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital. “Sixty percent of voters, including Democrats, pro-choice voters, and the majority of independents, oppose taxpayer funding of abortion.”
When the ACA was written, a provision of the landmark health legislation, Section 1303, sought to prohibit any federal funds from going towards non-Hyde exempt abortions. The ACA provision requires any ACA health insurers that provide elective abortion coverage to collect a separate private payment from enrollees for such coverage, to ensure that it is not being covered by federal funds.
However, subsequent Obama-era guidance allowed the separate abortion premium payments to be consolidated into a single transaction with payments for non-abortion coverage, effectively removing any distinction between abortion-related coverage payments and non-abortion related coverage payments.
Republicans and pro-life advocates have argued that this move has led to taxpayer funds being commingled with the separate private funds meant for abortion coverage, which, in turn, indirectly funds elective abortions. They also argue it obscures information from pro-life consumers who may not want to be party to a health insurance plan that provides funding for abortion.
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In 2014, the Government Accountability Project (GAO) examined compliance with Section 1303 of the ACA among a sample of 18 insurance companies that provide coverage for non-Hyde exempt abortions. While the analysis found no evidence of federal funds being used directly for abortions, not a single one of the 18 insurers it looked into was fully complying with the ACA’s mandate to collect a separate payment specifically for abortion coverage.
Nationwide, the GAO found that 1,036 Qualified Health Plans that covered non-Hyde exempt abortions, most of them had highly subsidized enrollment rates around the 87% average that encompasses all ACA health plans.
During President Donald Trump’s first term, he attempted to mandate stricter separate transaction requirements, but they were ultimately repealed under Biden.
“We just defunded Big Abortion, but our progress is lost if Americans are forced to fund abortion on demand through Obamacare. Obamacare was the largest ever expansion of taxpayer-funded abortion since Roe v. Wade, subsidizing insurance plans that cover elective abortion. As if that wasn’t enough, Biden significantly expanded Obamacare as a form COVID-19 relief, which in turn vastly expanded taxpayer funding for abortion through Obamacare,” Dannenfelser said. “”This pro-life Congress must not further extend Obama and Biden’s legacy of taxpayer- funded subsidies that end the lives of countless unborn children.”
Fox News Digital reached out to numerous pro-choice groups for their take on the letter calling for Hyde-specific protections for any ACA expansion.
Liz McCaman Taylor, senior federal policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the letter from the coalition of 88 pro-life groups serves “to push abortion services even further out of reach, including in states where abortion is legal.”
“The reality is that people already have extremely limited access to abortion care through the Affordable Care Act,” McCaman argued.
“This is an attempt to dictate states’ decisions about what benefits they can and cannot offer their citizens,” McCaman said. “Anti-abortion advocates’ claims to ‘leave abortion up to the states’ were clearly a lie.”
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