OLYMPIA, WA, January 31, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – A bill being considered today in Washington state would force insurance companies that pay for prenatal care to also cover abortion, placing parenthood and termination of the unborn on an equally subsidized footing.
The “Reproductive Parity Act” seeks to assure abortion will be covered under the state insurance exchanges set up by ObamaCare beginning in 2014. The federal health care act allowed states to opt out of such coverage.
“I look forward to the legislature sending the Reproductive Parity Act to my desk, which I will sign,” said Democratic Governor Jay Inslee.
State senator Steve Litzow has offered Republican support, allowing proponents to call it a bipartisan measure.
The bill is strongly supported by Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice Washington, Legal Voice, the National Organization for Women, the ACLU, and certain liberal clergy members.
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The bill did not come up for a vote in 2012 after it was introduced, but the abortion industry did not see that as a complete loss. “We made a huge amount of progress in drawing attention to the abortion access and coverage that women will lose if we don’t take action on this issue,” said Jennifer Allen, Director of Public Policy for Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest.
The state's pro-life movement is asking everyone to lobby strongly against the act.
“We need you to pack the hearing in opposition to the bill,” Human Life of Washington warned in an e-mail. “Americans will be forced by their government to pay for the taking of human life in violation of conscience for the first time in the history of our nation.”
In his January 24 column for the Archdiocese of Seattle, Archbishop J. Peter Sartain wrote, “To propose that coverage for abortion be mandated for all state-regulated health care plans is not only utterly indefensible — it is a grave infringement on the rights of conscience of insurers, private employers, churches and individual citizens.”
The first hearing on the bill begins at 8 a.m. Thursday morning before the House Committee on Health Care and Wellness.