H. R 7

NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue on H.R. 7 Floor Vote Today

WASHINGTON - January 28 - As H.R.7, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, heads to the floor today, NARAL Pro-Choice America President Ilyse Hogue will be available to discuss this anti-woman measure and how, with this first action of 2014, GOP leadership continues to ignore the priorities of American voters.

“The majority of Americans are supportive of abortion rights and we have made clear that we’d like Congress to have a genuine conversation about economic opportunity. Yet, conservative politicians continue to focus almost single-mindedly on finding new ways to dictate the private, medical decisions of women and their families," said Ilyse Hogue. “By introducing a bill that breaks new ground in intertwining our tax code with reproductive decisions and meddling in the private insurance marketplace, extreme members of the GOP have put their cards on the table – they are willing to violate their own principles in order to make attacking women’s reproductive rights their first and foremost priority. The War On Women cost conservatives in 2012 and it will cost them again in the midterm elections and beyond."

During its recent winter meeting, the Republican National Committee passed a resolution affirming that their anti-choice politics are central to their party platform. At the same meeting, Gov. Mike Huckabee equated offering women birth control coverage to “Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government."

H.R.7 would do the following:

• Revive the failed Stupak-Pitts amendment to the ACA, effectively banning abortion coverage in the new health system, even for women in state insurance exchanges who use their own, private funds to pay for their insurance. Experts have stated this could also jeopardize the availability of private insurance coverage of abortion for all women in all private health plans nationwide.

• Impose tax penalties on small businesses that choose private health plans that cover abortion care, with the goal of driving consumers away from these plans. (Absent political interference, 87 percent of private plans cover abortion services.)

• Permanently block abortion coverage for low-income women, civil servants, D.C. residents, and military women by recodifying anti-choice riders that reside elsewhere throughout federal law. Congress should be repealing these unfair and discriminatory abortion bans, not recodifying them.

The brand-new version of H.R.7, unveiled after committee mark-up last week, also adds these two new provisions:

• Bans coverage of abortion services for women insured by multi-state health plans under the ACA—private health-insurance plans which offer consumers a uniform array of health benefits in every state in which they operate.

• Mandates health plans to make biased, one-sided “disclosures” of abortion coverage and force plans to mislead consumers about the health-care law’s treatment of abortion coverage.