No Taxpayer Funding for Abortions Act

Our friends, in the House, those champions of limited government, passed H.R. 3 today. This is the bill that would end tax credits for companies that have private insurance policies that offer abortion coverage. Eight-seven percent of private insurance plans currently include such coverage.

The vote was 251-175. Sixteen Democrats and 235 Republicans voted aye. This amounts to both a massive tax increase and an interference in an individual's right to spend their money as they see choose.

Republicans, says Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) are trying to limit "private choices by private individuals and businesses in the private insurance market." By their logic, he said, "the tax exemption for the Catholic church is the establishment of religion and ought to be forbidden by law."

As is often repeated, the Hyde Amendment has forbade spending federal moneys on abortion since the 1980's. The Republican sponsored legislation is aimed to phase out abortion coverage in the private insurance market. The war against choice moves forward.

From Huffpo's Laura Bassett:

Further, H.R. 3 would eliminate privately funded insurance coverage for abortion in the state-based exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act. The policy team at NARAL Pro-Choice America estimates that 13.5 million women who receive health coverage through Medicaid and other government-sponsored programs would permanently lose access to abortion coverage if the measure, facing a floor vote Wednesday, passes. 

Some of the more extreme ramifications of the bill, which have attracted a great deal of negative media attention since its introduction in January, include a provision that could subject victims of rape and incest to abortion audits by the IRS. Mother Jones reported in March that H.R. 3 could turn IRS agents into "abortion cops" tasked with determining whether a woman used any kind of tax benefit to pay for a procedure not precipitated by rape or incest. 

Marcus Owens, a former longtime IRS official, told Mother Jones that if a woman received a tax credit for medical costs related to abortion, "on audit [she] would have to demonstrate or prove, ideally by contemporaneous written documentation, that it was incest, or rape, or [her] life was in danger. It would be fairly intrusive for the woman." 

H.R. 3 has achieved further notoriety through its attempt to narrow the definition of "rape" as it relates to abortion. Lawmakers pulled language from the original measure that allowed federal funding for abortions only in the case of "forcible rape" after drawing widespread public criticism, but Mother Jones reported on Tuesday that House Republicans are using a backdoor legislative maneuver to ensure the bill achieves the same effect.