Health Plan for State Employees To Restrict Abortion Coverage

August 8th, 2013

Health insurance for 650,000 state workers, including most of Georgia’s public school teachers, will no longer cover abortions. The lone exception for the procedure will be if the mother’s life is at risk.

State health officials, backed by Gov. Nathan Deal, approved the change Thursday.

Deal said the decision “shows our state’s commitment to reducing the number of abortions in our state by ensuring that state taxpayers aren’t paying for a procedure that many find morally objectionable.”

Earlier his year Deal said he’d explore using his executive powers for the ban. It came after state lawmakers failed to pass a related bill on the final day of legislative session.

The board of the Department of Community Health, which the governor appoints, ultimately signed off on the rule change as part of a larger approval process of the state health plan.

Reaction came quick from both sides of the abortion debate.

“The majority of Georgians don’t support their tax dollars for abortion on demand and we feel like this direction reflects their will,” said Suzanne Ward with Georgia Right to Life. “Why would Georgians want to pay for what’s truly not healthcare, but the destruction of human life?”

Meanwhile pro-choice groups expressed outrage.

“We’re very distressed,” said Janelle Yamarick of the Atlanta-based Feminist Women’s Health Center. “We think the governor has bowed to special interests and thrown women under the bus. He’s playing with women’s lives.”

Eighteen other states have imposed similar restrictions, but Sharon Levin of the National Women’s Law Center says Georgia’s ban is one of the strictest.

“Georgia’s decision not to include an exception for where pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or where either the woman’s health is impaired or there is a severe fetal anomaly, does put them on the extreme end of these bans,” said Levin.

In 2011, 366 patients sought abortions through the state health plan. Net insurance payments for those procedures were $213,000. Those figures were down from 2009, which saw 545 abortions procedures at a cost of $343,000.