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Kansas Passes Abortion Insurance Reform

Abortion Insurance Reform Passes Kansas Legislature

Contact: Kathy Ostrowski, Legislative Director, 785-250-4502, Topeka; Mary Kay Culp, 913-406-4446, K.C.; David Gittrich, 800-928-5433, Wichita; all with Kansans for Life

TOPEKA, Kan., May 13, 2011 /Christian Newswire/ -- A Kansas insurance bill, HB 2075, composed of 4 different measures, was passed in the waning hours of the 2011 session. It included a pro-life bill introduced last year by Rep. Pete DeGraaf (R-Mulvane) that removes abortion from automatic coverage under standard private health plans.

Effective July 1, Kansas private health insurance plans will only cover abortions done to save the life of the mother. Kansas insurers will be allowed to offer abortion coverage only through individually-purchased riders. The AP reported that such riders have cost $2.

Blue Cross of Kansas City long ago implemented this abortion exclusion in private plans across the state line in eastern Kansas, because Missouri passed this law in 1983. 7 other states limit abortion in private health insurance plans.

The insurance restriction makes sense because pregnancy is not a disease and abortion is not healthcare. Many businesses have complained about having to pay for elective abortions in the health plans they purchase for their employees

KFL Executive Director, Mary Kay Culp said:

    "It is anything but unreasonable to insist that morally opposed individuals and businesses be freed from underwriting abortions, especially now that official Kansas statistics show fully 40% of abortions are performed on women who've had one, two, three or more before."

See: www.kdheks.gov/hci/abortion_sum/2010itop1.pdf (bottom of numbered page 4.)

Public support continues to decrease for direct and indirect funding of abortion. 68% of respondents to a September 2009 International Communications Research poll answered "no" to the question, "If the choice were up to you, would you want your own insurance policy to include abortion"; 24% answered "yes." A majority of Americans in a February 2011 Rasmussen Reports telephone survey say they believe abortion is morally wrong -- and that includes a good percentage of people who call themselves "pro-choice on abortion."

The language of HB 2075 would also prevent any future 'Obamacare' state health exchanges from including abortion coverage. If the new federal healthcare law is not struck down, the state exchanges will begin in 2014, and states are allowed to prevent abortion coverage.

This is the fourth pro-life bill passed in Kansas this year. Gov. Sam Brownback has already signed two, and the third, the abortion clinic licensure bill, H sub SB 36, will be signed imminently.

KFL legislative Director Kathy Ostrowski said:

    "It has obviously been a good legislative session; long-needed bills were passed to correct fraudulent abortion reporting, and to protect women from dangerous abortion clinics that have acted above the law. We have established a beachhead of protection for the developing unborn child based on accurate medical knowledge about the human capacity to feel pain and responded to the public's ever-growing revulsion to direct and indirect funding of abortion businesses.

    "The just-passed state budget will direct over $300,000 in Title 10 federal money to local full-service health clinics instead of Planned Parenthood (which still faces 107 criminal charges in eastern Kansas) and will put $300,000 into the Stan Clark grant-matched fund for pregnancy maintenance and adoption counseling.

    "There is still serious education to be done, to show how harmful abortion is to women's health and to dispel the assumption that abortion is the answer to pregnancy from assault; but the fact that 73 crisis pregnancy centers continue to selflessly offer care and assistance to pregnant women across Kansas shows that our state is heading in the right direction."