Arizona health insurance companies, and all health insurers throughout the USA, must now cover contraception medication under the free preventive services section included in health insurance policies. As we are all aware by now, many religious organizations disagree with this new mandate, some suggesting that it will actually force them to stop offering health insurance to their employees, or worse yet, force them to close their doors.
The argument for mandated contraception coverage, and especially emergency contraception pills such as Ella, (a pill causing the abortion of the baby, a.k.a. the, “Morning After Pill,”) goes something like this… if everyone has access to, “free,” contraception medication, the need for abortions will decrease, something we can all agree is a good thing. Planned Parenthood and others also say that Arizona health insurance companies will ultimately save money by not having to pay for unwanted pregnancies, the cost of delivering a baby much more than a few pills.
These arguments for mandated contraception coverage by health insurance companies in Arizona and elsewhere make complete sense. There’s just one problem though… well, actually, there’s twenty-three problems. Twenty-three separate studies, many conducted by supporters of such coverage by Arizona health insurance companies, concluded that there is no direct correlation between increased access to emergency contraception medication and a reduction in unwanted pregnancies or abortions.
Enter the, “Reproductive Parity Act,” recently passed by a Washington state board, a first in the country. The law basically forces health insurance companies doing business in that state to cover abortions at ANY point in a pregnancy. The Huffington Post, Planned Parenthood, and others have called this new law, “ground breaking.” I’ll say. Somehow we have gotten to the point where killing is the equivalent to healing. If you are a health insurance company in Washington you are now to treat abortion the same way as the birth of a child. Up is down, and down is up it seems.
The majority of Americans believe in the right to life, are against abortions, and certainly don’t want to be forced to pay for them, or added as one more federal mandate on their health insurance policy. Yet here we are, the beginning push toward the right to end an innocent life hours before birth.