Texas targets insurance for abortion
Women might have to pay for supplemental coverage soon
AUSTIN — Women would have a much harder time finding health insurance to cover an abortion under legislation that passed the Texas House on Tuesday and has already cleared the Senate.
The Texas House — over strong objections from Democrats — gave preliminary approval to House Bill 214, which prohibits standard health plans in the private market and under plans offered under the Affordable Care Act from providing coverage for abortion except in the cases where the life of the mother is in danger. To get abortion coverage, women would need to purchase supplemental health insurance.
The House voted 95-51 to send the bill to a final vote, which could happen as soon as Wednesday.
With time fast running
out on the 30-day special session, abortion issues have become one of the few areas of solid agreement between the House and Senate that remain distant on other issues like the so-called bathroom bill and school finance reform. However, on Tuesday, House and Senate leaders offered hope they might still find agreement on school funding, though what that looks like remains unclear.
More certain is the willingness to pass bills championed by groups opposed to abortion rights. Already the House and Senate had passed bills to increase reporting requirements on abortion providers. And Tuesday’s passage of HB 214 puts the Legislature close to clearing a bill Texas Right to Life has declare critical to protecting “Pro-Life Texans from subsidizing abortions.”
“This isn’t about who can get an abortion,” Rep. John Smithee, R-Amarillo, said of the bill during more than four hours of oftenheated debate on the House floor Tuesday. “It is about who is forced to pay for an abortion.”
But Democrats vehemently objected, saying Smithee’s plan essentially targets women by forcing them to pay for extra insurance that men would be able to avoid buying.
“This bill takes us backwards,” said Rep. Ina Minjarez, D-San Antonio. “This bill is about denying Texas women their right to a safe abortion.”
Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie, was even more blunt, saying HB 214 was essentially forcing women to buy “rape insurance” because Smithee’s bill did not provide even an exception for rape or incest victims.
Turner tried unsuccessfully to amend the bill to allow insurance to still cover abortions for women and girls who are raped or victims of incest.
‘Economic objection’
According to the Guttmacher Institute, 25 states ban abortion coverage under health plans purchased through the Affordable Care Act exchanges, but at least 13 of those have exceptions for rape and incest victims. Of the 10 states that ban private insurance coverage of abortions, two have exceptions for rape and incest.
But the Texas legislation follows only Oklahoma in putting new obstacles in front of employers who seek to try to give employees an option of health care packages that cover abortions, according to Elizabeth Nash, who watches state trends for the Guttmacher Institute.
How premiums are calculated for abortion coverage plans and the procedures employers would have to go through will be among the most difficult to navigate, Nash said.
Abortion rights advocacy groups say the intent is clear.
“This legislation is part of an agenda to shame, bully, and punish people seeking abortion, and we’ve seen firsthand how Texans are harmed when abortion coverage is banned,” said Amanda Williams, Executive Director of Texas’s Lilith Fund for Reproductive Equity. “Every person should be able to make their own reproductive decisions, no matter what insurance they have or how much money is in their bank account.”
But Texas Right to Life officials were celebrating Tuesday on their Facebook page, declaring HB 214 one of the their priority bills.
Smithee said beyond a moral objection to funding abortion, he has an “economic objection” to being forced to pay for something that he — as a man — would never need. But that brought a series of sharp questions from Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, who asked Smithee if he had objections to paying for hysterectomies or breast exams — other procedures that only woman have that are allowed to be covered.
Hope for school finance bill
While Democrats and Republicans battled on the floor, education leaders were working behind the scenes and offered a sliver of hope that they could work together to pass a school finance bill and create a commission to study school funding, but only after trading barbs all morning.
Two powerful education committee chairmen have been at odds all year over how to address the state’s beleaguered school funding system.
Chairman Dan Huberty, a House Republican from Humble, renewed his promise to kill the Senate’s plan to create a commission to study school finance if it refuses to pass his bill to add $1.8 billion into public education and change how school funding is calculated, such as spending more money on bilingual students..
Senate Education Chairman Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, told reporters the House’s bill amounts to “Band-Aids” when the state needs a “total transformation” in how the state funds its broken public school system. Instead, he said the Senate wants to study how to change the school finance system in the lead-up to the 2019 legislative session. He went on to compare the system to an old car needing costly repairs until the “eventually driving it into the ground … It’s time to move on and start shopping for that new car.”
Huberty has sat on five such committees in the past and said the studies have rarely led to results the next session. It’s time to take action, he said, telling members of his committee that the Senate lacks the political will to fix public school funding. If the Senate thinks a study commission is going to “do something for the kids, they’re out of their mind.”
By the end of the day, Taylor said there were parts of Huberty’s House Bill 21 that the Senate could work with. Huberty and Taylor were later spotted talking twice on the House floor.
“You’re getting closer,” Huberty ribbed Taylor as the senator walked away.