State sued over Medicaid restrictions on abortion

Control Act of 1982, which prohibited Medicaid funds from being used for abortions except in cases of rape or incest or to save the woman’s life.

The plaintiffs had argued that the law violated the Equal Rights Amendment in that all of men’s health needs were covered but not women’s because abortion wasn’t covered.

The high court said that the law was not discriminatory because “the basis for the distinction here is not sex but abortion, and the statute does not accord varying benefits to men and women because of their sex, but accords varying benefits to one class of women, as distinct from another, based on a voluntary choice made by the women.”

The new suit raises the same issues, but this time in a changing political and legal climate, said Susan J. Frietsche, senior staff lawyer at the Woman’s Law Project who is among the lawyers who brought the case on behalf of the providers.

Sixteen states now allow Medicaid to cover abortion, according to the lawsuit, and Ms. Frietsche said new research details the harm that some women suffer when they are forced to carry a baby to term because they can’t get an abortion.

“Women who were turned away, when studied a while later, were poorer, less employed, more unhappy,” she said in an interview Wednesday. “It was kind of obvious and we knew it [in years past] but now we have data to show it.”

According to the suit, women who are forced to carry a pregnancy to term against their will suffer psychological and economic damage. Their employment and education options are curtailed and, in some cases, their health is at risk, especially for poor women.

The state ban is a “decadeslong injustice that deprives low-income women of reproductive health care” in violation of the state constitution, said Ms. Frietsche in announcing the suit.

She said the ban discriminates on the basis of sex because Medicaid provides comprehensive coverage for men but not for women.

The ban has a disproportionate impact on poor and minority women, according to Lexi White, policy director for another advocacy group, New Voices for Reproductive Justice. She said in a statement that 11 percent of women in Pennsylvania are black but they account for 31 percent of pregnancy-related deaths.

According to the suit, Pennsylvania providers performed 30,881 abortions in 2016, the latest year for which statistics are available, and the lawsuit petitioners handled 95 percent of them.

Many of the women seeking abortions have low incomes and are harmed by the ban, the suit said, not only because they can’t afford the procedure but because many live in rural areas where there are no providers and so they must travel long distances.

The costs of travel, including gas, tolls and time off from work, “make it even more difficult for low-income women in Pennsylvania to access abortion care, if they can make the trip at all,” the suit said.

The petitioners cited national statistics indicating that a quarter of women seeking abortions in states with a coverage ban are forced to continue their pregnancies to term because they can’t raise money for the procedure.

The lawsuit is asking for a court order forcing the Department of Human Services to comply with the state constitution by covering abortion through Medicaid and reversing the 1985 Supreme Court ruling.

The Wolf administration declined comment except to say it was reviewing the suit.