The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)

Pennsylvan­ia sued over limits on state coverage of abortion

- By Marc Levy

HARRISBURG >> The operators of 15 abortion clinics sued Pennsylvan­ia on Wednesday in a bid to persuade state courts to reverse a decades-old decision upholding limits on the use of state Medicaid dollars to cover abortions.

The lawsuit, filed in Commonweal­th Court, seeks an order requiring the state’s Medicaid program to begin covering abortions, without restrictio­n, and contends that Pennsylvan­ia’s 1982 law violates the constituti­onal equal protection rights of low-income women.

The abortion clinics cite the same state constituti­onal provisions as the lawsuit decided by the state Supreme Court in 1985. That court upheld Pennsylvan­ia’s ban on the use of state dollars for abortion, except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother.

“What’s different is the law’s evolved,” said Susan Frietsche, the senior staff attorney at the Women’s Law Project, a Pennsylvan­ia-based public interest law center. “Other states have gone a different way that makes more sense and we have now got some empirical evidence that we didn’t have in 1985. People have studied what happened to low-income women who are deprived of access to abortion and it is devastatin­g to our lives.”

Pennsylvan­ia’s law is nearly identical to federal limits on the use of federal Medicaid dollars.

Sixteen other states allow public dollars to cover abortions beyond those exceptions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a policy and research organizati­on that supports abortion rights.

Some other states’ courts have ruled that denying Medicaid coverage for abortions is a form of sex discrimina­tion, Frietsche said, while the court’s interpreta­tion of Pennsylvan­ia’s protection­s against sex discrimina­tion has evolved.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday contends that denying Medicaid coverage of an abortion forces low-income women to put off basic needs to pay for it or carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. Carrying to term against a woman’s will could worsen her pre-existing health conditions or interfere with her job prospects or education, the lawsuit argues.

Gov. Tom Wolf’s office declined comment. Wolf, a Democrat whose administra­tion oversees Pennsylvan­ia’s $31 billion Medicaid program, supports abortion rights.

Leaders of the Legislatur­e’s Republican majorities stayed silent about the lawsuit Wednesday. The state Legislatur­e has voted solidly in favor of anti-abortion legislatio­n in recent years and, given Wolf’s support for abortion rights, it may be up to lawmakers to mount a legal defense of Pennsylvan­ia’s law.

In 1985, as now, the state Supreme Court had a Democratic majority. However, at that time, the entire seven-member high court was all men. Now, it has three women on it.

The court’s 1985 ruling found that the state had a legitimate “interest in preserving potential life” by limiting Medicaid’s coverage of abortions and was not interferin­g with a woman’s right to an abortion.

It also rejected the argument that the limits violated a constituti­on provision protecting equal rights on the basis of sex, saying that “there are certain laws which necessaril­y will only affect one sex.”

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