"Among the most nettlesome obstacles in the yearlong debate over increasing the accessibility and affordability of health insurance has been the question of what effect health care reform legislation would have on the incidence of abortion. The recent experience in Massachusetts suggests that universal health care coverage has been associated with a decrease in the number of abortions performed, despite public and private funding of abortion that is substantially more liberal than the provisions of the federal legislation currently under consideration by Congress. Parties on both sides of the national debate on this issue, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, reached an informal consensus early last year that reform should maintain as nearly as possible the status quo, which mostly keeps the federal government out of the abortion business.
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Massachusetts is one of 17 states that provide full coverage for abortion under the state Medicaid program (MassHealth) for the poorest residents, and abortion is a covered service under all the Commonwealth Care plans that cover the next tier of income earners. Yet in this midsized, ethnically diverse state, full insurance coverage of abortion services for all lower-income residents did not result in an increase in the number of abortions performed. I believe it is reasonable to conclude that the possibility of some federal subsidization of overall care, for a fraction of the additional 31 million people who would be covered, would not mean a significant or even a likely increase in the number of abortions performed nationally."
http://healthcarereform.nejm.org/?p=3178&query=homeThis study was authored by Dr. Patrick Whelan, who is the president of the Catholic Democrats, a group rooted in Catholic Social Teaching that grew out of an earlier group, Catholics for Kerry. I know Patrick personally and he is a good guy.
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