For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician.
So reads part of the decision of Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that protects the right of women to a private decision with their doctor on the matter of abortion.
It is my opinion that this sentence conflicts with Stupak-Pitt as it now stands, because the "abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician."
The Stupak-Pitt amendment will add a second judgment to this decision for most women, an undue financial one. Women too poor to be able to afford insurance without government subsidy will have to decide if they can even afford a necessary procedure. It is precisely this burden in millions of other health care situations that H.R. 3962 was designed to alleviate. However, for this single set of procedures and medications, the financial decision is enshrined in law.
Women and families who need assistance with insurance costs will have to seek out their own insurance for abortion procedures, and for these women and families so close to the poverty line, the added rider for abortion coverage will become a natural way to save an expense. Should they forego such coverage, they will find themselves facing increasingly exorbitant bills.
For this type of coverage will be saddled with unnecessary administrative hurdles made necessary under the Stupak-Pitt amendment. Stupak-Pitt segregates abortion into the ghetto of market forces out of which we are currently trying to extract our health care system. Abortion costs, completely free from the controlling power of a public option, will skyrocket, further burdening the patient at a critical point in her life.
This is how Stupak-Pitt places an undue burden on a woman's right to choose. It forces her to pay for her own abortion under the most strenuous financial situations, while simultaneously magnifying the effect of the market to inflate the costs of abortions. Even those women and families electing to purchase abortion riders will face premium raises vastly out of step with all other insurance in America, encouraging more to drop coverage and face out-of-control costs for the actual procedure when decided upon.
Again and again financial judgments will intrude on an area that should be about a medical judgment. Stupak-Pitt places an undue burden on the rights of women and must be removed from this bill.