One of the statics that's been tossed out quite often since the House passed the Stupak amendment is this one, here used by E.J. Dionne at TNR.
Whatever else is true, Stupak's amendment is unlikely to have a significant effect on the availability of abortion, since most abortions are not paid for through health insurance. The Guttmacher Institute, for example, reported that only 13 percent of abortions in 2001 were directly billed by providers to insurance companies--although the institute cautioned that this figure did not include "women who obtain reimbursement from their insurance company themselves."
Actually, it goes just beyond the issue of women who directly obtain reimbursements. Here's the Guttmacher Institute's researchers in their own words, setting the record straight on this statistic.
[T]hat statistic alone misrepresents the situation on three counts:
- Our study included all women who obtained abortions in 2001, including women on Medicaid and those who are uninsured. If one looked only at privately insured women, the percentage of procedures billed directly to insurance companies would be substantially higher than 13%.
- Perhaps even more importantly, the 13% statistic does not include women who pay for an abortion up front and then seek reimbursement from their insurance provider. This is common when a medical provider does not participate in a patient’s insurance plan, as is often the case with small, specialized providers, including abortion providers.
- Lastly, some of the women whom our study identified as paying out of pocket likely had insurance coverage for abortion care, but may not have known they had it or chose not to use it for reasons of confidentiality. Given the stigma that still surrounds abortion, many women might not have wanted their insurer or employer—or their spouse or parent who may be the primary policyholder—to learn that they had obtained an abortion. That antiabortion activists who have worked for decades to perpetuate that stigma are now turning around and using it to argue why women should not be able to purchase insurance coverage for abortion is deeply cynical.
The best available evidence—from two studies conducted by the Guttmacher Institute and the Kaiser Family Foundation—suggests that most Americans with employer-based insurance currently have coverage for abortion. Further, as outlined above, direct billing does not equate to either extent of coverage or even use of coverage. Guttmacher’s 13% statistic, therefore, should not be cited as evidence that insurance coverage for abortion is not widespread or to suggest that restricting such coverage would have an impact on only a small minority of women. [emphasis mine]
Abortion is a particularly difficult procedure to get accurate statistics around. As mention above, the stigma attached often leads to under-reporting. Additionally, for insurance purposes a D&C is a D&C. In this mix are elective abortions for unplanned pregnancies as well as for abortions for the health of the mother. Legislation that makes any of these abortions made harder to obtain by putting them out of financial reach, and in reality making them impossible to obtain for many women, is regressive to say the least.