Charles A. “Chuck” Donovan

From the beginning of the rollout of the federal and state websites displaying health insurance plans eligible for premium subsidies, the ability to identify key elements of the plans, compare and contrast them, and understand the scope of coverage and other issues has been limited at best.  In most cases, it was necessary at the outset of healthcare.gov (the federal exchange web site) on October 1, 2013 for an individual to register for a plan before finding out what it contained and what it excluded.  That situation prevailed even for the most controversial of coverage topics – elective abortion – despite the prominence of the abortion issue in the final passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Today the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will review two cases where the government is trying to force Christian-owned businesses to provide health care coverage that includes abortion-inducing drugs.

Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued an order that allows a recently enacted Texas abortion regulation to take effect. The case is called Planned Parenthood v. Abbott and it was filed by several Planned Parenthood entities and similar organizations.

More than a week into the enrollment period for health insurance via the federal-state insurance exchanges, whether existing plan options include elective abortion remains anything but clear.  Under Obamacare, a cluster of Multi-State Plans (MSPs) are likely to include elective abortion coverage in 27 states.  In each of those states, at least one MSP is required under federal law to exclude elective abortion coverage so that individual subscribers can select an option that squares with this element of conscience.  But how to tell an elective-abortion plan from one that does not include it?

In this report, CLI President Chuck Donovan documents how multi-state plans (MSPs) created under the Affordable Care Act are one pathway that would allow for an additional 111,500 publicly subsidized abortions per year.

The Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) is a non-profit pro-life and bioethics research and policy organization.  As such, CLI supports the protection of all human life from conception and appreciates the opportunity to comment on West Virginia law pertaining to abortion, abortion regulation, and women’s health.  CLI strongly supports policies which will protect the health and lives of women and unborn children.  To that end, CLI advocates gestational limitations on abortion and government regulation, rather than private accreditation, of abortion clinics at the same level as other facilities that provide outpatient surgical care.

In a new video released by commentator William Saletan at Slate magazine, the author critiques videos released by the activist group Live Action regarding clinics that perform late-term abortions.  In those videos, Live Action shows interactions between women whose pregnancies are in the range of 23 completed weeks of gestation.  Saletan critiques the editing of the video to omit points he argues show the clinics in a more favorable light, then states, “Here’s the big thing… even if you didn’t administer an injection, that kills the fetus inside the womb, which nearly all of these clinics do, the mere expulsion of the fetus, even at 21, 22, or 23, weeks is, itself, fatal.  That fetus is not prepared to survive the womb.”

Charlotte Lozier Institute President Chuck Donovan discusses the importance of accurate and reliable abortion reporting in the states at the New York Times.

This paper surveys the current state of federal and state adoption tax credits, which provide relief to families who choose to adopt a child. The paper makes several recommendations including making the adoption tax credit refundable so that adoption is an option for more families as it is such a positive force for children, families, and the country as a whole.

National and state abortion reporting laws and policies in the United States are a patchwork that falls far short of fulfilling the potential of this information to inform and guide public policy.   The composite picture they reveal is at once impressionistic and incomplete, non-contemporaneous and of limited use in providing a true and timely rendering of the impact of public policies and attitudes on the reality of abortion in the United States.