Federal and state funding and restrictions on abortion services in health insurance are topics that stir discussion among Pennsylvania lawmakers.
Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a bill in 2013 to prohibit state-run insurance exchanges from covering abortion in their health plans, although people can pay an additional cost for an optional rider.
Democratic State Rep. Brian Sims spoke out against the bill. “This legislation is about advancing an ideology of oppression and suppression,” he stated,
according to The Huffington Post.
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Sims added: “Each of us put our hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. We did not place our hands on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.”
Dr. Kermit Gosnell of Philadelphia was sentenced to life in prison in 2013 for the murder of a baby born alive during a botched abortion.
During the investigation of Gosnell, Republican lawmakers with the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee sent out letters to all 50 states inquiring about each state’s regulations regarding abortion clinics and
abortion laws, The Daily Caller reported.
The investigation raised “troubling questions about the practices of abortion clinics, and whether state health departments are aware, or even conducting appropriate monitoring, of these facilities,” the letter read.
The letter quoted from a grand jury report: “Pennsylvania’s Department of Health has deliberately chosen not to enforce laws that should afford patients at abortion clinics the same safeguards and assurances of quality health care patients of other medical service providers. Even nail salons in Pennsylvania are monitored more closely for client safety.”
Health Subcommittee Chairman Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania noted: “Other states should be aware of what happened in Pennsylvania and should take strong measures to protect women’s health.”
Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pennsylvania, gave his take on abortion laws affecting the financially strapped Social Security system in 2011.
“The reason Social Security is in big trouble is we don't have enough workers to support the retirees,”
Santorum said, according to Rolling Stone. “Well, a third of all the young people in America are not in America today because of abortion, because one in three pregnancies end in abortion.”
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