Maryland is using a little-known provision of Obamacare to bankroll the expenses of out-of-state abortion tourists, NPR reported on Thursday.
A new law that went into effect July 1 allows the state of Maryland to allocate millions per year from Obamacare-related insurance fees to subsidize abortions for women, including those coming from other states, according to NPR. The move comes amid a surge in abortion demand in Maryland following the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022, as more women from states that have banned or restricted abortions seek services.
Due to the influx of out-of-state patients, local funds — such as the Baltimore Abortion Fund, which pay for bus or plane tickets, lodging, and meals for women seeking abortions in the state — are running low. To address the shortfall, Maryland will tap into money collected through an obscure Obamacare requirement, which allows states to mandate insurance plans on the Affordable Care Act insurance marketplace to cover abortions by charging a minimum $1 monthly fee, according to NPR.
Currently, the funds generated through the Obamacare provision total $25 million, with at least $2.5 million to be allocated annually for grants to various abortion funds within the state to pay for women’s abortion-related expenses, NPR reported.
Critics argue the law forces individuals insured through Obamacare to be financially complicit in abortions by requiring them to pay fees that support the termination of life.
“This bill uses insurance premiums from insured women to abort the children of uninsured women,” Laura Bogley, the executive director of Maryland Right to Life, told the state legislature on March 6, according to NPR. “Many of those uninsured women are non-Maryland residents who are trafficked into the state for late-term abortions that are restricted by other states.”
Emily Erin Davis, vice president of communications for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, echoed similar concerns.
“It’s deeply troubling that Maryland is now using taxpayer dollars to fund abortion tourism. The state already has some of the most extreme abortion laws in the nation— allowing abortion through all nine months of pregnancy — and is home to notorious all-trimester abortion facilities specializing in aborting babies as old as 34 weeks,” Davis told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Now, Maryland is doubling down by subsidizing out-of-state abortion travel through Obamacare.”
Meanwhile, supporters of the new Maryland law are hoping other states will adopt similar schemes to finance abortions.
“Maryland has been a leader on a lot of reproductive bills for the past 30 years, and so in that way, this bill fits into that legacy,” said Democratic Maryland state delegate Lesley Lopez, who sponsored the legislation, according to NPR. “It’s also nationally significant, because there’s 25 or 26 other states that can take this model and run with it. We’re looking for California, Illinois, New York, those bigger states that are sitting on potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to take what we’ve done here in Maryland and implement it there.”
The number of abortions in the U.S. has continued to rise since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, driven in part by a sharp increase in telemedicine access, especially in states with near-total bans on the procedure, a June report by the Society of Family Planning found. By the end of 2024, one in four abortions were conducted using abortion pills mailed to patients, compared to just 7% at the end of 2022.
Republicans succeeded in including a provision in the recently passed reconciliation package that cuts Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. However, a Massachusetts district judge placed a temporary restraining order on July 11, blocking the enforcement of the provision.
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