Government Requires Insurance to Pay for Contraceptives

By Rebecca Faust,

Federal agencies recently issued regulations under the new health care act impinging on the freedom of pro-life citizens to not purchase contraceptives. However, they are still accepting public comment on these regulations from citizens like you.

At the beginning of August, the Health Resources and Services Administration added contraceptives to the list of services which health insurance plans are required to cover without a co-pay. While this does not include surgical abortions, it does include morning after pills which can prevent implantation of an embryo. Furthermore, some churches and individuals have religious beliefs against use of any artificial contraceptives, even those which don't cause abortion.

How Pastors Helped Marriage in NC

Last week, the Governor of North Carolina convened a special legislative session to consider a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman.

Like Washington, amending the state constitution in North Carolina requires two-thirds of both houses of the legislature and a majority of the public to support it on the ballot before it can become part of the constitution. Getting the measure through the legislature is thought to be the more difficult step. It is expected to pass when it goes to a vote next year.

But an interesting thing happened on the road to getting the measure on the ballot.

Abortion and Mental Health - A New Look

By Donald F. Calbreath, Ph.D

As the Washington state legislature prepares for its next session, we can anticipate pro-abortion forces once again trying to close crisis pregnancy centers. These centers provide a number of valuable services to pregnant women and their partners - pregnancy testing, counseling, health information, and adoption services among others. What they do not provide is abortions. This "lack" is something that greatly offends "pro-choice" supporters (whose only "approved" choice appears to be abortion) (1).

In the last legislative session, Planned Parenthood and its allies strongly supported HB 2837 (and its companion Senate bill 6452) which would have severely limited the activities of crisis pregnancy centers (2). Pro-life opponents said that these centers were providing false information to clients, including misinformation about links between abortion and breast cancer (worth another column at another time) and between abortion and mental health. Planned Parenthood's web site indicates that abortion is a relatively benign procedure for a psychological standpoint (3). They cite research studies that suggest few (if any) mental health issues for women undergoing an abortion. There are a number of problems with this work, including the fact that the most current reference is over five years old. No discussion of current literature is provided, leaving us with a very incomplete and misleading picture of the impact of abortion on mental health.

Planned Parenthood Admits Failure

During the last legislative session, the Washington State legislature chose to increase funding for Planned Parenthood through a contraceptive program called "Take Charge". In our testimony in opposition to HB 5912, we explained that there is no evidence to suggest that increasing funding for contraceptives actually reduces the unintended pregnancy rates.

Now, only a few months later, the Guttmacher Institute, which was started as a division of Planned Parenthood, has reached the same conclusion.

In a recently released analysis, the Guttmacher Institute confirmed that the overall unintended pregnancy rate in the U.S. has remained essentially flat since 1994. This is despite a steady increase in funding for contraceptives topping out at $305 million per year in 2006.