REPORT: Taxpayers Forced to Subsidize Abortions Through Obamacare

According to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, American taxpayers are being forced to subsidize Obamacare health plans that cover elective abortions – confirming what conservatives have long warned and revealing another sinister deception at the heart of Obama’s signature legislative legacy.

The report found that this year alone, federal taxpayers subsidized more than 1,700 Obamacare Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) that cover abortions for 4.4 million people. That figure represents nearly a quarter of all QHPs.

While the report does not confirm that individuals enrolled in these plans received abortions, it does shatter a popular Democrat talking point that taxpayer dollars cannot be used to fund elective abortions.

Current law prohibits the use of federal funds “to help pay for abortion services except where the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, or the life of the pregnant woman would be endangered unless an abortion is performed.” This is supposed to include the lucrative Obamacare subsidies handed out every year.

However, Democrat-run states like California skirt around the law by requiring health insurance plans that operate there to cover “non-excepted” or elective abortions.

In effect, this means taxpayers in Ohio and Indiana are forced to subsidize Gavin Newsom’s abortion regime, which currently allows abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, even just moments before birth.

Few taxpayers likely know they are subsidizing abortions, since only people who purchase health insurance plans are told their plan may cover the gruesome procedures. The GAO report found that only five of 11 issuers specifically said premiums went to abortion. Another five referred to “services required to be segregated under Section 1303 of PPACA,” clearly hoping that no one would bother to look it up.

In total, 1,609 of 1,620 QHPs in the 13 states that require coverage of non-excepted abortion services provided such coverage. In the 13 states with no laws regarding coverage, 110 of 691 QHPs covered elective abortions.

The results confirm the complete betrayal of American voters and the utter dishonesty of Democrats who for years claimed Obamacare would not include abortion coverage.

Back in 2010, President Obama was struggling to get the final votes needed to pass the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

A pro-life Michigan Democrat, Rep. Bart Stupak, proposed an amendment with Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Joseph Pitts to prohibit the funding of abortions through the bill to help secure final passage. The Stupak-Pitts Amendment successfully passed the House, back when pro-life Democrats were not an endangered species in Washington.

It built on preexisting language from the Hyde Amendment, a chief policy victory of the pro-life movement soon after the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973.

First passed in 1976, the “budget rider” (an additional provision or instruction attached to a budget or appropriations bill that dictates how public funds can be spent or restricts agency actions) introduced by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) prohibits federal healthcare funding from being used to pay for abortions.

Through the years, exceptions have been added for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. But in general, the Hyde Amendment ensures that pro-life Americans aren’t forced to fund a practice they have moral or religious objections to through their tax dollars.

However, egged on by pro-abortion groups, the U.S. Senate rejected attempts to add the Stupak-Pitts amendment to its version of Obamacare.

Instead, Obama signed a hollow executive order that “specifically prohibits the use of tax credits and cost-sharing reduction payments to pay for abortion services (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered) in the health insurance exchanges.”

This latest GAO report now proves the warnings of pro-life leaders back in 2010 exactly correct. Democrat states have indeed been using taxpayer dollars to pay for elective abortions.

“Tax dollars have paid for the violent deaths of countless babies, in an end run around the longstanding protections of the Hyde Amendment. Democrats’ gaslighting is inexcusable,” SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser stated. “While the Hyde Amendment has saved nearly 2.7 million lives in its 50-year existence, Obamacare is a glaring exception.”

Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Rep. Rob Aderholt (R-AL) said the report “confirms the very concerns that Republicans have raised for over fifteen years: the ACA fails to apply the longstanding and bipartisan Hyde Amendment law.”

Smith is pushing for a law, the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act,” that would prohibit abortion in all Obamacare plans across the country, regardless of the state’s permissiveness.

It is clear stronger protections are needed across the board. Democrat leaders will “pinky swear” and write meaningless executive orders promising not to use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, but they cannot be trusted. The reality is that abortion is one of the very few things Democrats still hold sacred. The party that once said abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare” now celebrates the killing of pre-born babies as a noble and even empowering act.

Republicans in Congress may not be able to change every state law allowing abortion-on-demand, but they can absolutely stand up to prevent the use of federal tax dollars to fund it.