Healthy mom-healthy baby. That’s a common public health slogan, so when states like Ohio have a chance to expand Medicaid to an additional 300,000 people, many of them women who make up the working poor, one would think the right to life movement would be pleased. That said, women would now have preventive health care and earlier prenatal care access. Instead, two?anti-abortion groups?and six Republican lawmakers in Ohio sued the state Tuesday over the state’s move to fund an expansion of Medicaid under the ACA.
Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income people of all ages, is currently responsible for?financing 40 percent of the births in the US,?so one could see how its expansion could be linked to maternal health and outcomes. ?Yet, as?The Associated Press reports,?the Right to Life chapters in Cleveland and Cincinnati are joined in the lawsuit because they ?”oppose the use of federal funding for expansion and wanted the chance to debate the issue with the Legislature, according to the filing.”
It is unclear what the real issue is they have with the working poor having tax payer funded health care. According to?Think Progress,?”Some abortion opponents have taken issue with the health reform law because they believe it?expands access to taxpayer-funded abortion services, but that’s a misrepresentation. ObamaCare doesn’t designate any federal funding for abortion coverage ? and federal Medicaid dollars are already?banned from covering abortion?under the Hyde Amendment.”
Since Medicaid expansion won’t affect abortion care, one has to wonder what this has to do with anti-abortion groups. Groups that want to reduce abortions should want women to be able to access preventive health care, including family planning services, for free. Free family planning services are proven to reduce abortions more effectively than standing outside of abortion clinics harassing women.
When Gov. John Kasich (R-OH), who is the?fourth governor of a Republican controlled state?to come out in favor of expansion, spoke of his support for the program, he mentioned?his faith.??He?has also stated he doesn’t understand opposition to the program?during an event?to promote the expansion.
Kasich stated:
“Why is that some people don’t get it? Is it because they’re hard-hearted or cold-hearted? It’s probably because they don’t understand the problem because they have never walked in somebody’s shoes.”
Edited by MB
