Government proposes benefits for fetuses

Christian Century, Feb 13, 2002

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services plans to allow states to provide health insurance for fetuses, a proposal cheered by antiabortion groups and condemned by groups supporting abortion rights. Regulations now define "child" in the State Children's Health Insurance Program as those younger than 19.

The new rule would include coverage for children "from conception to age 19," a department statement said. "Prenatal care for women and their babies is a crucial part of the medical care every person should have through the course of their life cycle," said HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson on January 31. The proposal, to be published in the Federal Register for further consideration, could allow states to make funding available to low-income pregnant women as soon as spring, Thompson said.

Carlton Veazey, president-CEO of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, said the Bush administration would make "a serious error" if the proposal is enacted because it would be a step "toward establishing the fetus as a legal person and fostering a troubling maternal-fetal conflict." Kate Michelman, president of NARAL, a reproductive-freedom group, called the move "the latest ploy in its ongoing stealth campaign to have government make abortions illegal."

But Cathleen Cleaver, a spokeswoman for the Catholic Bishops' Pro-Life Secretariat, said abortion rights groups are "seriously misguided" if they oppose the proposal. "Denying low-income women access to state-insured prenatal care in the name of abortion is senseless," she said. --RNS

Quote, unquote

"States like these [North Korea, Iran and Iraq], and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world."

--President George W. Bush, in a State of the Union address using the word "evil" five times while urging greater expenditures for his adminstration's war on terrorism.