When politics and insurance coverage get involved, the right for a woman to have an abortion is no longer a “yea” or “nay” issue. Now the debate involves taxpayer money, insurance premiums, intra-party splits and whether or not the Obama administration’s new healthcare legislation is really all that concerned with any of it.

Last week, OhMyGov! reported that the president was more focused on maintaining neutrality on the debate and ironing out overall costs of the bill than wading into these dangerous waters. Now, many disagree on whether or not the allegations that abortions will be subsidized under the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program using taxpayer money is even true.

Adamant pro-lifers, like blogger Jill Stanek, insist that last Thursday’s sudden overthrow of an anti-abortion amendment by a House committee means that the government will soon be funding abortion for all 8 million federal workers.

"Washington D.C. bureaucrats and abortion industry lobbyists are trying to force YOU to pay for abortions through your tax dollars as part of their proposed trillion-dollar healthcare takeover," reads Stop the Abortion Mandate, a website sparked by the bill.

According to U.S. News, however, the amendment adopted last week by the House Energy and Commerce Committee maintains the ban on government-funded abortions except in the relatively rare cases of rape, incest or endangerment of the pregnant woman's life. Democratic defenders of the amendment proposed by Rep. Lois Capps, the report says, insist that it still applies the Hyde amendment and that the federal government will not have the power to require participating private healthcare providers to cover abortion procedures nor to prohibit them from doing so. Private healthcare providers are free to cover abortion, it says, but not with federal funds.

This doesn’t mean that pro-lifers have nothing to fear, of course: the government can’t directly finance abortions, but multibillion-dollar investments in the healthcare system could ultimately mean a huge abortion subsidy.

Some members of a unique group that identifies itself as Catholics for Choice, however, make an interesting point: more women go through with the procedure because they can’t afford prenatal and pediatric care than have the baby because they can’t afford a few hundred dollars toward an abortion. Logic says, therefore, that a huge federal healthcare plan might actually reduce the number of abortions.

Previously:

[+] Abortion rights debate simmers again