Congress included in its omnibus spending bill for fiscal year 2005 a provision (sometimes referred to as the Weldon Amendment) that would allow virtually any health care entity to refuse to provide, cover, or even refer for abortions where they are otherwise legally mandated. As a result of its passage, all Labor-Health and Human Services-Education FY 2005 funds will be denied to any federal, state, or local government or agency that enforces laws designed to protect the public health and ensure access to abortion services. A number of efforts to repeal this provision are expected during the upcoming year.

Laws requiring abortion services tend to apply only in extreme circumstances -- such as when a pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or when a woman's life or health is threatened by a pregnancy. This broad refusal clause could allow health insurance companies, health plans, hospitals, providers, and others to ignore these laws with impunity.

Take Action! Urge Congress to repeal this dangerous health care refusal measure.

This health care refusal measure could impede access to emergency reproductive health care and other critical services. 
Although the meaning of the law is not entirely clear, the provision could allow hospitals to turn away women who need emergency abortions because they are hemorrhaging, experiencing heart failure, or suffering any one of a host of other grave complications of pregnancy. The measure could permit callous disregard for women's health despite federal and state laws that generally require hospitals to treat patients in medical emergencies. 

This measure places a health care entity's interests above the health care needs of individual patients.
This measure would protect the institutional objections of health plans, insurers, and hospital conglomerates over and above the health care needs of individual patients.  Congress should make laws that protect not threaten the public's access to critical health services.  

This measure allows the federal government to interfere with the ability of states to make and enforce their own public health laws.
This provision coerces states to choose between enforcing the laws they've enacted to safeguard women's health and receiving vital federal funds to support educational, health, and labor programs. This is a choice that no state should have to make.

TAKE ACTION!