Re: Tomorrow's Floor Vote on FY2000 Treasury, Postal Appropriations Bill  

Dear Representative:  

On behalf of the ACLU, we write to urge you to support two essential measures to protect the health and reproductive rights of federal employees during tomorrow's floor vote on the FY2000 Treasury, Postal Appropriations bill.  

Last year, Congress took an historic step toward improving women's health and ensuring gender equality in health care by mandating for the first time that health plans participating in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHB) provide coverage for prescription contraceptives. Before this legislation, most FEHB plans limited coverage of prescription contraceptives, despite the fact that these plans overwhelmingly covered other prescription drugs. This provision, which the Congressional Budget Office determined would not cost the government any additional money, thus reduced the startling gender inequity in the coverage of prescription drugs in federally sponsored health plans.  

The FY2000 Treasury, Postal Appropriations Bill includes a contraceptive coverage provision identical to the provision enacted last year. As it did last year, this provision exempts plans that object to contraceptive coverage on the basis of religious beliefs. This existing religious exemption is working in practice. The Office of Personnel Management reports that not a single participating FEHB plan has complained that the exemption is inadequate.  

We urge you to vote to maintain the contraceptive coverage provision in the FY2000 Treasury, Postal Appropriations bill and to vote against any attempt to narrow this coverage.  

The FY2000 Treasury, Postal Appropriations bill prohibits FEHB plans from offering abortion coverage except in cases where the woman's life is endangered or the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. This prohibition deprives federal employees of the right to choose a health plan that covers the full range of reproductive health services and makes it more likely that federal employees will be delayed or deterred in their efforts to access safe, early abortion procedures. During the floor vote, we expect an attempt to lift the ban on coverage of abortion services in FEHB plans.  

We urge you to vote in support of this effort to strike the abortion coverage prohibition from this year's Treasury, Postal Appropriations bill.  

Thank you for your past support of, and for your future commitment to, protecting women's health and reproductive rights.  

Sincerely,  

Laura W. Murphy
Director

Kathryn Engustian
Legislative Counsel