From the November 17 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

DOOCY: Yeah, but, Congressman, when you heard David Axelrod say that over the weekend, over on one of the other channels, your jaw must have dropped, because you've -- you guys have been burning the midnight oil trying to make this thing work, making it very clear that federal money will not be used to end a life, and yet, it makes it sound like just in a back room somewhere before it's all done, we're gonna just change everything.

Fact: NY Times wrote that amendment makes “it largely impossible to use a policyholder's own dollars to pay for abortion coverage”

In a November 9 editorial, The New York Times wrote that the amendment to the House bill offered by Stupak and Joe Pitts (R-PA) would affect “women eligible to buy coverage on new health insurance exchanges” and “would prevent millions of Americans from buying insurance that covers abortions -- even if they use their own money.” The Times noted that the amendment's supporters “reached far beyond Hyde and made it largely impossible to use a policyholder's own dollars to pay for abortion coverage” because the amendment “would ban the use of federal subsidies to pay for 'any part' of a policy that includes abortion coverage.” As the Times noted, the Hyde Amendment “bans the use of federal dollars to pay for almost all abortions in a number of government programs.” The Times further wrote:

If insurers want to attract subsidized customers, who will be the great majority on the exchange, they will have to offer them plans that don't cover abortions. It is theoretically possible that insurers could offer plans aimed only at nonsubsidized customers, but it is highly uncertain that they will find it worthwhile to do so.

In that case, some women who have coverage for abortion services through policies bought by small employers could actually lose that coverage if their employer decides to transfer its workers to the exchange. Ultimately, if larger employers are permitted to make use of the exchange, ever larger numbers of women might lose abortion coverage that they now have.

The restrictive language allows people to buy “riders” that would cover abortions. But nobody plans to have an unplanned pregnancy, so this concession is meaningless. It is not clear that insurers would even offer the riders since few people would buy them.

Fact: Status quo already allows people participating in federally funded plans to obtain abortions as long as funds are segregated

According to the Congressional Research Service, the Hyde Amendment was originally passed to prohibit federal funding for abortions through the Medicaid program and has since been expanded to other areas. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the prohibition on federal funding for most abortions under Medicaid, according to a September 1 study by the Guttmacher Institute, 17 states provide coverage under Medicaid for “all or most medically necessary abortions,” not just abortions in cases of life endangerment, rape, and incest. Therefore, in 17 states, Medicaid, a b000-.html" title="blocked::http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/42/usc_sec_42_00001396b000-.html http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.law.cornell.edu%2Fuscode%2F42%2Fusc_sec_42_00001396b000-.html http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscod">federally subsidized health care program, covers abortions in circumstances in which federal money is prohibited from being spent on abortion.