The recent "outcry" over Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell's (R) veto of funding for an expansion of Denali KidCare -- which provides health coverage to low-income pregnant women and children -- "points to the difficulty conservatives face when they pursue limits on abortion in state-funded health care," Alexandra Gutierrez, news director of KUCB in Unalaska, Alaska, writes in The American Prospect. Parnell said he vetoed the expansion -- which would have covered an additional 1,300 children -- because the program is required by a 1993 court order to cover abortion services that are deemed medically necessary and money for the expansion would have gone to abortion care.

In his veto explanation, Parnell said that he "want[s] to be able to provide" the expansion, "but if your governor doesn't stand for life and liberty, as he understands it in his conscience, then you don't have a governor." According to Gutierrez, Parnell "sounded remarkably like Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) during the throes of the health care reform debate." She added that "opportunity existed" during the federal debate "to improve health care for a huge swath of people, and the sticking point was mostly a worry that someone somewhere might get an abortion on the taxpayers' dime."

Adam Sonfield of the Guttmacher Institute said, "There are certainly parallels with the fight over the Stupak amendment," which was "also trying to disavow the status quo." However, the Stupak amendment dealt with private funds, while Parnell's veto deals with state funds, Sonfield said. He continues, "If we take this to its logical conclusion, Parnell is saying that we shouldn't have the Denali KidCare program -- or a Medicaid program -- at all." Sonfield added, "This type of move -- to say that we're going to cut, essentially, a broad-based health care program -- is unprecedented," adding, "I can't think of any state that has done anything near this extreme because of abortion."

Gutierrez writes that the "argument around the KidCare veto is familiar: How can the governor be pro-family and pro-life if he's willing to leave vulnerable children and pregnant women without the care doctors say they need?" Although the antiabortion-rights movement "consistently declares that it is on the side of children and mothers, ... when abortion restriction comes in the context of hurting kids and hurting mothers, backlash is likely, even in conservative states," Gutierrez writes. "In the case of Denali KidCare, abortion seemed tangential -- irrelevant, even -- to providing much-needed health services to low-income children and pregnant women," she continues, concluding, "It isn't. Maybe it won't take another state-level Stupak to remind people of this" (Gutierrez, The American Prospect, 6/11).

Reprinted with kind permission from nationalpartnership. You can view the entire Daily Women's Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women's Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families.

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