With anti-abortion legislation sweeping the country in recent months, insurance coverage for the procedure has emerged as a battleground.
A number of Democratic presidential candidates have called for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal Medicaid funds from covering most abortions. Meanwhile, abortion opponents continue to speak out in favor of keeping Hyde and states like Ohio are moving to also restrict private insurance coverage of the procedure.
But amid this debate, there's been a lack of up-to-date research on what actually happens to pregnant people when they want an abortion but their insurance won't cover it. To answer that question, researchers at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a group at the University of California San Francisco, surveyed pregnant women in Louisiana on whether they had ever considered abortion. For those who considered the procedure but didn't have one, researchers asked if lack of Medicaid coverage was part of the reason why. The research, published on Wednesday in the journal BMC Women's Health, was provided to Vox exclusively ahead of publication.
