Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as the 2009 health care reform legislation), states have the option of prohibiting insurance companies from offering health insurance plans that cover abortion care on the health insurance exchanges that will be created in the coming years. Nebraska is an anti-choice state (it received an F rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America) and a bill to exercise this option has already been introduced in the 2011 legislative session.

Senator Beau McCoy wants to go even further by prohibiting any private insurance company from offering plans in Nebraska that cover abortion care, even if those plans are purchased privately, outside of the health insurance exchange!  You can read more about it here.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 87 percent of typical employer-based insurance plans covered abortion. Under McCoy's bill, those plans couldn't be offered in Nebraska, leaving even more people uninsured. 

Since Nebraska is such an anti-choice state, arguments for the validity of choice will likely not be as effective, so this petition argues that prohibiting nearly 90 percent of the offered health insurance plans would leave even more people without health insurance, in a state that already has nearly 30 percent of its non-Senior population uninsured. 

Photo from: RobotSkirts