Student Insurance and Abortion: A Battle at University of North Carolina

The University of North Carolina offers its students affordable, accessible, comprehensive medical insurance, and anti-choice students take up arms because it has abortion coverage.

It happened so quickly you might have missed it if you blinked.  One day a storm was brewing on the University of North Carolina campus, with the administration taking a firm stance on one side, and the campus’s anti-abortion student group pushing hard from the other. 

The next morning, the storm blew over, the University had acquiesced, and the fight was done.

At the center of the battle was the school’s mandate that all students must be covered by some form of medical insurance — a rule that occurs at most public and private universities.  Should the student not have insurance, either their own personal policy of coverage via their parents’ policies, they would be required to purchase insurance through the school at a cost of about $350 or $375 per semester, or $700 to $750 a year.

Most people would be excited to have such affordable insurance with the skyrocketing costs of healthcare.  Students, especially, rely on preventive healthcare to keep serious illness at bay, when complications could not only cost them lost time in the classroom but also lost money on tuition.

But the anti-choice students on campus discovered that among the many benefits being provided in their affordable plans was one they simply could not accept – coverage for elective abortions.

Via the Carolina Journal Online:

“I’m dismayed that my classmates who cannot afford their own health coverage or who are not covered by their families will not only be forced to purchase health insurance, but they will also be forced to pay into a pool that will go to abort the children of North Carolina students,” said Sarah Hardin, president of North Carolina State University’s chapter of Students for Life, in a prepared statement.

But the University noted that no one was forcing the students to purchase the school insurance, and if they were unhappy with the idea that their payment might somehow go to support abortion, they were more than welcome to purchase their own, separate plans.

Joni B. Worthington, UNC Vice President for Communications, said in an e-mail to Carolina Journal that students don’t have to buy the university plan that includes abortion coverage, but can buy their own that does not include elective abortion coverage. But they must have insurance of some kind, she said.

“No student is required to buy the University-sponsored plan; in fact, to date more than 90,000 students have elected not to purchase the University plan,” she said. “What our students are required to do is have a health insurance plan that provides creditable health care coverage. Any student may choose to purchase health insurance elsewhere that does not provide elective abortion coverage. Our sole concern is that our students all have affordable, high-quality health care coverage.”

Pro-choice groups on campus echoed Worthington’s sentiments, as well as pointed to the myriad other reproductive health coverage options being provided in the school’s policy.  When contacted by Rewire, Amy Sparks, the UNC President of Medical Student’s For Choice, responded,

“I applaud UNC‘s decision to offer a cost effective plan (it costs close to $1000 less than the previous year’s plan) that covers the full spectrum of reproductive health services that are particularly pertinent to the health of college aged students.” 

More access to services, especially contraception, for a lower cost, means fewer unintended pregnancies, and fewer women potentially in need of an abortion.

The school seemed to be very firm on its belief that those who dislike the policy’s abortion coverage should simply look somewhere else for insurance. 

Then, the next day, they weren’t. Via Eyewitness News 9:

University of North Carolina will let students remove coverage for elective abortions from their university-sponsored health insurance after a national group complained about the coverage.

UNC system President Erskine Bowles on Thursday directed a student insurance company to contact students who have bought a policy this fall and give them the chance to opt out of that coverage.

Students who object to the idea of paying for abortion coverage now have a way to express their dislike of the procedure: they can opt out of that part of the coverage plan.  Cost savings for those students?  Absolutely nothing, since having abortion covered didn’t change the cost of the plan in the first place.  As UNC President Erskine Bowles told the News Observer,

“No student will be required to have this coverage as part of their health care plan, nor will they be paying for anybody else…It has no effect on the cost whatsoever. It didn’t before; it won’t now.”

Of course, Student’s for Life continue to fight the policy, first arguing that students who choose to stay in the “abortion coverage plan” will have a higher “cost of attendence ratio” and rank higher than the anti-choice students when it comes to federal financial aid (even though the two plans have identical costs, so no “cost of attendance” ratio should be higher than anothers), then by stating that it somehow constitutes federal funding of abortion, and violates the Hyde Amendment.

But in essence, the real mission is not to provide equal access to financial aid, or to ensure students who object to abortions don’t have to pay for them.  The real mission is simply to eliminate abortion coverage for all students because some students don’t like the idea.  As Kristen Hawkins, Executive Director of Students for Life, told the Herald Sun,

“Abortion is not health care, neither for the preborn child or his mother,” Hawkins said. “Abortion should be removed from the UNC System completely.”