2005-2006 Regular Session H.R. 6067

Summary: This bill is intended to provide programs that reduce the number of abortions by reducing unplanned pregnancies, helping women bear healthy children, and supporting new parents.  This bill focuses on prevention, which includes teen pregnancy prevention, by establishing grants for sex education programs and requiring programs with a focus on abstinence to include thorough instruction on contraceptives.  It would also expanded Medicaid and Title X coverage for family planning services, requiring states to cover contraceptives for women with incomes of up to 200% of the federal poverty level.  The measure, which includes 20 initiatives, would also exclude pregnancy as a pre-existing condition for insurance, increase funding for health care for low-income women with children, provide no-cost visits from nurses to teens and women who have given birth for the first time, expand a tax credit for adoption and fund child care services for parents in college.

Similar to the Pregnant Women Support Act, this legislation is modeled after Democrats for Life of America's "95-10 Initiative," which aims to reduce the U.S. abortion rate by 95% over the next 10 years.  Expanding access to contraception is the significant difference between this bill and the Pregnant Women Support Act.

What You Should Know:  With nearly 1.3 million abortions occurring in the United States, the goal of reducing the need for abortion is laudable.  The most obvious first step in reducing the incidence of abortions is to reduce the large number of unintended pregnancies.  In 2001, half of the pregnancies in the United States were unintended - with 5% of women aged 15-44 having an unintended pregnancy. Between 1994 and 2001, the proportion of unintended pregnancies ending in abortion among all women declined, while the unintended birth rate increased.  Yet publicly-funded contraceptive services are chronically under funded - and this legislation does nothing to address that primary problem.

This bill also beefs up programs to help those who choose to carry an unintended pregnancy to term, another area related to women's health and support that has gone unattended for years.

Primary Sponsor(s): Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)

Introduction Date: 9/13/2006

Last Major Action: 9/13/2006 Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committees on Education and the Workforce, and Ways and Means, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.