Duke Expanding Abortion Coverage After Lobbying by Planned Parenthood
“Duke must provide elective abortion coverage (and comprehensive reproductive care) to the full extent allowed under North Carolina law”
When did any of this become the responsibility of schools?
The College Fix reports:
Duke expands abortion in health plan after Planned Parenthood group lobbies for more
Duke University will pay for students to abort unborn babies in elective abortions after several groups, including a campus Planned Parenthood chapter, lobbied the institution to expand coverage in its health insurance plan.
Students for Life of America, which has more than 1,600 student pro-life groups across the country, swiftly criticized the university for giving into the student activists’ demands.
“But instead of standing its ground, Duke, which began as a Christian school and still houses one of the nation’s 13 United Methodist seminaries, caved to the pressure, updating its plan to include abortion coverage,” the pro-life organization wrote Wednesday on its blog.
Initially, the North Carolina university only included limited coverage for abortions in its student health insurance plan under a May agreement with its new provider, Aetna, The Duke Chronicle reports.
As the student newspaper reported, “the initial draft of the new Aetna plan excluded both abortion pills and procedures as eligible health services, except in cases of rape, incest or ‘if it places the woman’s life in serious danger.’”
However, the Duke Graduate Student Union, campus Planned Parenthood chapter, and others created a petition demanding that the health insurance plan cover, among other things, elective abortion-on-demand for students, according to the report.
“Duke Administration has decided -without the input from students- that only incest, rape, and life-threatening conditions warrant said coverage. North Carolina State Law does not pose any such restriction, and Aetna does offer in-network coverage for abortions,” the petition states.
“Duke must provide elective abortion coverage (and comprehensive reproductive care) to the full extent allowed under North Carolina law,” it states.
More than 800 people signed the petition, including community members and alumni, and organizers delivered it to campus leaders on June 8, the report states.
The new insurance plan, published that same day, offers coverage for abortions without limits.
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Comments
Not only is Duke University a school, it is a major health care provider in the region with at least two hospitals and a major health provider network.
As for having a United Methodist seminary, the school/seminary is very liberal and the UMC social justice stance is in favor of abortion. That’s another reason I left.
Well, down the road, decades ago I was on the advisory committee for the student health plan at UNC-CH. The director there wanted to build a Cadillac plan and to require a mandatory proof of insurance. One huge component of the plan was pregnancy coverage for a sudent’s spouse under a family plan, and this was really being exploited by savvy couples. Another aspect which I was privy to was that while the average plan cost was $500, when it was broken down into itemized costs, it turned out that females accounted for an average of $600/yr because of expanded coverages while to cost for males was $400. A student that I knew brought this to the attention of a guy he rented a room from, who was an independent insurance agent. That agent then located a plan for males in our age demographic which was suitable and was billed quarterly for $90. As word spread every quarter a larger percentage of the males shifted to save $35 ( a big amount back then) such that it really started to deplete the official university underwritten system, whose costs not only started to approach the $600/yr required by the females, but exceeded it as there were now way fewer participants to offset the unrelated fixed costs. Of course, the females were not happy about this change.
As a former mentor once said, “if you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it is free.”
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