Affordable Health Care Act Case Study

Since 2010, the Affordable Health Care Act (ACA), has been treating abortions differently than any other health service. For them to determine whether the ACA’s abortion restrictions are uniquely American or have counterparts in other national health systems, and this study employs a cross sectional design comparing abortion restrictions in the ACA with those in 17 western European countries. Abortion became legal across the United States in 1973 when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade. The Court held that a woman's right to choose abortion was constitutionally protected as part of her right to privacy. This decision prohibited any level of government from interfering with abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy, "except to insist that …show more content…
The ACA addresses abortion by precluding public funding for this procedure except in the rare circumstances permitted by the Hyde amendment. Within the ACA parameters, states can decide whether any insurance policies offered in their health insurance marketplaces can provide abortion coverage or if most of those policies can. The ACA does require that at least one policy in each state exchange must not offer abortion coverage. About half of the states have no bans on abortion coverage, and almost half of the states do have some type of marketplace abortion ban. Some stats show that within state marketplaces, there is not perfect adherence with state bans and the above ACA abortion insurance requirement. The ACA abortion requirements are supposed to operate within existing state abortion laws. The ACA does not dictate waiting periods, mandate parental consent, or require specific counseling for pregnancy terminations, but it explicitly does not preempt any abortion restrictions that states may impose. As a result, there is great variation in abortion restrictions across the