Anti-Choice Power Grab

In comments to this post, low-tech cyclist asks:

Now, a simple question: who would actually be worse off than they are now if the Stupak amendment makes it into the final bill?

As I understand it, what it effectively says is that if your health insurance is subsidized, it can't cover abortions.

So, what are the before/after possibilities here? Here's what I see:

1) No insurance before, subsidized insurance after: no abortion coverage before or after.

2) Unsubsidized insurance coverage before, unsubsidized insurance after: no change from whatever it used to cover.

3) Unsubsidized insurance coverage before, subsidized insurance after: if your insurance covered abortions before, it won't now. But on the other hand, the government hadn't been helping to pay for your insurance before, and it is now. Seems like that would be a wash, at worst.

Am I missing something here?

Short answer:  Yes.  For the longer answer, let me outsource to Mark Silk from Spiritual Politics, who says that Stupak

confuses "public funding of abortion" with "public funding of abortion coverage." What the bill would do is provide a subsidy to help a woman purchase an insurance policy. The subsidy could not, under the Hyde Amendment, go towards that portion of the plan that covers abortion--presumably, under a separate rider whose price tag would be determined by the insurance company. If the woman chose to purchase the rider, and then obtained an abortion, the company would pay for it, as it would any other medical treatment covered by the plan.

What Stupak and his allies oppose is heath care legislation to help purchase policies that could include abortion if other monies were added. By that logic, they should support ending Medicaid, since states can and not a few states do add their own funds to provide Medicaid recipients with abortion coverage. 

Addendum: Think about Stupak's use of the phrase "affordability credits." What are affordability credits? They're vouchers--as in the education vouchers so beloved of conservatives, that inoculate public money from the taint of Establishment Clause violation because they go directly to individuals, not religious institutions. Only in this case instead of public money going directly (via vouchers) to religious schools, it would only go to help pay for the (non-abortion) portion of a health insurance policy, with the insurance company paying for the abortion with non-government money. Call it twice (or thrice) inoculated.

This amendment will cause problems for people on Medicaid.  It will result in women losing healthcare coverage they currently have.  Stupak's amendment is a vile, misogynistic piece of crap that somes entirely from the same "women aren't real human beings" thinking that led the Supreme Court to ban so-called partial birth abortions. 

Religious schools get federal money all the time.  My alma mater used federal funds to build an extension to the library, and immediately set about putting the offices of Spiritual Development and Student Ministries in it. 

It's far past time to end the double standard for abortion.