Governor Mitt Romney has signed a bill that could expand the number of people who get family-planning services, including the morning-after pill, confusing some abortion and contraception foes who had been heartened by his earlier veto of an emergency contraception bill.
''The guy's not coming around," said Joseph M. Scheidler, the national director of the Pro-Life Action League, a Chicago-based organization of 6,000 members that considers many forms of birth control to be tantamount to abortion. ''If he's trying to win prolife folks, he won't get the hardcore."
The new law calls for the state to seek a federal waiver to expand the number of low-income people eligible for comprehensive family-planning services statewide. If the federal government approves the waiver, an estimated 88,000 more people would be eligible, said Richard Powers, spokesman for the state's Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
The services include the distribution of condoms, abortion counseling, and the distribution of emergency contraception, or morning after pills, by prescription, Powers said. In addition, the services include testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, medical and gynecological examinations, counseling on methods of birth control, screening for breast and cervical cancer, prenatal care, and counseling and referral services for pregnancy and infertility. Abortions would not be covered under the waiver. Under a court ruling, they are covered under the state's Medicaid program only when deemed medically necessary, Powers said.
In July, Romney vetoed a bill to expand the use of the morning-after pills by requiring hospitals to offer them to rape victims and requiring pharmacists to dispense them without prescriptions. At the time, the governor embraced opponents' argument that the pills not only prevent pregnancies, but cause abortions. The Legislature overrode the veto in September.
The administration did not publicize the waiver request. Yesterday, the governor's communications director, Eric Fehrnstrom, suggested that the decision was not controversial.
''The Commonwealth already provides these health services to low-income women, and we have no objection to the Legislature's directive that we seek a waiver to expand the eligible population to women with a slightly higher income," Fehrnstrom said in a statement.
But activists on both sides of the highly charged abortion debate saw another wrinkle in Romney's abortion position. As a candidate in 1994, he said he would keep abortion ''safe and legal" and in 2002 said he would support the current abortion laws. But this year, as he contemplated a run for president, he vetoed the emergency contraception bill, criticized the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, and called himself ''personally prolife."
Yesterday, the abortion-rights advocates who had denounced his emergency contraception veto issued muted praise for the governor. If the federal government agrees to the waiver, they said, the state could serve people with incomes too high to be eligible for Medicaid and still receive 90 percent reimbursement from the federal government. The state Department of Public Health is now spending about $5 million a year for family-planning coverage for those who are not covered by Medicaid, said O'Reilly.Continued...
