February, 10 2020, 11:00pm EDT
ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and Consumers Challenge Trump Administration Rule That Threatens Insurance Coverage for Abortion
The rule imposes more than $1 billion in unnecessary costs in an effort to coerce insurance companies to stop offering coverage for abortion, affecting more than 3 million consumers.
WASHINGTON
Planned Parenthood of Maryland, Inc., and several consumers around the country filed a lawsuit today challenging the Trump administration's new rule designed to make insurance companies stop offering coverage for abortion. They are represented by attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., and Brown Goldstein & Levy, LLP.
In December 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a new rule that, if implemented, would force insurance companies that sell plans in the Affordable Care Act individual marketplaces to send two separate bills to customers -- one for the coverage of abortion care, and another for coverage of other health care. Insurers will also have to instruct their customers to pay the bills using two checks, two money orders, or two electronic transactions every month.
As the administration acknowledged in finalizing the rule, the extensive administrative burdens will lead to higher premiums for consumers and will cause some insurers to drop insurance coverage for abortion altogether. As the administration also acknowledged, confusion about these new requirements will lead some people to miss payments and risk losing their health insurance coverage entirely.
"If this rule takes effect, I face the terrifying risk of losing not only my insurance coverage for abortion, but my insurance coverage entirely, which would be devastating for me given my pre-existing condition," said Rebecca, a resident of Washington, D.C. and plaintiff in the case. "That's why I'm joining the ACLU and Planned Parenthood to fight back. It is cruel and unacceptable that the Trump administration is interfering in my health care and trying to interfere with how health insurance companies do business, just because they want to make it more difficult for me to access my right to abortion."
"The Trump administration's new insurance rule is another attack on abortion care, designed solely to push safe, legal abortion further out of reach," said Meagan Burrows, staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. "And yet again, its actions will have the most devastating effect on already marginalized communities, including low-income people, people with limited English proficiency, and people with disabilities. Abortion is health care, and our government should be making it easier -- not harder -- for people to get the health care they need."
More than 3 million consumers would be affected by the rule's onerous restrictions, including the individual plaintiffs in the lawsuit from Maryland, the District of Columbia, New Jersey, and Maine.The rule would also affect one-third of the individual market exchange plans nationwide, including every individual plan offered on the marketplaces in Maryland. A fact sheet on the impact of the rule can be found here.
"Abortion opponents are waging everything they've got as part of their massive war on our access to health care," said Karen Nelson, President and CEO, Planned Parenthood of Maryland, Inc. "The attacks and deceptions continue, but here's the truth: Abortion care is health care, and it should not be separated, "carved out", or treated differently from any other medical service. We will always fight to eliminate barriers and protect access to safe, legal abortion care and we will continue to provide people with the health care they need."
"This rule exists for one reason: to make it more difficult for people to access safe, legal abortion," said Alexis McGill Johnson, Acting President and CEO, Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "The administration itself admits this rule has no quantifiable benefit -- its sole purpose is to create extra red tape for millions of people across the country. We will not stand for this administration's attempt to shame people and keep them from accessing health care. All people deserve to be able to access abortion in this country, and to have their health insurance cover this safe, legal medical procedure. Planned Parenthood Federation of America is proud to stand with Planned Parenthood of Maryland, the ACLU and these brave individual consumers to fight back against this harmful rule in court. We will never stop fighting for our patients, or for the right of all people to access sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion, without shame or needless hurdles."
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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On Monday, Real Zero Europe—"a campaign calling on the European Union to deliver real emissions reductions and real solutions to the climate crisis, instead of corporate greenwashed 'net zero' targets"—published a call for an E.U. Climate Law that does not contain provisions for international carbon offsetting, in which countries or corporations compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions by funding projects that reduce emissions in other nations.
🔴 OUT NOW📢 69 NGOs call on the EU to deliver a Climate Law that rejects international carbon offsetting & Carbon Dioxide Removals (#CDR), commits to a full fossil fuel phase-out, and reflects Europe’s fair share of climate responsibility!Read the statement👇www.realzeroeurope.org/resources/st...
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— Real Zero Europe (@realzeroeurope.bsky.social) June 30, 2025 at 2:40 AM
A draft proposal of the legislation published Monday by Politico revealed that the European Commission will allow E.U. member states to outsource climate efforts to Global South nations staring in 2036, despite opposition from the 27-nation bloc's independent scientific advisory board. The outsourcing will enable the E.U. to fund emissions-reducing projects in developing nations and apply those reductions to Europe's own 2040 target—which is a 90% net decrease in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels.
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This heatwave is brutal. Temperatures above 40°C in June across France, Spain, Italy...We still hear from right-wing politicians that “it’s just summer.” It’s not. This is the climate crisis courtesy of the fossil fuels industry. It’s not normal.
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— European Greens (@europeangreens.eu) June 30, 2025 at 7:01 AM
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk also addressed the European heatwave on Monday, saying that "the climate crisis is a human rights crisis."
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On Monday, the Senate kicked off a vote-a-rama process where senators can demand an unlimited number of votes on amendments to the reconciliation package.
While negotiations on the legislation are still ongoing, the version of the reconciliation bill that was narrowly advanced in the Senate on Saturday includes $29.85 billion for ICE to "remain available through September 30, 2029" for personnel recruitment, technology for "enforcement and removal operations," and other priorities. It also includes $45 billion "for single adult alien detention capacity and family residential center capacity," also available through the same period.
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"The transition can also lead to significant savings of taxpayer money that is currently going into responding to climate change impacts, saving health costs, and also recouping lost tax revenue from fossil fuel companies," she said. "This could be the single most impactful health contribution we could ever make. The transition seems radical and unrealistic because fossil fuel companies have been so good at making it seem so."
In addition to lobbying bans, said Morgera, governments around the world must ban fossil fuel advertising and criminalize "misinformation and misrepresentation (greenwashing) by the fossil fuel industry" as well as media and advertising firms that have amplified the industry's disinformation and misinformation.
Several countries have taken steps toward meeting Morgera's far-reaching demands, with The Hague in the Netherlands introducing a municipal ordinance in 2023 banning fossil fuel ads, the Australian Green Party backing such a ban, and Western Australia implementing one.
The fossil fuel industry's "playbook of climate obstruction"—from lobbying at national policymaking summits like the annual U.N. Climate Change Conference to downplaying human rights impacts like destructive storms and emphasizing the role of fossil fuels in "economic growth"—has "undermined the protection of all human rights that are negatively impacted by climate change for over six decades," said Morgera.
Morgera pointed to three ways in which states' obligations under international humanitarian laws underpin the need for a fossil fuel phaseout by 2030:
- The survival of states that contributed minimally to climate change is impaired by loss of territory to sea-level rise and/or protracted unsafe climatic conditions;
- People are substantially deprived of their means of subsistence because of the severe deterioration of entire ecosystems due to climate change due to flooding, drought, and extreme heat; and
- The cultural survival of the populations of small island developing states, Indigenous peoples, people of African descent, peasants and small-scale fishers is impaired by loss of territories, protracted unsafe climatic conditions and/or severe ecosystem degradation.
Morgera's report was presented as more than a third of Tuvaluans applied for a visa to move to Australia under a new climate deal between the two countries, as the Pacific island is one of the most vulnerable places on Earth to rising sea levels and severe storms.
Morgera said that fossil fuel industry's impact on the human rights of people across the Global South—who have contributed little to the worsening of the climate emergency—"compels urgent defossilization of our whole economies, as part of a just, effective, and transformative transition."Keep ReadingShow Less
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