Texas Extends Postpartum Medicaid Coverage that Could Incentivize Abortions

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services approved Texas’ plan to extend health care coverage from 60 days to 12 months for new moms. The extension was implemented on March 1 and could unintentionally incentivize illegal and out-of-state abortions.

Extending Medicaid coverage to one year postpartum was the top recommendation by the Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee to reduce preventable deaths among new mothers. Texas Right to Life supported this policy on the condition that the language clearly excluded cases of elective abortion.

House Bill 12 in 2023 by Representative Toni Rose (D-Dallas) and sponsored by Senator Lois Kolkhorst (R-Brenham) secured a full year of medical insurance coverage for low-income mothers after giving birth. Texas Right to Life thoroughly informed lawmakers that the language in HB 12 could potentially allow for a full year of coverage following an elective abortion, whether performed illegally within Texas or legally elsewhere, unless an amendment was added to specifically exclude coverage where a pregnancy ended by elective abortion.

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A symbolic amendment was added in the Senate expressing Texas’ profound respect for preborn children’s lives and that the legislative purpose of the bill was to extend Medicaid coverage for mothers whose pregnancies ended in the delivery of a child or in the natural loss of the child; however, this was only legislative purpose, not statutorily part of the bill.

Consequently, we are now faced with the federal government’s broad interpretation of the bill’s terms—requiring continued Medicaid coverage from the last day of a woman’s pregnancy, without specifying qualifications for how the pregnancy ended.

This is not the first time Texas tried to extend coverage for postpartum women. Two years ago, the state submitted a plan to extend coverage to six months. The Biden administration found Texas’ application for continued coverage “unapprovable,” likely due to Pro-Life language clarifying the extension excluded women who had elective abortions.

While Pro-Life Texans support the policy’s intended outcome, the Biden administration has unsurprisingly capitalized on this opportunity, and every opportunity, to promote abortion and undercut Texas’ strong Pro-Life stance.

Abortion is lethal to the innocent preborn child and dangerous to the mother’s physical and mental health. Promoting women’s health care should not come at the expense of preborn children.