Governor Whitmer Overturns Law Prohibiting Abortion Coverage

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a bill on Monday that repeals a law that blocked health insurance coverage for abortion services, The Detroit News reported.

The abortion-related statute had been on the books for decades, prior to Whitmer’s repeal, and only allowed health insurers to cover abortions through separate insurance riders.

Whitmer reportedly condemned the law when she served as minority leader of the Michigan Senate, saying it forced women to buy “rape insurance” to cover an abortion if they became pregnant from a sexual assault.

“I am proud that in just over 18 months, we have gone from the repeal of Roe v. Wade to expanding reproductive freedom in Michigan with the passage of Proposal 3 and the Reproductive Health Act,” Whitmer said when signing the legislation inside the state Senate chamber.

During her speech against the abortion-blocking legislation in December 2013, the Democrat governor publicly revealed that she had been sexually assaulted in college. Though she did not become pregnant, Whitmer said the issue was “personal to me and so many Michigan women.”

According to the News, the bill Whitmer signed is part of a nine-measure package that loosens several restrictions on abortion and enshrines the language of Proposal 3, or the Reproductive Freedom for All constitutional amendment, into Michigan law.

State Rep. Laurie Pohutsky, the bill’s lead sponsor, said the legislation sends a message about the state’s commitment to self-determination.

“We are saying definitively that Michigan is a state that values and protects the right of every person to determine their own reproductive future,” Pohutsky told the News.

Denouncing the signing of the bill on Monday, the Michigan Catholic Conference said the measure eclipses what people were promised when they voted last year to codify abortion rights into the state constitution.

Rebecca Mastee, Michigan Catholic Conference policy advocate, told the News that the “abortion lobby has leveraged passage of the new constitutional amendment to make Michigan an extreme outlier on abortion policy;” voters were told the new policies would restore the conditions of Roe v. Wade, she said.