In my morning piece I described, perhaps, the only sort of tax the GOP will happily support — ones that makes it harder for women to get legal abortions. I focused most specifically on a provision that would eradicate tax-incentives encouraging employers to provide health benefits if those benefits include abortion coverage. But it goes further than that. As Nick Baumann writes, the proposal would impact smaller parts of the health-care financing market by forbidding self-employed people from writing off abortions on their taxes, and making it illegal for people to pay for abortions out of tax-exempt health-savings accounts.
Nick’s been sitting on a great quote from Tim Jost, who’s an incredibly reliable health law expert, a supporter of ObamaCare, and, it turns out, pro-life.
“Going after the tax subsidies that affect abortion” would represent a “substantial victory for the pro-life movement in America,” Jost said.
So this isn’t something the GOP came up with by the seat of its pants. It’s, as I said, part of a plan to broadly phase out abortion coverage.
