Extend Abortion Insurance

THE RADCLIFFE Union of Students (RUS) should be applauded for its recent creation of an emergency medical fund for Radcliffe students, to be used mainly for abortion and delivery. But the RUS fund is extremely small, and students will have to repay loans.

The Harvard health insurance plan does not now cover nontherapeutic abortions; pregnant students must look elsewhere for funds for an operation whose costs must usually be paid in advance. Should the RUS fund run out, there would be nowhere in the University students could go for money to cover abortions--which must be performed as soon as possible if the operation is to proceed legally.

The major arguments against changing the University health plan are that pregnancy is not an illness, and that it would be unfair to ask those students opposed to abortion or physically unable to become pregnant to pay additional insurance premiums. But the principle of any insurance pool is that one contributes to coverage for accidents or illnesses to which one may not be susceptible. All the Ivy League schools except Princeton--which is considering changing its policy--and Harvard cover pregnancy insurance in their student health plans. A spokesman for Dartmouth, which will begin covering abortions next year, said last week that the university considers abortions roughly equivalent to athletic accidents--they only happen to athletes, and only to people who voluntarily expose themselves to the risk.

And even those women opposed to abortion should accept the need for some insurance providing pregnancy benefits. It is their right, if they wish, to have children if they get pregnant; but it is not their right to force other students to go into debt because they need abortions. If a woman cannot find the $150 for an abortion, how can she hope to pay the $400 for delivery? No one would argue that abortion should be a form of contraception, but there are times when it is necessary--and it seems unlikely that there would be an increase in abortions if they were paid for by insurance.

The University should widen the student health insurance plan to include all maternity benefits--both delivery and abortion costs. To decline to do so is to refuse responsibility for all students' welfare, a refusal that belies the concept of health insurance.