BY JANET COLM

Guest columnist

In early November, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and anti-abortion ideologues hijacked the House health care reform bill in their dedicated attempt to ban all legal abortion in the United States.

This came in the form of an 11th-hour amendment to the U.S. House of Representatives health reform bill introduced by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Michigan). The Stupak amendment would place unprecedented restrictions on women's ability to access private health insurance coverage for abortion under health care reform.

For three decades, Congress has prohibited the use of federal funds for abortion, except in cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the woman. The Stupak Ban reaches much further. As the amendment says, "No funds may be used to pay for any abortion or to cover any part of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion" except for rape, incest and life endangerment.

A careful compromise had already been worked out weeks before the Stupak Ban was introduced -- a genuine compromise between pro-choice and pro-life members of Congress. It maintained the status quo: Federal funding of abortion in health reform was prohibited, but women could pay for abortion coverage with their own private funds.

The Stupak Ban is not about public funding for abortion. It's certainly not about improving health care for women or any other group. It is about undermining women's reproductive health care options in order to push a broader anti-choice agenda.

The ban would prohibit any insurance coverage for abortion in the public option. And it goes beyond that. It would prohibit any coverage of abortion in the new "exchange" established by health reform. The ban would apply if a private plan enrolled even one person who was receiving a federal subsidy to pay his or her premiums

The exchange is intended to provide a new source of affordable, quality coverage for many of the 46 million uninsured Americans and for millions of Americans who work for themselves or for small businesses. Depending on their income, these individuals would receive subsidies on a sliding scale to purchase private insurance through the exchange. For example, in the House bill, a family of four with an annual income of $88,000 or less would be eligible for a subsidy to help purchase health insurance through the exchange.

If Stupak becomes the law of the land, middle-class women will face barriers to reproductive health coverage unlike any they have faced since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973.

Planned Parenthood provides health care to more than 3 million people every year. We know first-hand the stories of thousands of people who do not have health insurance. And we know first-hand the stories of thousands of women who face unintended pregnancies.

As a health care provider, Planned Parenthood is committed to passing health care reform that will guarantee affordable, high quality health care coverage for all. And we are committed to ensuring that women with private health coverage do not lose benefits they have today -- including coverage for abortion services.

These are the facts: Each year, almost half of all pregnancies among American women are unintended and about half of these unplanned pregnancies -- about 1.3 million -- end in abortion. A quarter of all abortions are for women who are 30 or older. Over half of abortions happen in the first 8 weeks of pregnancy. More than half of women having abortions have had some college education. And women of all religions have abortions -- 13 percent describe themselves as born-again Christians and 27 percent say they are Catholic.

If current rates continue, it is estimated that 35 percent of all women of reproductive age in America today will have had an abortion by the time they reach the age of 45.

Abortion care is part of health care for American women. It is unthinkable that women would actually lose health care benefits after reform which promised only to improve their access to care, not leave them worse off.

For all the benefits that reform could bring, health care reform will not be fair -- and it will not succeed -- if it comes at a steep cost to women.

Women and their allies must make our voices heard, so that we do not become second-class citizens in a newly reformed health care system in the United States.

Janet Colm is CEO of Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina.