{"id":537697,"date":"2026-03-22T01:05:29","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T01:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/537697\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T01:05:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T01:05:29","slug":"trump-administration-investigates-states-over-abortion-coverage-requirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/537697\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump administration investigates states over abortion coverage requirement"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration<\/a> said Thursday that it has launched investigations into 13 states that require state-regulated health insurance plans to cover abortion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The probes are the latest in a long-running dispute between the political parties on how to interpret a provision, known as the Weldon Amendment, that\u2019s included in federal spending laws each year. It bars states from discriminating against health entities that don\u2019t provide, cover or refer for abortion.<\/p>\n

When Democrat Joe Biden was president, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services\u2019 civil rights office said the provision didn\u2019t pertain to employers or other health care sponsors. The Trump administration said this year that it does.<\/p>\n

The administration says<\/a> that potentially puts states with abortion coverage requirements in violation of the law, because they may not allow employers or other health care issuers to opt out. It said it was sending out letters to gather more information from those states.<\/p>\n

The HHS civil rights office launched the investigations \u201cto address certain states\u2019 alleged disregard of, or confusion about, compliance with the Weldon Amendment,\u201d office Director Paula M. Stannard said in a statement. <\/p>\n

\u201cUnder the Weldon Amendment, health care entities, such as health insurance issuers and health plans, are protected from state discrimination for not paying for, or providing coverage of, abortion contrary to conscience. Period,\u201d Stannard said.<\/p>\n

The states with the coverage requirements are California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. All except Vermont have Democratic governors.<\/p>\n

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said in a statement Thursday that she\u2019ll defend her state\u2019s policies. <\/p>\n

\u201cNew Jersey requires health insurance plans to follow all applicable laws, including protecting women\u2019s reproductive freedom. So Donald Trump\u2019s latest \u2018investigation\u2019 is nothing but a fishing expedition wasting taxpayers\u2019 money,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The Weldon Amendment is one of a series of provisions known as conscience laws, which provide legal protections for individuals and health care entities that choose not to provide abortions or other types of care because of religious or moral objections. <\/p>\n

In the years since it was enacted in 2005, there\u2019s been a \u201cpartisan swing\u201d in how broadly or narrowly it is interpreted depending on which party is in office, according to Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis.<\/p>\n

Ziegler said the fact that employers and plan sponsors are not mentioned among health care entities in the text of the Weldon Amendment could give Democrats an edge with their interpretation, but the question has yet to be resolved in court.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Sepper, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said the Heritage Foundation\u2019s massive policy proposal known as Project 2025<\/a> called for an incoming Trump administration to withhold Medicaid funding<\/a> for states found to violate the Weldon Amendment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing here is the fulfillment of a promise to the religious right,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s first administration in 2020 moved to withhold federal health care funding<\/a> for California over what it interpreted as a Weldon Amendment violation, but the Biden administration entered office the next year and reversed the decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration said Thursday that it has launched investigations into 13 states that require state-regulated health insurance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[28960,20544,2356,12,240953,793,9290,97,252,2601,253,3319,240955,90155,1997,240954,195303,111,8638,795,21,792,27076,800],"class_list":["post-537697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-abortion","tag-access-to-health-care","tag-california","tag-donald-trump","tag-elizabeth-sepper","tag-general-news","tag-government-budgets","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-health-care-industry","tag-healthcare","tag-joe-biden","tag-mary-ziegler","tag-mikie-sherrill","tag-new-jersey","tag-paula-m-stannard","tag-personal-insurance","tag-politics","tag-u-s-democratic-party","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-government","tag-vermont","tag-washington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}