More than 100 U.S. senators and representatives have signed a letter urging the Department of the Treasury to abandon Internal Revenue Service guidance that classifies abortion as health care.
After the 1973 Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade, the IRS chose to reinterpret the 1942 statutory definition of “medical care” in the Code to include abortions. This, in turn, creates tax breaks for abortions through the medical expenses deduction as well as through health flexible spending accounts, health savings accounts, health reimbursement arrangements, and other tax-preferred health accounts and tax breaks that incorporate §213(d)’s definition of “medical care.”
By correcting this error, the Department of Treasury would protect taxpayers from funding the procedure and subsidizing the deaths of innocent unborn children.
The letter was signed by 23 U.S. Senators and 80 U.S. Representatives and states, “Abortion is not healthcare. Any procedure for which a successful outcome depends on the death of a living human being, born or unborn, cannot be considered health care.”
The legislators also urge the IRS not to “treat premiums for health insurance that covers such abortions as medical care, unless in compliance with the law’s separate accounting requirements for coverage of non-medical care” and “to take swift action to issue new regulations to protect innocent human life by ending tax breaks for abortion under the guise of medical care.”
The new guidance would end medical tax breaks for abortion, except in cases where the mother’s life is in danger. It also requests that health insurers be required to separately distinguish abortion from medical care in coverage policies in order for insurance premiums to remain eligible for medical expense and self-employed tax deductions, similar to the 2009 Nelson Amendment included in the Affordable Care Act.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “Abortion is not healthcare. Not one tax dollar should ever fund the murder of children.”
