Q&A: How Upcoming Efforts to Transform Medicaid Could Affect Abortion Coverage

Executive Summary

Conservative lawmakers in Congress have signaled they will consider fundamental changes to Medicaid, ones that as Staff Attorney Catherine McKee notes could further reduce coverage of abortions. In this paper, McKee explains current Medicaid coverage of abortion care, describes how Medicaid funding structure and general coverage requirements would change under a block grant program, and examines how prior congressional block grant proposals in Medicaid would have “altered abortion coverage.”