Gingrich slams Romney over record on abortion

The Globe reported in 2005 that Romney signed a law allowing Massachusetts to seek a federal waiver to expand the number of low-income people eligible for state and federally funded family planning services. The change would give the same services already available to the lowest income individuals to another 88,000 people with slightly higher incomes. Services included the morning-after pill, a form of emergency contraception, and access to medical exams, cancer screenings, condoms, and pregnancy counseling. Romney vetoed a different bill to expand the use of the morning-after pills by requiring hospitals to offer them to rape victims and requiring pharmacists to dispense them without prescriptions, though the Legislature overrode his veto.

The board cited in the ad is the MassHealth payment policy advisory board, which reviews state Medicaid reimbursement rates. According to the Massachusetts health care reform law, passed under Romney in 2006, the 14-member board must include one representative of Planned Parenthood.

Romney’s 2006 health care overhaul did include an individual mandate that people buy health insurance - though the mandate is not tied to abortion. As the Globe reported this past weekend, Massachusetts’s Medicaid program has used taxpayer funds to cover abortions since 1981, based on a state court ruling. Under the 2006 overhaul, subsidies of abortions were extended to subscribers of the new Commonwealth Care program, whose incomes are too high to qualify for Medicaid but not high enough to afford unsubsidized insurance.