Abortion Coverage

To the Editors of The Crimson:

In a front page article by Gay W. Seidman, Friday Nov. 12, The Crimson announced that the University had decided to include abortions in the Student Health Care Plan. The article said that under the new policy, University Health Services will refund the portion of the fee that goes toward non-therapeutic abortions to students who oppose such voluntary abortions.

However, nowhere in the article, or in subsequent articles on the plan ("Covering Abortions, Slowly," Saturday, Nov. 13, and editorials "For UHS Abortion Coverage" and "Against Abortion Coverage," Wednesday, Nov. 17) did The Crimson specify how students can obtain this refund. Those of us who are interested for moral reasons in withdrawing the portion of our Health Services fee that would go toward abortion coverage were left totally in the dark as to how we could do so.

The missing information, as far as calls to UHS can reconstruct it, is this: a letter has been sent from UHS to all Harvard students, explaining the refund procedure. (It was supposed to have been distributed two weeks ago but was reportedly held up at the printer.) Each individual wishing to prevent his or her support of nontherapeutic abortions will apparently have to write a letter to the insurance office at UHS requesting the refund.

The exact procedure should be obtained from the UHS release, but students should just be aware that such a letter is forthcoming, and that following the procedure described in it will be the only way to withdraw his or her moral and financial support of abortion.

The new UHS plan is fair--it allows those of us with moral or religious objections to take no part in abortion coverage. But the structure of the refund policy makes it necessary for the individual student to make the active effort of writing a special letter to do so. In the future I believe it would be more equitable to include a refund option, which students could check, on the original Health Care Plan for the year.

However, students should realize that as the situation now stands, unless they actually take the necessary steps to obtain a refund, they are by forfeit financially and morally supporting voluntary abortion through the fee they have already paid for their Student Health Care Plan for 1976-77.

In addition, I would like to clarify the statement attributed to me in Seidman's article of Nov. 12, which reads, "The important thing to me is that I don't have to pay for any part of it." (The "it" refers to abortion coverage.) The reason a refund is important to me is in no way strictly monetary, as might be construed from the above statement as quoted. The fee for abortion coverage, and therefore the refund I will receive, is less than $1.00. But I believe my financial support of abortion would imply moral support of the procedure, and for this reason will ask that my portion be withdrawn from the UHS's abortion coverage fund. Students who feel similarly should know that information on how to obtain the refund is (we hope) on the way. Grace Mary Belfiore '79