Small Govt??? GOP Bill Would Force IRS to Conduct Abortion Audits

Under a GOP-backed bill expected to sail through the House of Representatives, the Internal Revenue Service would be forced to police how Americans have paid for their abortions. To ensure that taxpayers complied with the law, IRS agents would have to investigate whether certain terminated pregnancies were the result of rape or incest. And one tax expert says that the measure could even lead to questions on tax forms: Have you had an abortion? Did you keep your receipt?

In testimony to a House taxation subcommittee on Wednesday, Thomas Barthold, the chief of staff of the nonpartisan Joint Tax Committee, confirmed that one consequence of the Republicans' "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" would be to turn IRS agents into abortion cops—that is, during an audit, they'd have to detemine, from evidence provided by the taxpayer, whether any tax benefit had been inappropriately used to pay for an abortion.

The proposed law, also known as H.R. 3, extends the reach of the Hyde Amendment—which bans federal funding for abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is at stake—into many parts of the federal tax code. In some cases, the law would forbid using tax benefits—like credits or deductions—to pay for abortions or health insurance that covers abortion. If an American who used such a benefit were to be audited, Barthold said, the burden of proof would lie with the taxpayer to provide documentation, for example, that her abortion fell under the rape/incest/life-of-the-mother exception, or that the health insurance she had purchased did not cover abortions.

"Were this to become law, people could end up in an audit, the subject of which could be abortion, rape, and incest," says Christopher Bergin, the head of Tax Analysts, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit tax policy group. "If you pass the law like this, the IRS would be required to enforce it."

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"The Internal Revenue Service has no business interfering with a woman's right to a safe, legal, constitutionally-protected medical procedure," Thompson tells Mother Jones. "Private health care decisions belong to a woman, her family, and her doctor—not a government auditor."

Most IRS agents would likely agree, Owens says: "I don't think [IRS agents] enjoy prying around into those sorts of private matters." Another IRS veteran tells Mother Jones he doesn't believe his ex-colleagues would want to enforce such a law. "You can't ask people to go out and ask some woman about what the circumstances are surrounding her abortion. They just won't do it."

UPDATE: NARAL Pro-Choice America, one of the major groups supporting abortion rights, has issued a statement responding to this story:

"This bill gets more outrageous and insulting by the day. Not only would a woman have to describe her sexual assault to the police, but she could then be forced to relive that horrifying experience with an agent from the IRS," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. "The 221 members of Congress who signed their names to this egregious bill must explain to their constituents why they want to give the IRS authority to audit rape survivors."