The new Republican majority on the Wake County Board of Commissioners will vote at its first meeting since the election to bar the county employees health plan from paying for abortions, board chairman Tony Gurley said Wednesday.

The vote set for Dec. 6 marks a return to the abortion debate that erupted last February after county manager David Cooke unilaterally removed abortion coverage from the health plan.  The board’s Democratic majority restored it in March over Republican objections.

With Democrat Lindy Brown’s defeat by Republican Phil Matthews in the Nov. 2 election, Republicans have a 4-3 majority. The Republicans are all but certain to vote to remove elective abortion as a covered service when the employees health plan is renewed on Jan. 1. The ban would apply only to abortions in the first 18 weeks of pregnancy and would allow for exceptions in cases of rape, incest or a threat to the mother’s health.

Gurley said only a few employees each year use the health plan — which is self-funded by taxpayers — to pay for elective abortions, but he opposes the payments on principle.

“I don’t think taxpayers’ money should be used for elective abortions,”  he said.

Wake Commissioner Stan Norwalk, a Democrat, said the return of the abortion debate is part of a  Republican effort to push wedge issues that appeal to their political supporters.
“They just keep stirring the pot and making this thing a much larger issue than it is,” Norwalk said. “It’s just playing politics. It’s sends a message to their base who are on one side of the abortion issue.”

A coalition of women’s groups and public interest groups say the change would be discriminatory toward women. Representatives of those groups and possibly county employees are expected to address the commissioners during the Dec. 6 meeting. The meeting starts at 2 p.m. Its public comment portion begins at 3 p.m.

“I don’t believe the commissioners should be cherry picking what types of health services are available to their employees,” said Melissa Reed,  vice president for public policy with Planned Parenthood Health Systems in Raleigh. “It would realize no savings. It’s really just a punitive action based on Commissioner Gurley’s opposition to reproductive freedom for women.”

Gurley said the ban is not a matter of  his opinion. He said it’s the law. “We have a court case that says we’re not allowed to use taxpayers’ money to pay for elective abortions,” he said.

Gurley was referring to a 1981 North Carolina Supreme Court case, Stam v. State, which found that counties could not pay for medically unnecessary abortions for indigent women through their social services programs. The ruling did not bar local government employee health insurance plans from paying for such procedures.

The plantiff in the case was Paul “Skip” Stam, an Apex attorney who became a Republican state representative and is in line to become the next House majority leader in January. Stam has pressed local Republicans to use the court ruling to end payments for abortions through public employee health plans. At least 10 counties and municipalities have eliminated the coverage from their health care plans.