Jennifer Steinhauer of The New York Times reports that despite public promises otherwise, legislation pushed by congressional Republicans would still ban coverage of abortions for many rape victims in both public and private plans:

One bill, the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” would eliminate tax breaks for private employers who provide health coverage if their plans offer abortion services, and would forbid women who use a flexible spending plan to use pre-tax dollars for abortions. Those restrictions would go well beyond current law prohibiting the use of federal money for abortion services. The bill, sponsored by Representative Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey, has drawn fire over language that undercuts a longstanding exemption on the ban on using federal money for abortions in the case of rape or incest; the measure narrows the definition of rape to “forcible rape,” a term that his office has never defined. Democratic lawmakers and others repeatedly hammered on the term, saying it suggested that victims of statutory rape and other crimes could not get abortions paid for with federal money. While Mr. Smith’s staff said last week that the term "forcible rape" would be removed from the bill, the staff of Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, said that language remained intact as of Tuesday.

As both Digby and David Waldman have explained, the fact that the legislation creates a category of rape cases that it deems to be acceptable is (amazingly) not the most pernicious aspect of the legislation.

The most pernicious aspect of this legislation is that it would effectively ban all private insurance coverage of abortion, for the first time ever putting the government in a position of effectively banning a perfectly legal health care option. The legislation would do this by banning all tax credits and deductions for health care plans that include abortion, including health savings accounts.

Because virtually every health plan receives some form of tax subsidy, the bill's provisions effectively ban all forms of insurance coverage for abortion services. So even if the GOP keeps their promise to carve out an exception for all cases of rape, this legislation still represents a massive assault on the right to choose.