Honesty is the Best Policy

When Henry David Thoreau refused to pay delinquent poll taxes on the grounds that they would be used to support the Mexican-American War, he spent a night in jail. Harvard’s current conscientious objectors are treated a little differently. The Harvard Right to Life (HRL) campaign to encourage students to opt-out of the portion of their Blue Cross/Blue Shield (BCBS) insurance fees that fund elective abortions has ruffled more than a few feathers on campus. Some have argued the campaign—in the form of mass e-mails and opt-out cards delivered to student mailboxes—is misguided altogether, while others have defended HRL’s campaign, saying they are only raising awareness about a policy students should be familiar with. The crux of the debate, however, should not be about whether students should know about an obscure policy—they should—but about the disingenuous way in which HRL advertised the policy.

To a naive student, HRL’s campaign would lead one to believe that some large part of the BCBS fee —about $700 a term added on top of the student health fee which supports University Health Services (UHS)—goes to funding abortions and that their opting out will make a difference or somehow reduce the ability of individuals on BCBS plans to obtain an abortion. That is hardly the case. The refund amounts to just a dollar per term. HRL says it has collected over 400 waivers this year, up from 128 last year. That $300 a term is a drop in the bucket compared to the overall pool of money flowing into Harvard-affiliated BCBS plans and the $50 co-pay on an elective abortion. Anyone who believes that their opting out of the dollar per term is anything more than a symbolic gesture is deluding him or herself.

Therein lies the flaw in HRL’s campaign. In order to get students to opt out, it exaggerates the numbers and mischaracterizes the impact. Some students might even want the refund simply because it is “free money.” That being said, students should certainly know about the option to opt out and be free to do so if they so please and are fully informed about the refund and where it goes. Given that BCBS allows opting out, the awareness element of HRL’s campaign is reasonable. Its particular methods, however, are not.

Students are certainly free to opt in or opt out of the elective abortion option, but they should strongly consider the possible implications of their decision to opt out of the fee. The decision is not simply a moral issue; the implications of such an action could have an effect on other controversial services that are offered not only by an insurance company, but also by the University at large.

As long as BCBS’s policy remains in place, students should know about it, and we expect HRL will want to inform them of it. We hope that next time HRL does so in a more honest way.