Vice President Joe Biden described pregnancy as a "pre-existing condition" Tuesday in remarks in Norfolk, Va.
BIDEN: So there’s a lot of things. For example, when you guys—when you women—get over 18, and get out of school, and you get married, you get pregnant—guess what? Pregnancy’s a pre-existing condition. You didn’t know that, did you? You think I’m joking, I’m not joking. Women get charged much higher rates for insurance than men. We don’t think that’s fair; we think everyone should be charged the same, whatever that is. So there’s a lot of things in the law, in the law. A lot of you, when you go off to college, you are not going to be able to afford private insurance all on your own. So what we’ve changed the law to say, is up to age 26, you can stay on your mom and dad’s policy, and be covered. Now again, I want to try to be fair here. There is a legitimate argument on the other side. There’s a legitimate argument that says, we’d like that all to be able to happen, but the government—the government—should not be engaged; it should all be through the private enterprise system. And that’s a legitimate position—I disagree it with it strongly. But I don’t want to make fun of it, I don’t want to say our Republican friends don’t care about people. They care about people as much as we do. They just don’t think the government, just like they don’t think the government should be providing these loans.
The HHS mandate treats pregnancy like it is a disease; contraception, sterilization and abortion pills are classified as medical prevention.