All of the controversy over whether employersshould be required to cover birth control in the Patient Protection and Affordable CareAct hasn't changed the fact that every insurancepolicy in the country provides birth control to its female membersat no cost, whether it's technically the employer or the insurerproviding it.

But when it comes to coverage of abortion, a far morecontroversial medical service, the picture is much more ambiguous.It's often extremely difficult to understand whether an insurancepolicy covers abortion, reports Kaiser Health News in a recent nationalanalysis.

Much of the confusion is due to the fact that, unlike thecontraception mandate, PPACA allowed state governments todetermine whether abortion could be covered by plans on exchangesin their states.

Predictably, a number of Republican-run states barred exchangeplans from covering abortion.

But surprisingly a number of red states didn't. Texas, WestVirginia, Alaska and Wyoming are probably the most conservativestates that do not prohibit PPACA plans from covering abortionservices.

However, it's not just state laws that make it hard to what aplan covers. The insurers themselves don't seem interested inadvertising whether or not they cover abortion.

“It's not easy to figure out whether a plan covers abortion andif it does, to what extent,” Kinsey Hasstedt, a public policyassociate at the Guttmacher Institute, told Kaiser.

Furthermore, even in states that allow plans to cover abortion,there may not be a plan within a given area that does. And in astate such as Texas, which has imposed significant restrictionsthat forced the closure of many abortion providers, many residentslive in areas with no nearby abortion clinics. Indeed, findingplans that provide specific services–including those far lesscontroversial than abortion–is already a challenge for consumers inrural areas.

It appears that insurers are opting to avoid abortionaltogether, particularly for plans that they make available inmultiple states.

Of the 261 multi-state plans available across the country, onlyfour cover abortion.