Gender equality was one of themany arguments that the Affordable Care Act’s backers mounted sixyears ago in support of the landmark overhaul of the nation’shealth care laws.

The law barred health insurers from pricing their plans based ona customer’s gender. Or, as Nancy Pelosi announced, “Being a womanis no longer a pre-existing medical condition.”

But a new analysis of 109 qualified health plans bythe National Women’sLaw Center and the Commonwealth Fund finds that insurers regularlyrefuse to cover a range of medical services that aredisproportionately used by women.

The most common prohibition — exercised by 42 percent of theexamined health plans — relates to any condition that is the resultof a noncovered service, such as cosmetic surgery. The logic thereseems tenuous. Skateboarding is not a “covered service,” either,but presumably injuries resulting from it are covered, right?

Twenty-seven percent of the health plans do not covermaintenance therapy, a broad range of services that are gearedtowards maintaining, but not necessarily improving, health.Conditions that often call for that type of treatment includelupus, depression and chronic pain, conditions whichwomen are more likely to suffer from.

Fifteen percent of the plans excluded genetic testing, a servicefor which demand is mounting as researchers begin to connect thedots between genes and illnesses that a patient is likely todevelop, such as breast cancer, as well asconditions that are likely to affect their future children, such assickle cell anemia and Tay-Sachs disease.

Similarly, a number of insurers won’t cover procedures thatpeople often choose to undergo after discovering they have agenetic predisposition toward a certain condition, most commonlybreast cancer or ovarian cancer. Removal of breasts or ovaries is arecommended medical service for women of a certain geneticprofile.

Fourteen percent of health plans said they would not cover fetalreduction surgery, in which a woman opts to abort one of multiplefetuses she is carrying. Doctors might recommend the procedure forthe health of the mother or to improve the chances that theremaining fetus develops and is delivered successfully.

Finally, in an attitude that runs directly counter to the pushfor parity between mental and physical health, 11 percent of healthplans refuse to cover “self-inflicted” conditions. That might meandamage incurred by an eating disorder or a suicide attempt. Womenare more likely to survive both.