WASHINGTON (August 6, 2009) – President
Obama and top Democratic congressional leaders are
pushing hard for enactment of sweeping “health care
reform” bills that would greatly expand abortion in
America. The bills even create a nationwide
insurance plan to cover elective abortions, run by
the federal government.
Both the U.S. House of Representatives and the
U.S. Senate are expected to vote on the bills in
September.
The bills backed by the White House would also
make drastic changes in the health care system that
raise acute concerns about future rationing of
lifesaving care, and that even open the door to
government promotion of assisted suicide.
National Right to Life President Wanda
Franz said, “Defeating the White House bills is
among the most important challenges the pro-life
movement has faced in Congress in many years.
Pro-life citizens must make their voices heard by
members of Congress, before it is too late.”
The White House and Democratic congressional
leaders had originally
planned to hold House and Senate floor votes on the
bills during July, but solid opposition from
congressional Republicans, coupled with resistance
among some factions of Democrats, forced the delay
until the fall. Congress is now in recess until
after Labor Day.
At NRL News deadline on August 6, two
health care bills, one in the Senate, and one in the
House, oth reflecting White House priorities, had
gone through the process of revision in
Democrat-controlled committees.
No Republican has yet endorsed either bill, and
no Republican voted for either bill on any of the
committees. However, Democrats currently hold
majority control of Congress, with 60% of the seats
in each house.
The Senate bill (as yet unnumbered), sponsored
by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), was approved by
the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
(HELP) Committee on a party-line vote on July 15.
In the House,
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) and the rest of the
Democratic leadership is pushing H.R. 3200, which
during July was approved by three different
committees.
In the Senate HELP Committee, and in all three
House committees, pro-life lawmakers offered
NRLC-backed amendments to prevent the bills from
mandating that insurance plans cover abortions, and
to prevent federal subsidies for abortions – but in
all four committees, the Democratic chairmen
succeeded in defeating the genuine pro-life
amendments. In the committees, the pro-life
amendments won support from nearly all Republicans,
but only a handful of Democrats.
Broad abortion mandates
As originally introduced, both the Kennedy bill
and H.R. 3200 had most key elements in common.
Under both bills, the federal government would in
effect take charge of marketing private health
insurance through a so-called “exchange.” Federal
officials would define a package of “essential
benefits” that virtually all private plans must
cover in order to participate. The bills describe
broad categories of services that must be included,
such as hospitalization, outpatient hospital and
outpatient clinic services, professional services of
physicians and preventive services.
NRLC and other pro-life analysts warned that
these broad categories have been interpreted in the
past to include elective abortion, except when
Congress explicitly excludes abortion.
(That is what occurred, for example, with the
federal Medicaid program. Although the law that
created the program does not mention abortion, it
was interpreted to require coverage of abortion, and
by 1976 the federal government was paying for
300,000 elective abortions a year. This was stopped
only when Congress added the Hyde Amendment to the
annual Health and Human Services funding bill,
starting in 1976, explicitly prohibiting the use of
federal HHS funds for abortions.)
In addition, the Kennedy bill and H.R. 3200
would create a “public option,” a nationwide
insurance plan operated by the federal government.
It would also create a program of premium subsidies
to help roughly 27 Americans purchase health
insurance. Pro-life analysts warned that both the
government plan and the premium subsidies program
would pay for elective abortions unless Congress
amended the bills to explicitly exclude abortion.
Once abortion is defined as a federal
“essential benefit,” other provisions of the Kennedy
bill could require health networks to establish new
abortion-providing sites to provide adequate
“access” to abortion, and state laws regulating
abortion might be declared invalid.
The HELP committee rejected several NRLC-backed
amendments to the bill, including an amendment
offered by
Sen. Mike Enzi
(R-Wy.) to remove any authority
to declare abortion to be an essential benefit, and
an amendment by
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to prevent federal
funds from being used to subsidize abortion or plans
that include abortion.
The HELP Committee even voted down an amendment
offered by pro-life
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Ok.) to prevent health care
providers from being penalized for refusing to
participate in providing abortions.
“The Kennedy bill would result in the greatest
expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade,”
said NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson. “It
would result in federally mandated coverage of
abortion by nearly all health plans, federally
mandated recruitment of abortionists by local health
networks, and nullification of many state abortion
laws. It would also result in federal funding of
abortion on a massive scale.”
Although all of the pro-life amendments were
defeated in the HELP Committee, it is not yet
entirely certain what bill language will be brought
to the Senate floor in September.
For months, key members of the Senate Finance
Committee, of both parties, have been meeting behind
closed doors, trying to craft a more “centrist”
alternative to the Kennedy bill. It remains unclear
whether these negotiations will ultimately produce a
bill that will draw some Republican support, or how
it will handle abortion-related issues. The
chairman of the Finance Committee, pro-abortion Sen.
Max Baucus (D-Mt.), was quoted in the August 6 Washington Post as saying that there are
“active discussions underway with all sides to try
to put something together that would be acceptable.”
Two of the key Republicans who are conducting
the negotiations with Baucus, Senator Charles
Grassley (R-Iowa) and Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wy.),
have strong pro-life records.
Capps Amendment
When pro-abortion forces face risk of defeat in
Congress, they commonly put forward a “phony
compromise,” a term used by pro-life lawmakers to
refer to language that incorporates a pro-abortion
policy goal but disguises it with language that is
cosmetically pro-life.
Pro-life groups knew the pro-abortion side was
preparing a “phony compromise” on July 21, when
Congressman Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) sent Speaker
Pelosi a letter calling for “a common ground
solution” on “the issue of abortion in health care
reform.”
“Ryan,
who has not cast a pro-life vote since 2006,
impersonates a pro-life lawmaker, but in reality
he is an active agent of pro-abortion activists at
groups such as Planned Parenthood and Third Way,”
explained NRLC’s Johnson. “When Tim Ryan calls for
‘common ground,’ you know he has a memo from Planned
Parenthood in his pocket.”
Four other House Democrats co-signed Ryan’s
letter – one of whom,
Rep. Kendrick Meek (Fl.), has never cast a
single anti-abortion vote during his entire
congressional career. Just a few days earlier, Meek
had voted against pro-life amendments to the health
care bill in committee.
When the House Energy and Commerce Committee
met to amend H.R. 3200 on July 30, the “phony
compromise” amendment was offered by
Rep. Lois Capps (D-Ca.), who has voted
pro-abortion 100 percent of the time during her 11
years in the House – but pro-life observers say that
it was actually crafted by veteran staffers to
committee Chairman
Henry Waxman
(D-Ca.), one of the House’s most
tenacious defenders of abortion.
The Capps Amendment was strongly opposed by
NRLC, but was adopted by the pro-abortion majority
on the committee, over the “no” votes of the
committee’s Republicans and six Democrats.
Rep.
Chris Smith (R-NJ), co-chairman of he House
Pro-life Caucus, said of the Capps Amendment, “It’s
one of the most deceptive amendments I have ever
seen. The bottom line is that money is fungible,
and the plan itself will be subsidizing
abortion-on-demand, with taxpayer funding
commingled, and the numbers of abortions will go up
significantly.”
Unlike the Kennedy bill, the Capps Amendment
says that private health plans would not be required
to cover elective abortions. But it would create a
new nationwide government-run insurance plan (called
the “public option”), and authorize the Secretary of
Health and Human Services to cover all abortions
under that plan.
In addition, the language would create a new
program to provide federal subsidies to over 27
million Americans to help them purchase health
insurance, and plans (either private plans or the
new federal public plan) that cover abortion would
be eligible for these subsidies.
The Capps language says that the amount of
money spent for abortions would be counted against
funds obtained from private premiums – a device
denounced by pro-life analysts as “a bookeeping
sham.”
“H.R. 3200 would drastically change
longstanding federal policy,” said NRLC’s Johnson.
“The bill creates a nationwide insurance plan run by
the federal government, and the language explicitly
authorizes this plan to cover all abortions. If
this passes, the federal government would be running
a nationwide abortion plan. Abortionists would send
bills to the federal insurance plan and receive
payment checks from the federal Treasury. It is a
fiction, a sham, and a political ploy to pretend
that this scheme does not constitute federal
subsidies for abortion.”
On the committee,
Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mi.) and
Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) jointly offered a genuine
pro-life amendment to prohibit federal funds from
flowing to any plan that covers abortion, except to
save the life of the mother, or in cases of rape or
incest. But the amendment failed, 27-31.
Five Democrats on the committee ended up voting
against H.R. 3200, of whom two, Stupak and
Rep. Charles Melancon (La.), cited pro-life
objections. All of the committee’s Republicans
voted against the bill. Nevertheless, H.R. 3200
passed out of the committee favorably, 31-28.
On July 29, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
(USCCB) sent a letter to members of the committee,
warning that H.R. 3200 contained provisions that
would constitute “a radical change” from past
federal policy on abortion, and open the door to
federal funding of abortion. The letter urged
committee members to adopt pro-life amendments to
correct the problem. Following the completion of
committee action, USCCB official Richard Doerflinger
denounced the Capps Amendment, calling its purported
separation of private premiums and federal subsidies
“a legal fiction.”
Under the Capps language, the public plan “must
include abortions for any reason if the HHS
Secretary (who supports publicly funded abortion)
says so,” Doerflinger said. “This would be an
enormous imposition on the working poor who may find
the public plan to be the only one they can afford.
Whether you call it federal funds or private
premiums, they would be forced to pay for abortions
they don't want and may find abhorrent.”
Next Steps in House?
Speaker Pelosi and other Democratic leaders
have the power to make further changes in the
legislation before they bring it to the floor in
September. The House Rules Committee, an arm of the
House Democratic leadership, will issue on a list of
amendments that can be considered on the House
floor. However, this list must be agreed to by the
full House through adoption of a resolution, called
“the rule,” before the bill itself can be taken up.
Stupak said that he will seek permission from
the Rules Committee to offer his
anti-abortion-funding amendment on the House floor,
and that if permission is denied, he will vote
against the rule and urge other pro-life Democrats
to join him.
Stupak told CBS News he believes “a minimum of
39" Democrats would join him in voting to block the
bill if it does not contain satisfactory abortion
language.
Pro-life observers think that the Rules
Committee is likely to refuse to allow a vote on
Stupak’s amendment on the House floor. A spokesman
for the Rules Committee chair,
Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-N.Y.), said, “The
starting point for Rep. Slaughter on the healthcare
debate was protecting abortion rights.” (Los Angeles
Times, July 28]
On June 25,
Rep. Dan Boren (D-Ok.), Stupak, and 18 other
House Democrats sent Speaker Pelosi a letter in
which they said, “We cannot support any health care
reform proposal unless it explicitly excludes
abortion from the scope of any government-defined or
subsidized health insurance plan.”
Obama Role
On July 17, 2007,
Barack Obama – then seeking the Democratic
presidential nomination – appeared before the annual
conference of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
Speaking of his plans for “health care reform,”
Obama said, “in my mind, reproductive care is
essential care, basic care, so it is at the center,
the heart of the plan that I propose.”
Under his plan, Obama explained, people
could choose to keep their existing private health
care plans, but “insurers are going to have to abide
by the same rules in terms of providing
comprehensive care, including reproductive care ...
that’s going to be absolutely vital.”
In recent months, however, Obama and his appointees
have tried to deflect public attention away from
these pro-abortion goals.
Katie Couric of CBS, in an interview broadcast
July 21, asked Obama directly, “Do you favor a
government option that would cover abortions?”
Obama responded, “What I think is important, at this
stage, is not trying to micromanage what benefits
are covered. . . . As you know, I'm pro-choice. But
I think we also have a tradition of, in this town,
historically, of not financing abortions as part of
government funded health care.”
NRLC’s Johnson criticized those – including
Chris Korzen, executive director of the pro-Obama
group “Catholics United,” and Associated Press
reporter Charles Babington – who falsely reported
that Obama had endorsed a policy against financing
abortions in the exchange with Couric.
“Obama knows very well that abortion will be
covered unless Congress explicitly excludes
abortion, so his ‘micromanage’ comment was actually
a swipe against what the pro-life lawmakers are
trying to do,” Johnson said. “Obama’s remark about
‘tradition’ was an exercise in artful misdirection –
he simply observed that there is a longstanding
policy against federal funding of abortion, but he
certainly did not endorse it – and in fact, he has
opposed limits on public funding of abortion
throughout his political career.”
In mid-July, Tina Tchen, director of the White
House Office of Public engagement, attended the
Planned Parenthood Organizing and Policy Summit, a
gathering of over 400 pro-abortion activists. Tchen
urged the participants to “get back into campaign
mode” and stir up grassroots activity to keep
Congress from removing “basic reproductive health
services” from the pending bills, according to a
report of the meeting that appeared on the
pro-abortion website RHRealityCheck.org.
Pro-Abortion Groups Gear Up
For months, leaders of major pro-abortion
groups, when speaking to their own backers, have
emphasized the potential of the health care
legislation to greatly expand access to abortion and
government subsidies for abortion. For example, in
an April interview on National Public Radio, Cecile
Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood
Federation of America, said that the health care
legislation would be a “platform” to provide
abortion access to “all women.” The National
Abortion Federation, an association of abortion
providers, said, “NAF supports health care reform as
a way to increase access to comprehensive
reproductive health care, including abortion care,
for all women.”
However, in July, as the abortion-related
aspects of the issue became a hot issue in Congress,
some of the same pro-abortion groups began telling
the news media and lawmakers that the pro-life side
was promoting “myths” when they warned that the
bills would expand abortion.
“Most of the pro-abortion groups have been
talking out of both sides of their mouths on these
bills, but in recent weeks we have been able to get
more and more people to recognize what they are
trying to do,” said NRLC’s Johnson.
Action Needed Now
To read what you can do to prevent enactment of
the expansive pro-abortion legislation discussed
above, see the Action Alert on the back cover.
For updates on the legislative situation, check
in frequently at
www.nrlactioncenter.com
For additional documentation and background
information on this issue, go to
http://www.nrlc.org/AHC/Index.html
