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A Look Back at a
“Must Read” By Dave Andrusko Yesterday we printed an important op-ed written by NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson that had appeared on The Hill newspaper’s Congressional Blog (“Time to Codify the Hyde Amendment principles”). If you missed it, I would strongly encourage you to go to www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/March11/nv030211.html and to pass the link along to your pro-life friends, family, and colleagues. Mr. Johnson makes a number of very important points and clarifications. Let me highlight just a handful. First, until the last Congress federal law for the most part reflected the overwhelming public consensus that abortion should not be regarded as a routine part of "healthcare." The House initially acted to apply these same principles to legislation to restructure the healthcare system by adopting the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, which would have prohibited federal subsidies for elective abortion in any component of the healthcare legislation. The final law (ObamaCare) substituted (in Mr. Johnson’s words) a “hodge-podge of artful exercises in misdirection, bookkeeping gimmicks, loopholes, and provisions that are rigged to expire” to hide the fact that the Stupak-Pitts language had been eliminated. Attempting to add additional cover for House Democrats who had bailed out, President Obama ”tried to further cloak the abortion-expansive provisions of the bill with a hollow executive order --a document that was dismissed by the president of Planned Parenthood as a ‘symbolic gesture.’" Second, the first chance the Obama Administration had, the Department of Health and Human Services approved state-submitted plans that explicitly covered elective abortions while implementing the very first major component of the law, the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan program (PCIP). The Administration beat a hasty retreat when NRLC blew the whistle, but assured pro-abortion activists that the discretionary decision to exclude abortion from the PCIP program “is not a precedent for other programs or policies" under ObamaCare. Third, there is a bill to correct these abortion-expansive provisions in ObamaCare-- the Protect Life Act (H.R. 358), sponsored by Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.). But “what is ultimately needed,” Mr. Johnson wrote, “is a clear, comprehensive, uniform policy to prevent federal subsidies for abortion”--the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (H.R. 3), introduced by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Dan Lipinski (D-Il.) scheduled to be marked up today. (There was good news on that front today. The House Judiciary Committee today rejected all weakening amendments H.R. 3 and favorably reported the bill, 23-14.) Fourth and finally, experience shows that cutting off federal funding has a “tragic result,” according to the Guttmacher Institute, formally associated with Planned Parenthood. At least one million Americans are alive today “who otherwise would have died in federally funded abortions.” Please take the time to read Mr. Johnson’s richly detailed op-ed at www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/March11/nv030211.html. I need your feedback on both Today's News & Views and National Right to Life News Today. Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha. |