By Dave Andrusko

On Friday, I suggested we could anticipate lots of action over the weekend and Monday as the Senate gears up to consider health care "reform." And that's proven true many times over. Let me frame our discussion here around four very telling quotes and try to figure out what it means.

"White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod suggested Sunday that President Obama will intervene to make sure a controversial amendment restricting federal funding for abortion coverage is stripped from final health care reform legislation. In doing so, the president would be heeding the call of abortion rights supporters like Planned Parenthood that have called the White House their 'strongest weapon' in keeping such restrictions out of the bill."
     -- From "Axelrod Signals Obama Will Try to Strip Abortion Language From Health Care Bill." (The "controversial amendment" is the pro-life Stupak-Pitts Amendment.)

"At the time, Stupak's opposition to the Capps amendment -- he was suspicious of it because it had been drafted without his group's input, by a pro-choice Democrat no less..."
     -- From "Can the Dems Overcome Their Abortion Split on Health Care?" Time magazine online, November 16, by Amy Sullivan The Capps Amendment was not only not (as advertised) a "compromise," it explicitly authorized payment for all abortions under the big new federal insurance program called the "public option." In addition a new program to help tens of millions of Americans purchase health insurance would provide subsidies which could be used to purchase private insurance plans that cover elective abortions.

"A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending--one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health-care system -- would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.'
     -- From "Report: Bill would reduce senior care: Medicare cuts approved by House may affect access to providers," which ran in the Washington Post Sunday.

"The poll suggests the public is becoming more attuned to the fact that when it comes to health care, details often make all the difference."
     -- From "AP Poll: Fine print in health care prompts worries."
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In the interest of persuading you to read all three parts of TN&V for today, let me immediately draw three conclusions.

#1. Pro-abortion President Barack Obama is to sincerity what Al Gore is to graciousness. He spends months and months harping on the same mantra--health care "reform" would not upset the "status quo" on funding--at the very same time he and his party are in overdrive trying to reverse decades of federal policy. Adding insult to injury, Obama insists that it is the Stupak-Pitts amendment, which would apply the longstanding principle of the Hyde Amendment to the big new programs, is an attempt to upset the apple cart and therefore must be eliminated. And if that weren't enough, last week Obama told Jake Tapper of ABC News that "I want to make sure...that we are not in some way sneaking in funding for abortions…"

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, President Barack Obama, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

#2. But Obama's up is down, hot is cold counter-intuitive language is of a piece with much of the la-la land discussion about health care "reform." For example, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released a report over the weekend that warned, "A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending -- one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health-care system -- would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday," as the Washington Post reported. Quoted in the same article Administration officials simply close their eyes and deny the undeniable.

Why is that important to pro-lifers as pro-lifers? As NRLC's Powell Center for Bioethics points out, "The National Right to Life Committee has long warned that over-promising and under-funding is a recipe for future rationing. That is, if a bill passes providing subsidies for the uninsured without providing an adequate funding source for it, not only now but as health care spending rises in the future, the likely result will be cutting back on the treatments and tests available not only for the newly subsidized but also for those covered by other government health care programs, notably Medicare for senior citizens."

#3. One other quote I could have included fits right in: "President Barack Obama's bid to overhaul America's healthcare system has exposed a split within his Democratic Party over abortion that threatens to undercut the party's gains in recent elections." (From "Abortion Exposes Divisions Among Democrats.")

Pro-abortion Democrats find themselves in an interesting dilemma. They know how successful they were (starting with Obama's election) in snookering many pro-life Catholics into believing that these pro-abortionists were practically pro-life lite. This patently insincere but effective stratagem helped make possible the election of the most pro-abortion President in history and huge majorities in both the House and Senate. (There is a reason "abortion rights supporters like Planned Parenthood have called the White House their 'strongest weapon' in keeping such restrictions out of the bill": President Obama is pro-abortion from the tips of his toes to the top of his head.)

But, as I say, they are caught betwixt and between. They grasp (as even pro-abortion Time columnist Amy Sullivan admits) that the public is strongly against funding abortion, on the one hand, but that many of the pro-abortion militants are not willing to pretend they don't want abortion funded, on the other hand.

What's a guy to do, tell the truth? Not if you are Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, or Barack Obama.

Please send your thoughts and comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com.  And be sure to order your copies of the special January 22 Commemorative Issue of National Right to Life News. http://www.nrlc.org/news/Jan222010.pdf.  

Part Three
Part One