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NRL News
Page 3
September 2009
Volume 36
Issue 9

TELL CONGRESS: VOTE AGAINST ANY
HEALTH CARE BILL THAT INCLUDES ABORTION COVERAGE
By Wanda Franz, Ph.D.

OBAMA “FABRICATES” ON ABORTION

The liberal Faith for Health web site informs us: “[On] August 18, an estimated 140,000 people of faith gathered on a historic national conference call with President Obama and the American faith community.”  And what did the president say about health care? “There’s a lot of misinformation in this debate, and there are some folks who are frankly bearing false witness” (ABC News, 8/19/2009).  And “you’ve heard that this is all going to mean government funding of abortion. Not true. These are all fabrications” (Weekly Standard, 8/19/2009) Fabrications? Really, Mr. President?  We have news for the “140,000 people of faith” gathered electronically, so to speak, at the president’s feet: it is the president who bore “false witness” and engaged in a “fabrication.”

Factcheck.org (8/21/2009) had this to say: “‘President Obama today brazenly misrepresented the abortion-related component’ of health care legislation, said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee.”  Moreover, “NRLC’s Johnson said ‘the bill backed by the White House (H.R. 3200) explicitly authorizes the government plan to cover all elective abortions’. And our analysis shows that Johnson’s statement is correct…. Obama has said in the past that ‘reproductive services’ would be covered by his public plan, so it’s likely that any new federal insurance plan would cover abortion unless Congress expressly prohibits that.” [italics added]

That’s why you must demand that Congress do just that.

ABORTION IN HEALTH CARE BILLS

Both of the health care bills backed by the Obama White House—H.R. 3200 in the House, and the “Affordable Health Choices Act” in the Senate—create two big new federal programs that would cover abortion for any reason: (1) a national health insurance program that would be run entirely by the federal government, called the “public plan” or “public option,” and (2) a huge new program to provide subsidies to help tens of millions of Americans buy health insurance.

WHAT ABOUT THE HYDE AMENDMENT?

The current “Hyde Amendment” would not prevent the new public plan from paying directly for abortions, and it would not prevent federal subsidies for private plans that cover abortion.  The Hyde Amendment is a very important law, but it applies only to federal programs that are funded through the bill to which it is annually attached, which is the appropriations bill that funds the federal Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), such as the Medicaid program.

Under H.R. 3200, all of the funds for the public plan and the premium subsidy program would flow through new pipelines created by the bill itself, not through the HHS appropriations bill, as the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has confirmed.  As the Associated Press accurately reported (8/5/2009): “A law called the Hyde amendment applies the [abortion] restrictions to Medicaid . . . [But] the health overhaul would create a stream of federal funding not covered by the restrictions.” [italics added]

A RADICAL MOVE TOWARDS ABORTION COVERAGE

To understand the radical nature of the proposed health care provisions for abortion coverage, consider this:

* Abortion is explicitly mentioned 17 times in the current House bill. On July 30, the Democrat-controlled House Energy and Commerce Committee added to H.R. 3200 an amendment written by staff to Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Ca.) and offered by Rep. Lois Capps (D-Ca.), both of whom have consistently pro-abortion career voting records. This “phony compromise” amendment explicitly authorizes the “public plan” to cover all abortions. This means that any citizen who wants to take advantage of the public plan will be compelled to purchase coverage for abortion on demand. Furthermore, the Capps Amendment explicitly requires the federal agency to raise every enrollee’s premium by an amount sufficient to pay for all the abortions paid for by the agency.  Thus, a federal agency will collect the premium money, will receive bills from abortionists, and will send the abortionists payment checks drawn on a federal Treasury account. This is clearly government funding of abortion – the federal government would be running a natio* wide insurance plan covering abortion on demand.

* The abortion coverage would not be optional—no citizen would be allowed to enroll in the federal insurance program without paying the abortion surcharge. As Time magazine accurately reported (8/24/2009), “The problem is that all those who sign up for the public option would have to pay into the account for abortion coverage, an amount ‘not less than $1 per month,’ according to the legislation. So in effect, anyone who wanted to sign up for the public option, a federally funded and administered program, would find themselves paying for abortion coverage.” Or to say it more clearly: they would be compelled to pay for abortion coverage.

* In four congressional committees, pro-abortion Democratic committee chairmen and majorities, allied with the White House, REJECTED amendments to keep elective abortion out of the “public plan” and to prevent federal subsidies from going to private plans that cover elective abortion.  What is there to “fabricate” here, Mr. President?  These votes are on record!

* Under the Senate bill, there is an additional problem: Both the “public plan” and, in time, most private insurance plans, would be required to cover all “essential benefits.” Under numerous past federal court decisions, such essential health benefits will include elective abortion unless Congress adds an explicit exclusion for abortion – but the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee rejected such an exclusion. Thus, under the Senate bill, many private health plans would be required to pay for and to provide local access to abortion, AND MANY STATE LAWS THAT REGULATE ABORTION COULD BE INVALIDATED.

The preceding relies heavily on previous critiques authored by NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson and Senior Legislative Counsel Susan T. Muskett, J.D.