[Apologetics] Smuggling abortion agenda into healthcare reform

Thu Jul 16 16:34:53 EDT 2009

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20090716/pl_cq_politics/politics3167407

GOP Escalates Effort to Link Health Bill, Abortion
By Alex Wayne, CQ Staff Alex   Wed Jul 15, 8:06 pm ET 

Anti-abortion Republicans are escalating efforts to link Democratic health bills to the divisive and emotional issue.

They contend the bill their chamber will debate this month would lead to more abortions because insurers would be required to pay for the procedure.

The bill (HR 3200), would authorize a new appointed committee to recommend minimum benefits that all health insurers would be required to offer in their plans. Without a prohibition against including abortion among those benefits, the Republicans said, history suggests insurers will be required to cover the procedure.

"This legislation will mandate and subsidize abortion and then tax the Americans who stand for one of the very principles that this nation was founded on -- the right to life," said Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa. 

He said he will introduce amendments to the bill when the Energy and Commerce Committee considers changes to the measure in sessions that begin Thursday. His amendments would prohibit requiring insurers to cover abortion, except when a mother's life is threatened or when the pregnancy resulted from rape and incest.

Democrats portray the issue differently.

A longstanding provision in the annual spending bill that funds the Department of Health and Human Services, named for former Rep. Henry J. Hyde, R-Ill. (1975-2007), prohibits Medicaid from paying for abortions. Democrats who support abortion rights have long chafed at the inclusion of the Hyde amendment in the bill, year after year, but have not tried to remove it since taking over Congress for fear of inflaming abortion opponents.

But those Democrats say Republicans are now simply trying to expand the Hyde prohibition to all health care services, and that they won't stand for it.

"I think that if anti-choice Republicans or others see this as an opportunity to expand prohibitions on a legally allowed and medically appropriate practice, then they are wrong," said Diana DeGette, D-Colo., vice chairwoman of Energy and Commerce. "We are not going to use the health care bill to expand prohibitions on a legal medical practice, period."

In that case, Republicans say, the slow decline in the number of abortions performed in the United States over the last three decades will likely be reversed. There were more than 29 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15-44 in 1980, according to the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute. The rate fell to 19.4 per 1,000 women by 2005.

The Guttmacher Institute, which was founded by a former president of Planned Parenthood, says that one in four Medicaid-eligible women who wish to terminate their pregnancies are instead forced to carry their children to term because the program will not pay for abortions.

Anti-abortion Republicans say that this is good: "Millions of children walk the earth today because of the Hyde amendment, because the money wasn't there to fund their destruction," said Christopher H. Smith, R-N.J.

Most people with employer-sponsored insurance also must pay for abortions out of their own pocket. "Most insurers offer plans that include this coverage but most employers choose not to offer it as part of their benefits package," said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, the insurance industry's trade association. 

There is no language regarding abortion in the House health overhaul, and Democrats say they do not intend to require that insurers and employers cover abortions under the bill. 

But Pitts, Smith and their allies say logic suggests that abortion will be a required service under minimum benefit standards the Obama administration would be authorized to create, under the bill. 

President Obama, who supports the right to an abortion, has said that he considers reproductive health care an essential health service. 

History, Smith says, is instructive. In 1983, he won passage of an appropriations rider that forbade the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) from covering abortion. But in 1993 and 1994, when President Clinton was new in office and Democrats controlled Congress, Smith's amendment was not renewed. 

The FEHBP covered abortions during that period. But Smith won passage of his amendment again in 1995, and the program has not covered abortions since.

Pitts said that he does not expect to win approval of his amendments to the health overhaul at the committee level, but that he might attract more support on the House floor, when anti-abortion Democrats could support them. 

That is, of course, if he can get his amendments to the floor. 

The House Rules Committee decides what amendments to put in order during floor debates, and Smith said the committee has ruled three of his abortion-related amendments out of order already this year.
--- On Thu, 7/16/09, Dianne Dawson <rcdianne at yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Dianne Dawson <rcdianne at yahoo.com>
Subject: [Apologetics] Smuggling abortion agenda into healthcare reform
To: "Apologetics Group" <apologetics at gathman.org>
Date: Thursday, July 16, 2009, 3:59 PM

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Politics/Default.aspx?id=602360

Smuggling abortion agenda into healthcare reform 

Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow - 7/16/2009 6:00:00 AM

If passed, two healthcare reform bills could mean more abortions at taxpayers' expense.

The two primary measures -- the Kennedy bill and the House Democratic leadership bill -- contain provisions that would represent the greatest expansion of abortion since the Supreme Court legalized it in 1973, according to Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee.

"These two bills contain multiple provisions that would result in federally mandated insurance coverage of abortion on demand, result in massive federal subsidies for abortion, result even in mandated creation of many new abortion clinics across the country," he explains.

Johnson adds the bills would nullify at least some state limitations on abortion. He concludes passage would result in an increase in abortions, but recalls the Obama administration promised to take steps to reduce them.

"And it's quite true that the majority of Americans do not want the government to be promoting abortion as a method of birth control -- but that is what is imbedded in these bills," Johnson notes.

According to Johnson, the pro-abortion movement hopes to smuggle the policies into law by using healthcare as a vehicle -- and there is a grave danger they will succeed, he laments, unless the public urges their elected representatives to vote against the measures.

On a party-line vote Wednesday, the Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee passed the $600 billion Kennedy bill. Democratic lawmakers in both houses of Congress are pushing for debate and passage of the bills before the August recess.

Like a deer that longs for running waters so my soul longs for you, O God.
Ps 42:1

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