U.S. HOUSE TO VOTE WITHIN DAYS ON WHETHER TO MAKE PRO-ABORTION SENATE HEALTH BILL “THE LAW OF THE LAND,” AS HOUSE MEMBERS STUDY COMMUNICATIONS FROM NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE, U.S. CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS, AND OTHERS

WASHINGTON – In a significant development this week, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) made it clear that the House Democratic Leadership will force a vote soon on the Senate-passed health bill (H.R. 3590), including multiple abortion-related provisions strongly opposed by the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) and other pro-life organizations, and will not include pro-life language in any followup legislation.

In addition, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) intends to go forward on the basis, reportedly articulated by the Senate parliamentarian, that H.R. 3590 must be enacted into law before the Senate can consider any followup bill under fast-track “reconciliation” procedures.  The Washington Postreported (March 13), “Pelosi shrugged off the ruling, accepting that the Senate bill would have to move first, and independently.  ‘It isn’t going to make any difference except maybe in the mood that people are in,’ she said Friday.  ‘The fact is that once we pass it [H.R. 3590] in the House, it’s going to be the law of the land.”

House members have received a March 5 memorandum from NRLC, posted here, which summarizes NRLC substantive objections to multiple provisions of the Senate bill, and sketches the political implications of the upcoming roll call.  NRLC said in part:  “When all of the pro-abortion provisions are considered in total, the Senate bill is the most pro-abortion single piece of legislation that has ever come to the House floor for a vote, since Roe v. Wade.  Any House member who votes for the Senate health bill is casting a career-defining pro-abortion vote.  A House member who votes for the Senate bill would forfeit a plausible claim to pro-life credentials.  No House member who votes for the Senate bill will be regarded, in the future, as having a record against federal funding of abortion.  All of those statements are true regardless of how many assurances or denials are disseminated by President Obama or by Speaker Pelosi, both of whom have sought throughout their political careers to undermine limits on government funding of abortion.  House members who vote for the Senate bill will be accountable to their constituents for what the Senate bill contains.”

On March 12, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops disseminated to congressional offices a four-page memorandum titled, “What’s Wrong With the Senate Health Care Bill on Abortion?  A Response to Professor Jost.”  This memorandum is a concise and cogent rebuttal to one recent tendentious attempt to minimize the multiple ways in which the Senate bill departs, in the pro-abortion direction, from the principles of current law and from the substance of the abortion-related provisions adopted by the House last year (especially the Stupak-Pitts Amendment).  The memo explains how provisions of the Senate bill would result in direct federal funding of elective abortions, federal subsidies for plans that cover elective abortions (including some federally administered plans), and authority for federal officials to mandate inclusion of abortion coverage in private plans.  It also notes that the Senate bill lacks the vital abortion nondiscrimination language (the so-called “Weldon” provision) found in the House-passed health bill.  The USCCB memo is posted here.

On March 11, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention issued a national alert, urging citizens to contact their representatives in the House to urge the defeat of the Senate bill.

The results of polls conducted very recently in 12 congressional districts by the polling companyTM, inc./WomanTrend, dealing with the abortion-related aspects of the health care debate, are postedhere.

Additional resources on the abortion-related controversies surrounding H.R. 3590 are posted on the NRLC website here.

To view this article in PDF format, click here. An updated action packet (with detailed articles, talking points, fliers, and action list) is now available for download over on the “Health Care Reform” page.

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Both of the bills backed by the Obama White House – Senator Kennedy’s bill (as yet unnumbered), and H.R. 3200 in the House – would create a massive new federal health insurance plan called the “public plan” or “public option.” Both bills contain provisions that would result in the “public plan” covering all elective abortions.

Under the Senate (Kennedy) bill, the “public plan” would be required to cover all “essential benefits.” The bill says that “essential benefits” include (but are not limited to) ambulatory patient services, hospitalization, and preventive services. Under numerous past federal court decisions, such broad categories will include elective abortion unless Congress adds an explicit exclusion for abortion – but the majority of Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee voted down such an exclusion (the Enzi Amendment). Thus, under the Kennedy bill, many PRIVATE health plans would also be required to pay for and to provide local access to “essential benefits,” and state laws that regulate abortion could be invalidated.

On July 30, the 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” explicitly authorizes the “public plan” to cover all abortions. This would drastically change longstanding federal policy. This means that any citizen who wants to take advantage of the public plan will be compelled to purchase coverage for abortion on demand. The federal agency will collect the premium money, receive bills from abortionists, and send the abortionists payment checks from a federal Treasury account. It is a sham to pretend that this does not constitute funding of abortion. If this passes, the federal government will be running a nationwide abortion-on-demand insurance plan.

The House bill also empowers a federal “Health Choices Commissioner” to insist that health networks provide local access to specific services (e.g., abortion).

In addition, both the Kennedy bill and H.R. 3200 also create a massive new federal program to provide subsidies to help tens of millions of Americans buy health insurance. The Kennedy bill’s “essential benefits” mechanism would ensure that virtually all plans, public and private, cover elective abortion, and the new federal subsidies would flow to these plans. Under H.R. 3200 as amended by the Capps Amendment, some private plans may elect not to include abortion, but private plans that cover elective abortion will be federally subsidized. Both bills provide funds for the new premium-subsidy program through a new funding pipeline that would not be subject to the Hyde Amendment, which is merely a year-to-year provision that currently prevents federal funding of abortions in the Medicaid program. As the Associated Press accurately reported in its August 5, 2009, analysis, “A law called the Hyde amendment applies the [abortion] restrictions to Medicaid . . . The [Obama-backed] health overhaul would create a stream of federal funding not covered by the restrictions.”

In three House committees, and in the Senate committee, pro-abortion Democratic committee chairmen and majorities voted down amendments to keep elective abortion out of the “public plan” and prevent federal subsidies from going to private plans that cover elective abortion.

From the Baptist Press:

Posted on Aug 7, 2009 | by Tom Strode WASHINGTON (BP)–The health-care reform bill making its way through the U.S. House of Representatives “is extremely dangerous legislation to the health and wellbeing of most Americans” for a variety of reasons, the Southern Baptist Convention’s ethics entity says.

The proposal — America’s Affordable Health Choices Act, H.R. 3200 — would endanger the lives of the unborn and elderly, increase taxes and health-care costs, and extend government’s reach into Americans’ private lives, according to an analysis by the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC).

While acknowledging the measure’s 1,018 pages and voluminous citations make “it nearly impossible to figure out what everything in the bill actually means,” the ERLC says it can report “with absolute certainty” the proposal “will lead to diminished health care for most Americans, less choice, higher taxes and unprecedented government intrusion into every level and aspect of society, from business, to education, to marriage, to individual liberty.”
Read more…

Pelosi Doubletalk on Abortion:  Hear House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) duck, weave, stammer, and prevaricate in response to a question from CNN’s John King about whether the Obama health bill will pay for abortions (July 26, 2009).