Denial and Deception
by Fr. Roger Landry - March 12, 2010
As President Obama and the Democratic leaders of Congress continue to approach the artificial deadline of March 18 to have the House of Representatives pass the Senate version of the Health Care reform and have both chambers pass some Obama-proposed revisions through the "nuclear option" of the reconciliation process, the U.S. Bishops have continued to call the president, senators, congressmen and citizens alike to the fact that the present bill is unacceptable. It still has several provisions that will provide federal funds for abortion and therefore force American citizens to have to pay for the destruction of innocent human life in the womb.
Both President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have been repeating a mantra that there are no federal funds for abortion in the health care reforms. During the February 25 health care summit, President Obama accused Ohio Congressman John Boehner of spinning the truth when he brought up the pro-abortion elements of the Senate bill and said "heath care reform should be an opportunity to protect human life, not end it." The president implied that the House Minority Leader was resorting to "standard talking points" rather than accurately portraying the bill. Speaker Pelosi intervened and emphatically declared, "There is no public funding of abortion in these bills and I don't want our listeners or viewers to get the wrong impression from what you said."
But it is the President and the Speaker who are resorting to the "standard talking points" to conceal what would in fact be, as Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee called it, "the most expansive pro-abortion piece of legislation ever to reach the floor of either house of Congress for a vote, since Roe v. Wade." The President and Speaker, according to Johnson, are employing a tactic of "denial and deception," seeking to claim that because there are no explicit allocations of federal dollars to pay for abortions in the Senate version that there are no back-door mechanisms, either. But there are several of those — and the President, Speaker, pro-abortion lobbyists and pro-lifers all know it.
Before we get into the details of how the Senate bill will fund abortions — and why, therefore, the Catholic bishops of our country are vigorously insisting that revisions be made — it would be helpful for those with common sense to just look at two big-picture facts to see how the President and Speaker are being disingenuous.
First, if there really were no federal funds going to abortion in the Senate bill, and if the President and Speaker and pro-abortion leaders of Congress truly intended that no federal funds go to subsidize this killing of the innocent, why would they not, therefore, support the insertion of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment language into the bill? This language, approved 240-194 by the members of the House in November, made totally explicit that no funds authorized or appropriated by the health care reform bill "may be used to pay for any abortion or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion." It was passed by the House because 240 Congressmen, including 64 from Speaker Pelosi's own Democratic party, recognized that her assertions that "there is no public funding of abortion" in the bill were simply not credible. With the language of the Amendment, people would still be able to obtain insurance to cover abortions, but this insurance would need to be "separate supplemental coverage" paid for entirely with non-federal funds. If this language were inserted into the President's proposed list of revisions to the Senate Bill, it is very likely that the whole health care bill would have sufficient votes to pass the House. The reason why it hasn't been readily embraced by the Speaker and President is because it would specifically close backdoor avenues to provide federal funds for abortion — and Pelosi and Obama are counting on pouring billions of dollars through those back doors.
The second macroscopic fact is that basically all national groups that promote abortion support the Senate bill and oppose the Stupak-Pitts language and all national pro-life groups oppose the Senate bill and support the Stupak-Pitts language. That, too, should indicate to everyone with common sense what the Senate bill contains — notwithstanding the President's and Speaker's multiple pronouncements that there's no federal funding for abortion in it.
Now we can turn to the actual backdoor mechanisms by which the Senate bill funds abortion and why, unless it is revised as the bishops insist, it should be opposed.
The first is through directly funding community health centers outside of the typical annual appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services. The HHS bill has traditionally been covered by the Hyde Amendment, which prevents any federal dollars from being used to fund abortions or organizations that provide them except in the case of rape, incest or life of the mother. Yet, during the debate for the Senate bill on Christmas Eve, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid inserted a "manager's amendment" allocating 7 billion dollars of direct funding — President Obama suggested increasing it to 11 billion — to community health centers, meaning that it would no longer be part of HHS allocation and therefore no longer come under Hyde Amendment restrictions. It's unsurprising, moreover, that two national pro-abortion groups, the Reproductive Health Access Project and the Abortion Access Project, have been actively campaigning that these community health centers perform elective abortions. Under the bill and their mandates, there would be nothing to stop them from doing so. The Stupak-Pitts language would eliminate this loophole by making the principles of the Hyde amendment apply to health care reform as a whole.
The second means by which the Senate bill funds abortion is through affordability tax credits given to subsidize plans that cover elective abortions. Some of the money given to those plans, therefore, would go to paying indirectly for abortions, which is something that the Hyde Amendment has always prevented. Language in the Senate bill seeks to set up an accounting system for these subsidized plans supposedly to prevent federal money from paying for abortion, but rather than alleviating the immoral situation of forced cooperation in evil, it aggravates it. For those who subscribe to these subsidized health plans, they would have two charges, one for regular health coverage and a second specifically to underwrite abortions system-wide. Everyone would be writing a second check to pay specifically for abortions. The head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, has said that this abortion surcharge would apply without exception to everyone who participates in such a health care exchange.
The third means is through the Milulksi amendment that was incorporated into the Senate bill. This amendment, filed by staunchly pro-abortion Senator Barbara Milulski, gives the Department of Health and Human Services the ability to compel even private health plans to cover elective abortions merely by placing abortion on a list of "preventive" services. When during Senate debate Mikulski was specifically requested to exclude abortion from the scope of the authority of "preventive" services, she denied the revision, because it was pretty clear what the purpose of the revision is.
The fourth means concerns health programs for Native Americans, where we see similar surreptitious tactics at work. Senator Reid introduced into the Senate bill a manager's amendment permanently reauthorizing these programs, but whereas in all previous Indian health authorizations there was always a ban on funding for elective abortions, Senator Reid left out the ban in his amendment. This means that without universal Stupak-Pitts language, we would be paying for the slaughter of the next generation of Native Americans.
As the contrived March 18 deadline nears, now would be the time for citizens who do not want to have income taxes taken out of their paychecks to fund abortion to contact their Congressmen. They should seek to persuade them definitively to include Stupak-Pitts language in the health care revisions or oppose the Senate Health Care bill until we can have a bill that truly prevents federal funds from paying for abortions.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
