Abortion and the Health Bill
According to a Wall Street Journal Article, the President’s Health Care bill is going to allow federal funding for abortions, something he said he would not do. So what’s the big deal? If anyone remembers the Hyde Amendment which was the first piece of legislation to ban the federal funding o abortion, it came about in the 1970’s when Congress realized that a full third of all abortions in the U.S. were being funded through Medicaid. This did not sit well with Congress so they passed the Hyde Amendment put forth by Rep. Henry Hyde in 1976.
Planned Parenthood and Medicaid were working together in the form they were meant to. To get rid of poor minorities through slavery and abortion. Congress actually stopped it with the Hyde Amendment, but I digress.
Anyway, now the administration is faltering. Claiming that here has to be a balance between healthcare reform and the Hyde Amendment. So far, according to the President current proposals to ban federal funding for abortion doesn’t strike that balance. Which brings up a good point: either the funding for abortion is prohibited or it isn’t. There is no Zen (as Charmaine Yoest says in the WSJ article).
From the Article:
• It would change existing law by allowing federally subsidized health-care plans to pay for abortions and could require private health-insurance plans to cover abortion.
• It would impose a first-ever abortion tax—a separate premium payment that will be used to pay for elective abortions—on enrollees in insurance plans that covers abortions through newly created government health-care exchanges.
• And it would fail to protect the rights of health-care providers to refuse to participate in abortions.
The president’s plan goes further than the Senate bill on abortion by calling for spending $11 billion over five years on “community health centers,” which include Planned Parenthood clinics that provide abortions.
The bottom line is that the president wants to deploy words that sound soothing like “balance” and “adjust.” Meanwhile, the courts are rendering precedent with stark words like “mandatory.”
When confronted by House Minority Leader John Boehner about abortion funding during the health-care summit last week, the president dropped his head and looked down at the table. How revealing.
Now, it is no secret that I am not a fan of abortion, however, I would never deny someone the right to save their own life through termination of pregnancy. What I can’t understand is why Americans fall for this all the time. The politician says one thing with the intention of doing the exact opposite. President Obama promised that the federal government would not fund abortion, yet his proposals clearly will allow for it. Where’s the change?
