Monday, July 20, 2009

More on abortion expansion via 'health care reform'

The following is taken from a new NRLC press release.

WASHINGTON (July 20, 2009) -- A report in today's New York Times ("Health Bill Might Direct Tax Money to Abortion," by Robert Pear and Adam Liptak) puts a spotlight on the Obama Administration's attempts to secure sweeping abortion coverage mandates and abortion subsidies in the health care bills currently under consideration in the Congress.

Referring to Senator Kennedy's unnumbered bill, which was approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee on July 15, and to the House Democratic Leadership's "tri-committee" bill (H.R. 3200), Johnson said, "These bills would result in federally mandated coverage of abortion by nearly all health plans, federally mandated recruitment of abortionists by local health networks, and nullification of many state abortion laws. They would also result in federal subsidies for abortion on a massive scale."

An NRLC analysis of H.R. 3200 explains in detail why general provisions such as those contained in the two bills will invariably be construed, by administrators and by the federal courts, to require coverage of elective abortion, unless Congress explicitly excludes abortion.

The NRLC analysis also explains why the "Hyde Amendment," a year-to-year patch on the federal Health and Human Services appropriations bill, would not prevent massive federal subsidies for elective abortions under H.R. 3200 or the Kennedy bill.

The NRLC analysis and other key documents on the issue are posted on the NRLC website at http://www.nrlc.org/AHC/Index.html.

Read the rest.