Smuggling Abortion Agenda into Health Care Reform

Smuggling abortion agenda into healthcare reform
Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow - 7/16/2009 6:00:00 AM
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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.