The Obama-nation of Abortion Coverage

Tony Perkins, FRC Washington Update: Health care may be on Sen. Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) Thanksgiving menu, but it could be awhile before the Senate talks turkey. The Majority Leader started the Rule 14 process last week, which basically means the House bill would be available on the legislative calendar by tomorrow. Of course, just because it's on the Senate calendar doesn't mean the chamber will do anything with it. In order to start considering the bill, Sen. Reid would need 60 votes on his motion to proceed. With shaky support from his own party, that prospect seems highly unlikely. If any of the 58 Democrats and two Independents vote against the motion, the bill would stall. In case you're wondering why the Senate is considering the House bill instead of its own version, H.R. 3962 is just a placeholder. Because tax bills can't originate in the Senate, Sen. Reid is using the House legislation as a shell. Eventually, that shell will be replaced by the Senate health care bill, which is still under construction in closed door meetings of the Senate leadership.

One of the biggest questions on everyone's mind is whether the Stupak-Pitts amendment will survive the secret negotiations. Yesterday, Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) was blunt about the bill's chances without it. "What is clear is that for this bill to be successful, there can be no taxpayer funding for abortion," he said. And he's right. The Stupak amendment was the only popular thing about H.R. 3962. PelosiCare passed by a measly five votes, while the amendment to strip abortion funding won by a landslide (46 votes)! That fact seems to be completely lost on the President, who can't backpedal fast enough on his promise that "no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions."

Yesterday, White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod hinted that the President will do everything he can to strip the ban from the final bill, claiming that "the amendment changes the 'status quo,' something the President cannot abide." What changes the status quo is government-run health care. The Stupak amendment just adds the current restrictions to it. Planned Parenthood is already predicting an end to the amendment at the hands of the President, who President Cecile Richards calls her "strongest weapon." Meanwhile, her allies still insist on spinning the debate not as a denial of federal funding for abortion, but as a denial of the "right" to abortion--which is absurd. Under the Stupak amendment, women can get as many elective abortions as they want. But taxpayers have no more obligations to pay for that elective procedure than they do for a woman's elective plastic surgery.

Tell that to a group called Blue America. For every person who signs a petition to block the Stupak amendment, its leaders are sending coat hangers to 20 of the House Democrats who voted for it. "We're telling [them] ... [not to] take us back to an era of coat hangers and back alley abortions." Somebody ought to point out to them that this campaign is just exposing the lie of the pro-abortion movement. Why would they want to put something back in the bill that they said was never there?

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by Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families: In his September 9th address to Congress and the nation, President Barack Obama promised, “Under our [healthcare reform] plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.” Many pro-life advocates took the president at his word, and they celebrated when pro-life members of Congress succeeded in passing the Stupak/Pitts amendment to prevent taxpayer-funding of abortions in the House healthcare bill.

But during last year’s campaign, and on the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Candidate Obama bragged, “I’ve been a consistent and strong supporter of reproductive justice [abortion], and have consistently had a 100% pro-choice rating with Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America.”

Now President Obama intends to keep his promise – not to the American people, but to the pro-abortion extremists at Planned Parenthood and NARAL. Appearing on CNN yesterday, White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod made it clear that President Obama would personally intervene in congressional backroom negotiations to make sure that the pro-life amendment is aborted.

Last year many pro-life Americans sadly deceived themselves into believing Barack Obama’s rhetoric about finding common ground on abortion. But among his first acts as president he repealed or rolled back several pro-life initiatives. And today Planned Parenthood calls the Obama White House its “strongest weapon” in the cultural war over the sanctity of life, and with good reason: ObamaCare will be a weapon of mass destruction for millions of unborn children, paid for with your hard-earned tax dollars.

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Tags: abortion, Barack Obama, David Axelrod, FRC, Gary Bauer, health care, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, Tony Perkins, Washington Update To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!