How Democrats slipped taxpayer-funded abortion into Obamacare

By Tom Quiner

Former Congressman, Bart Stupak

What a furious political battle.

Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama smelled blood. They knew national healthcare was within their grasp, and nothing would stand in their way, much less a few sentimental pro life Democrats led by Bart Stupak.

The issue was simple: Mr. Stupak, a pro life Catholic, believed taxpayer-funded human abortions was immoral. He spoke for millions of Americans.

He wanted to include a simple amendment, the Stupak-Pitts amendment, which would prevent the HHS from funding abortions.

Whether one liked Obamacare or despised it, the moral sensibilities of the faithful, especially Catholic and Evangelical Christians, would be violated if they were forced to pay for the destruction of human life via human abortion.

Some liberals advocate for human abortion simply because they believe women own the contents of their own wombs, just as they own their gall bladder or appendix. In other words, according to this view, which is held by the president and most of his party, women are free to dispose of its contents if they so choose. You remember the mantra from the 70s: “Our bodies, ourselves.”

Interestingly though, these same liberals believe the state really does have sovereignty over our bodies by mandating health insurance and telling us what size sodas we may purchase.

The growing army of pro life Americans see things differently. We view the entity in the womb as a person with a beating heart and the full range of human potential that we each have. To us, they’re no different than anyone else, except at a different place in their human development.

To us, human abortion is repugnant, immoral, and tragic.

Mr. Stupak fought a good fight before the political heat got to him. Nancy Pelosi wouldn’t budge, so the president provided Stupak a fig leaf in the guise of an executive order. The president said he would simply sign a piece of paper that says Obamacare won’t allow taxpayer funded abortion.

This from the president who enforces laws only if he likes them.

The fig leaf worked. Stupak caved. Obamacare passed. Liberals crowed.

And despite all of the posturing, taxpayer-funded human abortion found its way into Obamacare. Why am I writing about this now? Because I was asked to explain how after my last piece appeared in the Des Moines Register.

Stephen Mosher of the Population Research Institute explains how abortion sneaked in the backdoor of Obamacare:

• Money for so-called “Community Health Centers”: Many of these Community Health Centers will be run by Planned Parenthood and other groups that see abortion as an essential service and, without abortion-restricting language in the bill, money that goes to these centers will be used to pay for abortions.
• Money for federal insurance plans: Obamacare will provide two or more state-sponsored insurance plans. According to the bill, only one of these plans actually needs to have restrictions on abortion—meaning that federal dollars will almost definitely be paying for abortions in the other state plan. And even this restriction is limited, and will have to be renewed every year.
• Money for “temporary high-risk pools”: Obamacare provides 5 billion dollars for “temporary high-risk pools” that will cover people with pre-existing conditions until the actual health care exchanges kick in 2014. This money goes straight to the states and is administered by them. Without abortion restrictions, the states are free to use this money to fund abortions if they feel like it. And in fact, some of them tried to do just that … until complaints by National Right to Life forced HHS to promise it would actually enforce Obama’s executive order. This will last only as long as it takes to file a court challenge, however.