“A vote to table the amendment is a vote against the Nelson-Hatch-Casey amendment. A majority of Senators effectively endorsed the abortion lobby’s goal of mainstreaming abortion as health care.”
– Charmaine Yoest
The U.S. Senate voted today to table the Nelson-Hatch-Casey amendment, which would have maintained existing law by prohibiting both federal funding of abortion and government-mandated abortion coverage. Without the explicit ban on abortion funding, Americans United for Life’s legislative arm AUL Action will now oppose the final health care bill.
Americans United for Life Action President and CEO Dr. Charmaine Yoest stated, “A vote to table the amendment is a vote against the Nelson-Hatch-Casey amendment. A majority of Senators effectively endorsed the abortion lobby’s goal of mainstreaming abortion as health care.”
The Senate health care reform bill explicitly allows the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to include abortion coverage in the “community health insurance option,” and allows federal subsidies to go to private insurance plans that include abortion coverage. In addition, the bill also requires that at least one private plan in each exchange provide coverage for all abortions.
Dr. Yoest continued, “The Senate had the opportunity to follow the House’s lead in ensuring that federal dollars are not used to pay for abortions. Instead, the Senate chose to reject the Nelson-Hatch-Casey amendment and continue down the road towards unprecedented federal funding of abortion.”
Four major anti-life concerns in this health care bill:
1) Unprecedented abortion funding: The Senate bill explicitly allows the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to include abortion coverage in the “community health insurance option,” and allows federal subsidies to go to private insurance plans that include abortion coverage. In addition, the bill requires that at least one private plan in each exchange provide coverage for all abortions.
2) Rationing of care: The Senate health care reform bill contains provisions that could be used to deny or ration health care.
3) Lacks conscience protection: The Senate bill fails to prohibit government entities from discriminating against health care providers on the basis that they do not participate in abortions. The bill also explicitly provides that insurance plans in the exchange cannot refuse to contract with abortion providers on the basis that they provide abortions.
4) Abortion as “preventive care”: The Milkulski amendment added on the Senate floor could mandate abortion coverage under the guise of preventive care. For the first time in history, the federal government could require private insurance companies to cover abortion.
To view AUL Action’s score letter on the vote for the Nelson-Hatch-Casey amendment, click here.
To view AUL Action’s open letter to Planned Parenthood challenging them on their financial interests in health care reform, click here.
To view AUL Action’s newspaper ad of our open letter to Planned Parenthood, please click here or here.
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I know you are well intentioned and I agree that Abortion should not be federally funded. I am very Pro-Life. However, once again you fail to look at the big picture and the strategy to kill the bill, which should have been the focus all along. By supporting an abortion amendement, you are helping pass the health care bill. That is what happened in the house, had the Stupak-Pitts amendment not been in the bill we wouldn’t even be talking about this issue right now, because the Dems sitting on the fence would not have had a justification to vote for it. The strategy to kill this bill is to do nothing to improve it. If this bill passes with Abortion or no Abortion funding, it will put a nail in the coffin of not only the unborn, but every citizen in America.
Hm, ‘preventitive care’. DO they ever stop and ask themselves exactly what they are preventing? It would be tough to word ‘preventing the birth of a human being through termination of pregnancy’ in the same way they make all their other abortion terms sound neutral.