Today, Americans United for Life held a telephone press conference to discuss a hot political topic: Did Obamacare mark a huge expansion of abortion? This is important, because many self-identified pro-life Democrats voted for Obamacare, and some of those are up for reelection in races where this question has taken center stage.
The answer is yes, Obamacare did mark a significant expansion of abortion. It violated one plank of the “Hyde Amendment principles” (Hyde itself does not apply, since Obamacare is funded outside of Health & Human Services appropriations): no federal funding of insurance plans that provide abortions. The state exchanges established under Obamacare will certainly include plans that cover abortion. These plans will receive federal subsidies, thus violating Hyde principles. The meaningless “restriction” in the law is that the subsidies go to the insurance provider, not the individual, and that the abortions are paid for from a pool established by mandatory monthly payments by insurees. And even this restriction lapses if Hyde itself is not renewed (it is subject to yearly renewal).
Beyond this, there are virtually no restrictions on abortion in Obamacare. Funding streams such as those through Community Health Centers were thus unaffected. And while that particular problem was addressed in Obama’s executive order, the order failed to address anything else.
For instance, one loophole left open by the EO involved the high-risk pools. In fact, HHS would have directly funded abortion thereunder but for the protests of pro-life advocates. But HHS’ initial decision came as no surprise. As both the Congressional Research Service and the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights pointed out, there was no legal restriction against HHS approving such funding since neither the law itself nor the executive order forbade it.
Another loophole left unclosed by the EO is the meaning of “preventive care,” which must be covered by all private insurance plans under the new law. The government can define it to include abortion. If so, every insurance plan — not just those on the state exchanges — would have to cover it. This is a hole wide enough to drive the proverbial truck through.
Finally, one thing we know from court decisions in many circuits is that unless abortion is expressly prohibited, courts will read it into laws providing for health-care services.
In short, Obamacare marked a decisive pro-abortion shift. Representatives who voted for it should not be surprised if their constituents hold them accountable for doing so.
— William L. Saunders is a senior vice-president at Americans United for Life.
Obamacare and Abortion, the NHS and Catastrophe
In touting what eventually came to be called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, better known as Obamacare, President Barack Hussein Obama pledged that the measure patterned after Britain’s National Health Service, the NHS, contained no provisions for federal government funding of abortions.
He lied, just as he lied when he tied Obamacare to Romneycare–coincidentally after Mitt Romney became a serious threat to his re-election next year.
The question of the constitutionality of the PPACA, the same law which then-Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi infamously said Congress had to be pass “so you can find out what’s in it,” will be taken up in the current session of the Supreme Court.
With four confirmed liberals in his corner, including a ringer–Associate Justice Elena Kagan who was deeply involved in creating a defense of Obamacare as his Solicitor General and who so far has refused to recuse herself in the matter–Obama must be fairly confident in the PPACA being upheld as constitutional.
Until today, it was doubtful government lawyers would push for a separate ruling on Obamacare’s CLASS feature, the long-term insurance proposal which was effectively scrapped on Friday by HHS Secretary Sebellius due to doubts as to its fiscally solvency. CLASS was revived on Monday when the president revealed he was still committed to it.
Aside from the question of whether this administration knows what it’s doing, the long-term solvency and the sanity of the entire 2,409 page PPACA monstrosity have been as dubious from the outset, as dubious as the merits of our democratic republican government seizing control of one-sixth of the national economy and establishing itself as the arbiter of life and death.
Nancy Pelosi may still be in love with the president’s legacy issue but few others are confident in his pledges especially regarding abortion and even fewer comprehend the weird rationale of using the crumbling, antiquated NHS as the Obamacare model.
In what must have been a stinging no-confidence vote, 15 members of the Democrat Party joined 236 Republicans in the House last week to pass the Protect Life Act to amend the PPACA. The legislation would prohibit expenditure of any funds for abortion and would hold harmless health care providers who refuse to provide abortion services on moral grounds.
As much as it is pro-life legislation, the Protect Life Act is a no-trust measure. It merely re-inforces Obama’s hollow promise which was as trustworthy as his multiple other pledges. Notwithstanding statistics showing 67% of Americans oppose abortion funding, the pro-abortion Democrat Senate will surely kill it or, should Senate Democrats have an unlikely attack of conscience, Obama will certainly veto it.
It was anticipated that the most pro-abortion president in America’s history would continue his killing ways and, as bizarre as it was, developing Obamacare based on Britain’s socialized medical program fits tidily with the NHS in that respect: The NHS goes out of its way to make abortion available to all comers, consciences be damned.
The National Health Service is flawed in so many ways that it makes one wonder whether the president chose it to emulate as some sort of macabre joke on America. . .
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