Earlier today, Nancy Pelosi was asked: “Would you . . . say Mr. Stupak is wrong when he looks at the president’s language and says it’s also not fitting his standard on funding and also do you think that that’s going to be a problem still in the weeks to come?”

Pelosi responded: “Let me say it this way, there’s three, three, I don’t want to say principles but three standards that we are using as we go forward and I talked to the Catholic Bishops about this and people on all sides of the choice issue. Law prevents federal funding; federal law prevents federal funding of abortion. There is no federal funding of abortion in this bill. There’ll be no expansion or diminution of a woman’s right to choose and that does not happen in this bill and we’re determined that we are going to pass health-care reform. This bill that passed the Senate does not have federal funding of abortion.”

And so Richard Doerflinger, from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued the following “point of clarification” on the “Senate Health Care Reform [which] bill clearly expands abortion services, despite suggestions by some political leaders to the contrary.”

“We do not know how anyone who has spoken to the bishops could conclude that the Senate health care bill does not fund abortions. As the bishops have said in their letters to Congress, abortion problems in the Senate bill are so serious that, despite our strong support for expanding access to health care, we will have to oppose the bill unless they are resolved.
“While the Senate bill includes some language limiting the direct use of tax credits to subsidize abortion coverage, it still violates longstanding federal precedent on abortion funding in two ways.
“First, the Senate’s abortion language limits only use of tax credits for abortion in qualified health plans, not other funding in the bill. For example, the bill authorizes and appropriates $7 billion for services at community health centers (increased to $11 billion in the President’s new proposal). The Hyde amendment does not prevent direct use of these billions of dollars for elective abortions (because the funds are not provided through the appropriations bill governed by Hyde); nor does any provision in the Senate bill.
“Second, the Senate’s language on tax credits still allows subsidies for overall health plans that cover elective abortions, against the policy of the Hyde amendment and other longstanding federal laws. The bill requires each American purchasing such a plan to make a separate payment to the insurer every month, solely to pay for other people’s abortions. This is an enormous imposition on the consciences of the millions of Americans who oppose abortion.”
“Extensive analysis of key issues in the House and Senate health care bills, and other materials on our priorities in supporting authentic health care reform, can be found on the bishops’ web site at www.usccb.org/healthcare.”