WASHINGTON (ABP) — As the clock ticks down to a final, dramatic March 21 House vote on the Senate version of the health-care-reform bill, pro-life leaders are feuding over whether the bill’s abortion provisions maintain the status quo or represent a massive expansion of federal subsidies for abortion services.
“We believe that the provisions [of the Senate version of the bill] below provide extensive evidence that longstanding restrictions on federal funding of abortion have been maintained. Furthermore, this bill provides new and important supports for vulnerable pregnant women,” said a March 11 letter from a group of prominent evangelical and Catholic activists and academics including Baptist leaders Jim Wallis, David Gushee and Glen Stassen.
Organizations representing Catholic nuns and Catholic hospitals and clinics have also endorsed the Senate version of the bill.
But leaders of the National Right to Life Committee, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the conservative Christian group Family Research Council said, in a March 19 press conference, that the Senate bill would significantly expand abortion through federal subsidies.
“This simply is … the biggest expansion of government-funded abortion since Roe v. Wade,” said Tom McClusky, FRC’s senior vice president, referring to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide. “It’s very clear … that his bill does not protect human life.”
By law, the federal government cannot pay for elective abortions with appropriations for programs that deal with health care. But there is disagreement between the House and Senate versions of the bill on just how explicit that restriction should be when it comes to health-insurance reform — and whether the existing federal law, known as the Hyde Amendment, would apply to the new programs the bill would create.
Subsidies for insurance plans main disagreement
The main point of contention between the two bills is over subsidies for individuals, families and employers to purchase insurance through a federal “exchange” designed to expand the availability of affordable plans to uninsured or underinsured people. A controversial amendment to the House’s original version of the bill — pushed through by a bipartisan anti-abortion coalition led by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) — would have prevented private insurance plans that participate in the exchanges from offering abortion coverage. If a purchaser in one of the insurance-exchange programs wants abortion coverage, they would have to purchase a separate, supplemental policy.
The Senate version, however, doesn’t include this requirement. Instead, it requires that the exchanges offer at least one option that does not cover abortion — and that those who choose abortion-offering plans pay a separate premium for the abortion coverage. The funds are then required to be segregated from the federal subsidies, and all who choose the abortion-providing plans are required to pay the separate premiums.
Those who prefer the House language — including the Catholic bishops — argue that support of an abortion-providing plan would essentially subsidize abortion unless such plans are explicitly prohibited. But health-care-reform proponents who have no problem with the Senate bill say it would be no different than the already existing federal tax credits and exemptions that currently “subsidize” purchase of private health insurance regardless of whether the plans provide abortion coverage. Therefore, they say, it maintains the status quo on federal funding of abortion.
There are also sticking points over issues such as new funding for community health centers and whether it would fall outside of the bounds of the Hyde Amendment, as well as conscience protections for abortion opponents.
A March 14 analysis by health-care-policy expert Timothy Jost of Washington & Lee University Law School in Lexington, Va., asserts that there is essentially no difference, from a pro-life perspective, between the two bills.
“In sum, if one examines the abortion provisions of the House and Senate bills carefully, in their totality, they are equivalent. Each has its strengths and weaknesses with respect to pro-life concerns,” Jost wrote. “At this point in time, however, we do not have the choice between the House and Senate language. The Democrats no longer have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and therefore the Senate bill must be the platform for the health reform bill.”
But Richard Doerflinger, an anti-abortion official with the bishops' conference, said the bills were not morally equivalent.
“Our goal has been really for decades to have universal health-care reform. We’re very much in favor of that; we were in favor of that many decades before it was fashionable,” he said. “So, we have wanted to be able to support a health-care-reform bill. Unfortunately, the Senate bill … is morally unacceptable.”
Doerflinger’s organization has issued a rebuttal to Jost’s initial analysis of the bills. The bishops' analysis of the bills and their response to Jost are both posted on the National Right To Life Committee’s website.
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Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.