Pro-Life Democrats Urge Pelosi to Exclude Abortion Funding from Health Care Reform Bill

Tuesday, June 30, 2009
By Monica Gabriel

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) (AP Photo)

(CNSNews.com) – Nineteen pro-life House Democrats signed a letter last week to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) expressing their opposition to any health care reform that includes abortion funding.
 
“We cannot support any health-care reform proposal unless it explicitly excludes abortion from the scope of any government-defined or subsidized health insurance plan,” the letter read.
 
The congressmen did not take a position for or against the so-called “public option” feature of the health care reform bill, which involves the creation of a government-sponsored health insurance poll, but the congressmen were blunt about what they do not want.
 
“Plans to mandate coverage for abortions, either directly or indirectly (are) unacceptable,” they wrote.
 
“We want to ensure that the Health Benefits Advisory Committee cannot recommend abortion services be included under covered benefits or as part of benefits package,” the letter further stipulated. “Without an explicit exclusion, abortion could be included in a government subsidized health care plan under general health care.”
 
“Nineteen Democrats breaking the fold is a sign that not everybody within the Democratic Party is completely sold out to the abortion lobby,” Shaun Kenney, executive director of the American Life League, the largest grassroots Catholic pro-life education organization in the United States, told CNSNews.com.
 
The fact is, taxpayer dollars are already going towards programs that fund abortion, Kenney said.
 
“Planned Parenthood alone consumes about $349 million a year in federal and state tax subsidies,” he added.
 
According to a report from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, research arm of Planned Parenthood, state policies restrict insurance coverage of abortion in only a few states.
 

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