The Abortion Mandate

ERLC Alert: The Abortion Mandate! YOUR ACTION IS NEEDED NOW!

Through its actions this week, it has become clear that the Senate intends to mandate that every healthcare plan offered through the government's healthcare gateway provide abortion coverage. Here’s how it will work. The government creates an insurance gateway that people can enter to choose a healthcare plan. The plans the government makes available are all vetted by the government. If a plan doesn’t offer the coverage the government says it should offer, the plan doesn’t make the cut and isn’t available for people to choose from.

Activity in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee reveals that the Senate leadership intends for every government-approved healthcare plan to provide abortion coverage. The Senate liberals beat back numerous attempts to prevent the inclusion of abortion coverage in government-approved health plans. There is only one reason to reject any attempt to prevent abortion as a covered item in health care—because they expect it to be required. Here are the results of just some of the amendments proposed by some Republicans in the HELP Committee to keep abortion out of the Senate healthcare plan:

Senator Hatch amendment: no federal funds could be used for abortion or for any health plans that include abortion, defeated with 11 yes, 12 no.

Senator Coburn amendment: to allow conscience protection for health care providers who do NOT want to do abortions, defeated with 11 yes, 12 no.

Senator Coburn amendment: to ensure that state abortion laws, like parental consent on abortion laws, are not overruled by the bill, defeated 11 yes, 12 no.

Senator Enzi amendment: to ensure that the bill cannot mandate abortion coverage, defeated with 11 yes, 12 no.

Then there’s Senator Dodd’s sham amendment: to protect those who cannot conscientiously perform abortion, “except in an emergency.” But “emergency” is left undefined and so can mean anything, including a woman who is feeling emotionally distraught, passed with voice vote.

The House bill, “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009” (H.R. 3200), is at least as dangerous as the Senate bill on many fronts, including abortion mandates. National Right to Life just released their statement, http://www.nrlc.org/AHC/HR3200NRLCfactsheet.pdf, about the abortion mandate it carries. Here is their summary statement:

“The health care restructuring bill pending in the U .S. House…contains provisions that will result in federally mandated coverage of abortion on demand in virtually all of America's health plans. Once abortion is established as a federal "essential benefit," the bill will also require "access" to elective abortion, which will require many issuers to establish and staff new abortion-providing sites. Moreover, state laws that impede "access" to elective abortion (such as waiting periods and parental notification requirements) may be nullified as conflicting with the purposes of the federal law .In addition, the bill will result in the massive subsidization of elective abortion with tax dollars.”

What You Can Do Now
Please take a few minutes to locate legislators by clicking here to send messages to your two U.S. senators (Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn) and to your representative in the U.S. House of Representatives, to urge them to oppose any federal "health care reform" legislation that does not contain explicit exclusions of abortion. You can modify the suggested message as you see fit. Please contact both your two U.S. senators and representative, give your name and address, and tell their staff that you wish to be recorded as "opposed to Senator Kennedy's health care bill because it would result in mandates for virtually all health plans to cover elective abortion, and would result in federal funding of abortion on demand."

Also, please send short letters to the "letters to the editor" features of your local newspapers, in order to alert your fellow pro-life citizens to the sweeping pro-abortion mandates and pro-abortion subsidies that the Obama White House and the pro-abortion lobby are trying to smuggle into law through "health care reform."

Upcoming Webcast on the Abortion Mandate
The healthcare overhaul is turning out to be more about the radical pro-abortion agenda than making sure everyone has healthcare coverage. This is an issue every pro-life person must engage. A great way to start is to plan to participate in an upcoming webcast on the abortion mandate. The webcast will start at 9 p.m. ET on Thursday, July 23. Numerous family group and pro-life leaders will be on this webcast to talk about their concerns, including Richard Land. You can sign up here, http://www.stoptheabortionmandate.com/.