Audio from ad: “All five committees defeated amendments that would have stopped an abortion mandate…”
KIM LAWTON, correspondent: Abortion opponents have already launched an aggressive lobbying campaign. This new ad is from the group Americans United for Life.
CHARMAINE YOEST (President, Americans United for Life): Polling shows over 70 percent of Americans don’t want to see their tax dollars going for it, so that’s what this debate is over, is not whether or not you agree or disagree with abortion, but whether or not at the federal level we’re going to pay for it.
LAWTON: Meanwhile, an interfaith group called the Religious Institute gathered signatures of more than a thousand clergy affirming access to abortion.
REV. DEBRA HAFFNER (Executive Director, Religious Institute): We believe that abortion should be safe, legal, rare, and accessible, and that a health care reform should not make it more difficult for women to get abortions in this country.
LAWTON: In his address to a joint session of Congress last month, President Obama made a clear promise.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA (speaking to Congress): Under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.
LAWTON: But working that out legislatively has been complicated. The current House and Senate proposals do not explicitly prohibit abortion coverage. Congressional leaders say the bills would comply with the so-called Hyde Amendment, which restricts most abortion funding in Medicaid. Abortion opponents say that’s not good enough.
YOEST: Unless there’s an explicit exclusion of abortion, abortion will be in health care reform.
LAWTON: Yoest and her fellow activists also object to proposed compromises that would require insurance plans offering abortion coverage to keep public and private funds separate and use only the private funds to pay for abortions.
YOEST: A lot of the solutions that we see involve a lot of really fancy accounting gimmicks, and that’s exactly what it is, is it’s just moving money around from pot to pot in order to try to promote this fiction that somehow we’re not paying for it just because the money is being funneled through a particular channel.
LAWTON: But pro-choice activists say, given the legal right to abortion, that compromise is the very least Congress owes women.
HAFFNER: There may be a lot of medical services that I might disagree with that I wouldn’t want a member of my family to have, but that’s not up to me. If we care about the very difficult situations that women and families find themselves in, then out of that compassion we would make sure that women would have access to all options.
LAWTON: Faith-based moderates and liberals have been actively pushing for health care reform as a moral issue. Many are worried that abortion debates will derail their efforts.
REV. ANDREW GENSZLER (Director of Advocacy, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America): We think that in some sense it’s a distraction. I mean, it’s an important issue, a very important issue, but in the context of a country where a growing number, millions and millions of people, don’t have insurance, health insurance, we feel that’s more the main issue for this particular debate.
LAWTON: The issue has already become a rallying point for religious conservatives.
REP. MIKE PENCE (R-IN): The American people will not stand for government-run insurance that uses taxpayer money to fund abortions in this country.
HAFFNER: I’m really disappointed that, once again, women’s lives, the desperate situation that so many women find themselves in, the desperate situation that so many poor women face is being used as a political football. I think it’s morally unconscionable that we are segregating some health services. Abortion’s a health service.
LAWTON: But abortion opponents say that’s precisely the view they’re fighting against.
YOEST: It’s really troubling to us that we face a future where we might not be able to make a fundamental difference between abortion and a tonsillectomy. For millions of Americans across this country, abortion is a morally objectionable activity, and so for us to lose the ability to differentiate with a tonsillectomy would be a real, real tragedy.
LAWTON: Activists on both sides of the abortion issue are mobilizing for some key battles in the next few weeks. Both the House and the Senate are expected to begin floor debates on health care reform by the end of the month, and the Obama administration hopes a final bill will be passed by the end of the year.
I’m Kim Lawton in Washington.
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It’s disgusting to me that ministers of God’s Word would advocate not only making it easier to take innocent human lives, but also to stick the American taxpayer with the bill. It goes against everything Christianity represents to assent to abortion.
This argument is very limited, but while I would like to see abortion funded, I am strongly against funding “faith-based” initiatives or private school vouchers that go to religious schools. If we are going to not fund abortion based on belief, we shouldn’t fund religious indoctrination, either. If we can’t separate public and private funds for abortion, then we can’t do it for religious purposes, either.
To abort or not to abort? That is the question. Necessary abortions to save the life of the mother in situations that allows no alternative, is not an issue. To abort immediately after it is clear the woman is pregnant should be allowed. Second and third tri-sermester abortions should not be allowed because the fetus has developed enough to have feelings and consciousness. Adoption laws should be in place to allow the baby to be adopted to a good family with no children and for little or no cost.
I think it’s about time that ministers looked up from their daily scripture and considered the world around them in the development of their values.
I agree with Jane when she says that there are things she would like to see go unfunded if we are picking and choosing values for other people.
And I agree with Karl, to some extent. Although, first trimester abortions are probably more humane, there are circumstances where a second trimester abortion (or even third, rarely!) are necessary.
The Conservatives want to pass laws based on a judgment of an entire group of people. But situations differ from person to person, and it isn’t our place to decide for them what is right and wrong in each instance.
Furthermore, I find it ironic that the very party who traditionally opposes social reform is so against abortion. If Conservatives were a little more liberal in their social policies, and helped more to make America equally profitable for everybody, maybe there wouldn’t be so many abortions in the first place.
I’m Canadian, and can’t imagine having to live in a country where I might not be able to have my sick infant/child cared for promptly and with expertise.
Oh would the Founding Fathers have been alive today, would they really be thrilled to discover that the government is even involving itself in an issue that is so morally objectionable? People talk about how a Woman has a right to an abortion, yet no such right exists under the Constitution. It wasnt until the legal travesty of Roe V Wade that an abortion was (mistakenly) considered a right to be had by anyone. People dont realize that you cant use a right to invalidate the right of another person, in this case a developing life. Furthermore Roe V Wade was based on a lie which has allowed for the state sanctioned holocaust of human life to continue to this very day. For these so called ministers to rally for abortion rights sickens me to no end, they do their faith a disservice to lobby for something which is so intrinsically unChristian. And lastly, i disagree with the earlier statement that if this Country were more “socially liberal” (aka socialist) we wouldnt have as many abortions nowadays. History has shown the opposite to be true: the more we move away from values based on traditions, the less likely Americans citizens are to take the responsibility of conception seriously. It’s the fact that we’ve moved so far into the realm of socialism that got us in this mess in the first place. Removing God from the schools has done nothing to help, and everything to harm, our children and our overall society as well.
As the law of the land, abortion is available as a right to woman. That doesn’t mean the government approves of abortion; it just means women have the right to choose.
Having said that, because we live in a pluralistic society where the views on abortion are diametrically opposed and the debate is so emotionally charged it only makes sense, that when using taxpayers dollars, they not go toward funding abortions.
To do otherwise would create an inverse dynamic of healthcare as defined by Julian Tudor Hart in 1971. It states that “the availability of good medical care tends to vary inversely with the need for it in the population served.”
This is why abortions rose during the Bush administration and fell during the Clinton administration.
Women should have the right to have an abortion, period. If a woman is wealthy, she can have an abortion for whatever reason. If a woman is of a lower or poor income, the right-to-lifers want to take the right to have an abortion away from her after a rape or if her life is in the balance. An abortion should be between the woman, her physician, and her God.
Healthcare the world over seems much more of an illusion, for far too many people that need it. My company is right now securing doctors and dentists for voluntary free clinics, for all those uninsureds throughout the USA, who still will not have insurance coverage, even after the dust settles on the great healthcare debate.
The irony of the issue that’s left out of these debates we’re fighting this very moment is that most people in this country die from viruses that are freely contracted. Whatever then will all your money buy you then?
The statement that an abortion should be “between the woman, her physician and her God” ignores the fact that according to scientific understanding there are two others involved. Take a cell from the aborted person and compare it to a cell from the woman. There is only a 50% match with the genes. The other 50% of the genes came from the biological father who is rarely if ever consulted. Then there is the aborted person who would have been a unique individual, possibly even a woman. The specific combination of genes from the man and the woman will never ever occur again no matter how many other babies those two people have in the future. This conclusion is based on scientific understanding not religious belief.
I agree with Jane when she says that there are things she would like to see go unfunded if we are picking and choosing values for other people.
And I agree with Karl, to some extent. Although, first trimester abortions are probably more humane, there are circumstances where a second trimester abortion (or even third, rarely!) are necessary.
Andy
whether you are religious or not you should be able to decide where youre tax dollars ae going, especially when it comes to terminating a baby or a life in question (whichever you believe)
Abortion is murder because life begins at conception and ends with death. There is an educational film titled, The eight cycles of life”, which depicts the beginning of ones life at conception. This issue has no place in Congress, because it is a moral issue. We cannot pic and choose which parts of the Bible to pratice.
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