Obama Brazenly and Falsely Claims There is No Abortion Funding in Health Care Legislation
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Washington, D.C. – In a conference call with supporters yesterday, President Obama said that it is a “fabrication” to say that the legislation backed by the White House would result in “government funding of abortions.” and that this is “untrue.”
In response to Obama’s false claim, National Right to Life Committee’s Legislative Director Douglas Johnson issued the following statement yesterday:
“Emboldened by the recently demonstrated superficiality of some organs of the news media, President Obama brazenly misrepresented the abortion-related component of the health care legislation that his congressional allies and staff have crafted. As amended by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on July 30 (the Capps-Waxman Amendment), the bill backed by the White House (H.R. 3200) explicitly authorizes the government plan to cover all elective abortions. Obama apparently seeks to hide behind a technical distinction between ax funds and government-collected premiums. But these are merely two types of public funds, collected and spent by government agencies. The Obama-backed legislation makes it explicitly clear that no citizen would be allowed to enroll in the government plan unless he or she is willing to give the federal agency an extra amount calculated to cover the cost of all elective abortions — this would not be optional. The abortionists would bill the federal government and would be paid by the federal government. These are public funds, and this is government funding of abortion.”
Johnson continued, “In 2007 Obama explicitly pledged to Planned Parenthood that the public plan will cover abortions (see the video clip here). Some journalists have reported that Obama “backed off” of this commitment in an interview with Katie Couric of CBS News, broadcast July 21, but Obama actually carefully avoided stating his intentions — instead, he simply made an artful observation that “we also have a tradition of, in this town, historically, of not financing abortions as part of government funded health care.”
“It is true that there is such a tradition — which Obama has always opposed, and which the Obama-backed bill would shatter,” said Johnson.
On August 13, NRLC released a detailed memo explaining the provisions of the pending bills that would affect abortion policy, with citations to primary sources. Many of the “factcheck” articles that have appeared in the news media in recent weeks reflect, at best, unsophisticated understandings of the provisions they purport to be explaining, and also give evidence of a weak understanding of Obama’s history on the policy issues involved. Wisconsin Right to Life urges members of the media and other interested individuals to download the memo which is in PDF format here: http://www.nrlc.org/AHC/HR3200NRLCfactsheet.pdf
Wisconsin Right to Life is the Wisconsin state affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee.
Posted @ 1:50 p.m.
