House Minority Leader John Boehner is slamming the Obama administration and the Democrats for their efforts to get abortion included as a subsidized health care reform benefit. He has penned an op-ed in National Review this morning. The full article is here. A couple of key excerpts are below:
When most Americans talk about the need for health-care reform, they’re usually talking about the need to address rising health-care costs; they aren’t talking about the need for taxpayers to subsidize abortion. In fact, a November 2008 Zogby poll revealed 71 percent of Americans oppose government-funded abortion.
It seems Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill don’t share this perspective, however. With the unequivocal support of President Obama, they’ve written a health-care bill that won’t lower health-care costs for American families, but will require them to subsidize abortion with their hard-earned tax dollars.
The legislation's abortion-related language stands as Exhibit A. How many Americans currently realize the House bill contains provisions that will result in federally mandated coverage of abortion on demand in virtually all of America's health plans?
Fact: The bill as currently written will allow the federal government to classify abortion as an "essential benefit" — a health-care right that would be guaranteed to all Americans. This will make it illegal for health-care providers nationwide — even Catholic and religious-based hospitals with missions that reflect a fundamental moral objection to the killing of the unborn — to provide anything less than abortion on demand for anyone who seeks it. As a result, the bill will repeal laws in many states that currently require commonsense limitations on abortion-on-demand, such as mandatory parental notification and waiting periods.
Fact: The bill would also establish a taxpayer-funded "public" health-care plan to "compete" with private-sector plans. This public plan, like all plans, will be required to classify abortion as an "essential benefit," forcing American citizens to directly subsidize abortion-on-demand with their tax dollars. And in addition to the public plan, individuals with incomes of up to 400% of the poverty level will receive subsidies to buy insurance to pay for abortion-on-demand.
...given its controversial nature, it deserves a full and open public debate — the sort of debate that is impossible when major bills are rammed through Congress based on politically driven timetables.
If a health-care bill doesn't lower costs for middle-class families, but does require them to subsidize abortion-on-demand with their hard-earned tax dollars, one has to ask a fundamental question: For whom was this bill actually written? Was it written for the millions of Americans who were promised a health-care bill that lowers costs? Or is it really for the radical special-interest and lobbying groups that invested millions to elect a cooperative president and Congress?
Health care is too important to get wrong. Too much is at stake. For the sake of American families struggling with health-care costs — most of whom don’t want their hard-earned money being used by the federal government to subsidize abortion — President Obama should scrap the current health-care bill, and work in a bipartisan way for true reforms.