A piecrust promise is one that is easily made and easily broken. The promise – more a rumor than anything else – that the U.S. Senate will use the reconciliation process to adopt a strong ban on abortion funding if the House passes the Senate-approved bill is flakier than most. Never before in the history of the 34-year abortion funding debate have pro-life members of Congress approved a bill containing abortion funding on the promise that a subsequent vote will fix the problem.
The scenario being discussed in the media requires some explanation. The House-passed version of health care reform includes the blanket provision known as Stupak-Pitts. This provision applies to all the terms of the House bill, makes the traditional Hyde Amendment language on abortion (allowing funding only when the life of the mother is at stake and in instances of rape and incest) permanent, and permits individuals to buy abortion coverage only as a personally elected and paid for rider on their policy. The Senate-passed bill, H.R 3590, include numerous mechanisms whereby abortion is either directly funded, subsidized through the state and federal exchanges created under the bill, or susceptible to inclusion via interpretations by the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Personnel Management.
Reports have surfaced of a deal whereby the House would approve the Senate bill on a promise that the abortion language would be fixed in reconciliation. There are at least two (related) problems with this scenario. First, it would require the U.S. Senate, with a maximum of 45 votes for strong limits on abortion funding, to approve a permanent pro-life amendment that meets the stringent standard set by Stupak-Pitts. Second, it would require Stupak and a cadre of pro-life Democrats that numbers a dozen or more to vote for a bill that the National Right to Life Committee has described as “the most pro-abortion single piece of legislation that has ever come to the House floor for a vote, since Roe v. Wade” and a “career-defining” vote on abortion policy.
In this scenario, members in both chambers execute votes that are the polar opposite of their actual views and against the desires of their strongest supporters. Both would be doing so on the basis of promises that no one can predict will be kept. The pro-life House members are being asked to believe that once the Senate-passed bill is adopted in toto by the House and signed by President Obama, the Senate, with its pro-abortion majority, will proceed to enact a permanent abortion funding limitation and other provisions that it did not deem wise to include in its own bill, which will be the law of the land.
The senators who opposed Stupak-Pitts will be asked to believe that they can return next year, or at some other distant date, and join with President Obama in repealing the permanent Stupak-Pitts law and install full federal funding of elective abortion. President Obama for his part says the bill he supports has no federal funding for abortion, a finesse at best. Is it credible that the President will proceed in 2011 and 2012 and support repeal of Stupak-Pitts, a measure that the latest surveys say has as much as 72 percent public support, as he seeks reelection in 2012?
Senators opposed to Stupak-Pitts have no reason to believe this, and thus pro-life House Democrats have no reason to believe that the “reconciliation fix” on abortion is anything more than a piecrust promise. If they were to proceed anyway and vote for H.R. 3590, it would indeed be “career-defining” for these House members who have so far stood tall for their, and their constituents’, convictions.
In a Christmas Eve vote, the American people watched a U.S. Senator betray his pro-life principles for $100 million. The version of Obamacare that passed the Senate is the one to watch—it changes current law and allows taxpayer dollars to fund plans that cover elective abortions for the first time in years—and with the hair’s-width margin by which it passed, it may well emerge from the negotiations between the House and the Senate. The only thing that stands between Americans and a law forcing them to fund abortion coverage against their conscience, is a small group of House Democrats, who, led by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), dug in their heels for an amendment in the House version upholding current law limiting tax-funded abortions.
On November 9th, President Obama said, “I laid out a very simple principle, which is this is a health care bill, not an abortion bill… And we’re not looking to change what is the principle that has been in place for a very long time, which is federal dollars are not used to subsidize abortions.”
Unfortunately, the “Nelson version of the bill,” does just what President Obama said he was not looking to do: it entangles the federal government in the promotion, administration and subsidization of plans that cover elective abortions. The long-standing current policy is that health insurance programs subsidized with federal money—including those for Congressional staffers who are given the opportunity to choose from a variety of private plans under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP)—are not allowed to cover elective abortions. No delineation is made between the staffer’s money and tax money. It’s all in the same pot and if the government is paying for any portion of the insurance, it falls under this rule. The most recent Quinnipiac survey, taken after full public exposition of this issue, shows that the American people oppose abortion funding in health reform by more than 3 to 1 (72 to 23%).
The House-passed Stupak-Pitts measure merely seeks to maintain current law. Its fate is likely on the table in the meetings among the White House staff and House and Senate leadership, which are being kept more secretive than usual. And it’s the Senate that has the narrower margin within which to work.
Here is how the Senate’s version would change current abortion funding law. It would first require every individual to buy insurance or face a fee (or prison). Individuals and families that fall into certain income ranges would receive assistance to buy this insurance—tax dollars. The Senate purports to protect an individual’s right not to participate in purchasing a plan that covers elective abortions, but it does so through a web of bookkeeping exercises and a state opt-out provision that will likely lead to new abortion funding debates in state after state – where most policies were fixed to public satisfaction decades ago. Heritage Expert Chuck Donovan points out that, in many instances, employees’ first notice that they are funding abortion coverage could come when they see a special “abortion debit” on their pay stubs. Even if an employee succeeds in discerning and opting out of such coverage, he or she will still be underwriting that coverage through their tax dollars paid to promote and administer abortion-inclusive plans in other states and the new federal exchange program.
So what happens now? We all wait as the camera lights go dim and the secret “negotiations” continue. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) predicted the House pro-life language would be removed from the final version of the bill. Will the small band of pro-life House Democrats resolutely led by Bart Stupak stand in the gap? For them and for the nation, that’s much more than a $100 million question.