This is an opinion I wrote that was published in yesterday's Reno
Gazette Journal regarding the health care reform bills under
consideration in the Congress and the massive increases in the number
of abortions that will occur every year in the United States unless
abortion is explicitly excluded.
Reno Gazette Journal
July 30, 2009
Don Nelson: The Health-Care
Bill Will Increase Abortions In The U.S.
Massive
increases in abortion, the largest since Roe v. Wade, are looming because
health care proposals such as HR 3200, "America's Affordable Health Care
Choice Act," will not only fund abortion, they also will mandate coverage
of abortion on demand in virtually all of America's health care plans, preempt
abortion-reducing state limitations and protections, and create an abortion
clinic mandate. These proposals will reverse America's steady reduction in
abortions.
HR 3200 might
not use the word abortion, but unless Congress excludes abortion from being
defined as an "essential benefit," the broadly worded mandatory
categories of coverage will be interpreted by courts to include abortion. And
that's how President Barack Obama and abortion advocacy groups believe it
should be interpreted.
In July 2007,
Obama told Planned Parenthood that "reproductive care is essential care,
basic care, so it is at the center, the heart of the plan I propose."
Private insurers will "have to abide by the same rules in terms of
providing comprehensive care, including reproductive care..." The Obama
administration said "reproductive care" includes abortion.
HR 3200 also
will create an abortion clinic mandate by requiring plans that use a provider
network to ensure the "adequacy of such network" so enrollees have
access to services covered. And once abortion becomes a federally mandated
"essential benefit," networks will need to take steps, including
establishing new abortion sites in the service area, to meet standards required
by the "health choices commissioner."
HR 3200 will
bring huge increases in abortion. The American taxpayer paid for 300,000
abortions every year between Roe in 1973 and 1976, when the Hyde Amendment
excluded abortion funding. In 1993, the Congressional Budget Office wrote that
"the federal government would probably fund between 325,000-675,000
abortions each year" if taxpayer funding were resumed. It would be much
higher because under HR 3200, populations receiving federally funded health
care would be much larger than populations on which the 1993 estimates were
based.
Abortion advocates'
claims that 18 percent to 35 percent or even 50 percent of women who would have
aborted did not abort because of the Hyde Amendment mean that there could be
200,000-500,000 more abortions every year. Sixty-nine percent of Americans
oppose lifting the Hyde Amendment.
HR 3200 makes
clear that standards in the bill or written by the "Health Choices
Commissioner" will preempt state abortion laws. This could nullify
limitations on abortion such as waiting periods, parental involvement and other
laws that could be regarded as impeding access to a federally guaranteed
benefit. (There wasn't room for this comment we submitted: These protections
and limitations, along with Hyde, have been the backbone in reducing abortions.)
Abortion must
be excluded from any health care reform bill or a massive taxpayer-funded increase
in abortions will ensue.
Don Nelson
is president of Nevada
LIFE (Life Issues Forum and Education).
Learn
More:
Click
here to read National Right to Life's briefing on abortion and health care
reform. The author, Douglas Johnson, is one of the pro-life geniuses and
tireless leaders responsible for the steady, decade's long drop in the rate and
numbers of abortion in the United
States. His policy of specific targeted
goals and public education are very much responsible for America's
pro-life shift.
It's always
an honor to participate in the public square in one of Nevada's most important and vital
newspapers, the Reno Gazette Journal.
