Opinion: The Senate Health Care Legislation Does Not Protect Children in the Womb.

'Federal funds will help subsidize, and in some cases a federal agency will facilitate and promote, health plans that cover elective abortions.' (U.S. Bishops)

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Catholic Online) - On the morning of Christmas Eve the Democrats in the United States Senate, joined by two independents who vote with them, passed the Senate Version of the Health Care Reform Bill. This legislation includes the "Managers Amendment" which provides for federal funding for abortion. Some argue it does not, claiming that it simply allows participants to pay for that funding as an additional option.

However, money is fungible. The notion that it can be segregated in this fund - and that this kind of shell game avoids the obvious - is an accounting ruse. The last Democratic holdout, Senator Ben Nelson, who pledged to make sure that Abortion was exempted from coverage through an Amendment similar to the House Stupak Amendment, accepted the so called "Managers Amendment". He and Senator Bob Casey, who also initially seemed to be opposing this kind of compromise on the Right to Life, now publicly maintain that it protects against such funding. The entire pro-Life community, including the US Catholic Bishops, absolutely disagrees.

The recent letter sent from the Bishops to the Senate makes their opposition clear. They said of the legislation passed this Christmas Eve morning: "Specifically, it violates the longstanding federal policy against the use of federal funds for elective abortions and health plans that include such abortions -- a policy upheld in all health programs covered by the Hyde Amendment as well as in the Children's Health Insurance Program, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program -- and now in the House-passed "Affordable Health Care for America Act." We believe legislation that fails to comply with this policy and precedent is not true health care reform and should be opposed until this fundamental problem is remedied".

They said of the "Managers Amendment": "The abortion provisions in the Manager's Amendment to the Senate bill do not maintain this commitment to the legal status quo on abortion funding. Federal funds will help subsidize, and in some cases a federal agency will facilitate and promote, health plans that cover elective abortions. All purchasers of such plans will be required to pay for other people's abortions in a very direct and explicit way, through a separate premium payment designed solely to pay for abortion. There is no provision for individuals to opt out of this abortion payment in federally subsidized plans, so people will be required by law to pay for other people's abortions. States may opt out of this system only by passing legislation to prohibit abortion coverage. In this way the longstanding and current federal policy universally reflected in all federal health programs, including the program for providing health coverage to Senators and other federal employees, will be reversed. That policy will only prevail in states that take the initiative of passing their own legislation to maintain it."

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They raised the danger that Catholic Health Care Institutions, which are unqualifiedly Pro-Life, will be squeezed out of the marketplace of care if something is not done when this Bill passes through its next phase: "This bill also continues to fall short of the House-passed bill in preventing governmental discrimination against health care providers that decline involvement in abortion (Sec. 259 of H.R. 3962), and includes no conscience protection allowing Catholic and other institutions to provide and purchase health coverage consistent with their moral and religious convictions on other procedures".

Like millions of Americans, I watched with great alarm as the Senate Health Care Reform bill failed to add the language which would prevent federal funds from being used to fund the taking of innocent human life in the womb through abortion. Let me be clear, my fundamental opposition to the Senate version of this Health Care Reform Bill is that it fails to protect that Right to Life and fails to respect the human dignity of our first neighbors in the first home of the whole human race, their mothers womb. Under its provisions, Federal funds will be used for abortion. Abortion is the taking of innocent human life. Killing is not - and will never be - health care.

Certainly, there are other issues involved in analyzing the propriety of this health care legislation. For example, the entire notion of federalizing the delivery of health services can be seriously questioned through an application of the principle of subsidiarity. There are constitutional concerns arising out of provisions within the legislation which attempt to prevent any future efforts at revision or repeal. There are also serious concerns over the last minute negotiations which have led to a patchwork approach to the States as it relates to their financial obligations to fund Medicare and Medicaid.

However, there is a hierarchy of principles which we who are Pro-Life, and in particular we who are Catholic Christians, should apply in our public policy analysis. The Fundamental Human Right, the Right to Life, is the first principle and the foundation of every other human right. Many who support the Health Care Reform package do so because they believe they are respecting human dignity. They do not believe that any person should be without health care. They think this approach of federalizing health care will ensure that. However, they do not include our youngest neighbors within our human community and seem to have forgotten their rights and needs in their expressed concern over human dignity. They fail to hear the cry of those whom Mother Teresa called "the poorest of the poor". We must pray for their conversion to the truth while we work to protect those children. They have no voice but ours.

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Until children in the womb are fully protected from being killed through federally funded abortion, we should vigorously oppose this Senate Health Care Reform Legislation. Medical Science has confirmed what the Natural Law and our consciences long ago confirmed, children in the womb are our neighbors. We routinely operate on them and return them to the womb until they reach full term. We prosecute offenders who in the commission of another crime cause their death. It is always and everywhere wrong to kill our innocent neighbors. To use Federal funds to do so is an egregious violation of fundamental human rights. It is also not health care.

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