Mis-Speaker
If you didn’t watch the televised health care summit live last Thursday, chances are you saw precious little coverage in the news media afterward. Especially of odd outbursts like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid angrily denying the Democrats had even considered a ‘reconciliation’ move (when everyone knew they were planning that very thing). And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi testily denying the legislation allows federal funding for abortion…..(when it in fact, does).
So let’s take a look at that latter tiff, because it’s a pivotal issue. Ms. Pelosi was misleading.
Pelosi’s comments came in response to pro-life House Republican Leader John Boehner telling President Barack Obama that Americans don’t want to be forced to finance abortions under the government-run health care bill.
“I think it’s really important to note, though, and I want the record to show, because two statements were made here that were not factual in relationship to these bills,’ Pelosi claimed.
“My colleague, Leader Boehner, the law of the land is there is no public funding of abortion and there is no public funding of abortion in these bills and I don’t want our listeners or viewers to get the wrong impression from what you said,” Pelosi asserted.
Emphatically asserted.
However, the Senate bill that is the basis of the reconciliation push in Congress contains massive abortion funding and has other pro-abortion problems.
Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, emailed LifeNews.com about Pelosi’s error.
“Speaker Pelosi has her own idiosyncratic dictionary, in which federal agencies can pay for abortion on demand without spending ‘public funds’ or ‘taxpayer funds’ for abortion,” Johnson said. “In ordinary English, however, this is deceptive claptrap.”
“Every version of the health care bill has contained multiple pro-abortion mandates and federal subsidies for abortion — except for the version that was fixed by adoption of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, over Speaker Pelosi’s objections,” Johnson explained. “But President Obama and Senator Reid succeeded in keeping that fix out of the Senate bill — indeed, the Senate produced a final bill that is the most pro-abortion single piece of legislation to reach the floor of either house of Congress since Roe v. Wade.”
Which is why the US bishops are so actively engaging Congress to encourage moral reform.
It is significant that the bishops who for decades have lobbied for health care reform have now made it clear that no health care reform is preferable to legislation that violates…basic moral criteria.
