Abortion and health care debate
Are opponents of health care reform trying to help scuttle the Obama plan by steering it into the rocky shoals of the abortion debate? Catholic Charities USA, outspoken in calling for Congress to enact health care reform, seemed to say as much in a statement it issued in response to “inaccurate online media reports.”
Father Larry Snyder, president of Catholic Charities USA, denied claims that he supported health care reform without regard for whether it would lead to more abortions. “These attacks appear to be politically motivated by opponents of health care reform,” he said. “They are distortions of the truth and disingenuous. Catholic Charities USA will continue to work to reform health care in a way that is consistent with the teachings of our faith.” He appeared to be responding to stories carried on pro-life Web sites.
Catholic Charities said its position on health care reform legislation and abortion is consistent with statements from the U.S. bishops.
Tags: abortion
How many people who oppose health care reform on the grounds that their tax dollars might be used to subsidize abortions paid for by a new health care program currently pay premiums on health insurance policies that cover abortions? How many people who oppose health reform on the grounds that it might pay for some abortions currently have no health insurance at all?
Find me one person who has decided to drop her or his employer provided health insurance on princple because that insurance covers abortion, or find me one person who currently has no insurance and is willing to refuse coverage for themselves and their families because of abortion provisions in a health care plan, and we can discuss this without spectre of hypocrisy hanging over the discussion.
Joe makes good points.
I recently received an email from Catholics United about this issue, which had in part ….
” … Over the past weeks, we’ve seen the misinformation from special interests get worse and worse …. They’ve taken the sensitive issue of abortion, which isn’t even mentioned in the health care bill, and placed it center stage and under a false light …. We can’t let these distortions be the voice of the faith community on health care …”
… with a link to this page – Catholics United Condemns Family Research Council’s Deceptive Health Care Attack Ads.
F.Y.I.-
http://www.lifenews.com/state4332.html
This would be a good time to check and see if your private insurance covers abortion.
As a sidebar to the Health Care legislation issues, Camille Paglia has some interesting things to say in Salon. A couple of tidbits:
The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration’s outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable “casual conversations” to the White House. If Republicans had done this, there would have been an angry explosion by Democrats from coast to coast. I was stunned at the failure of liberals to see the blatant totalitarianism in this incident, which the president should have immediately denounced. His failure to do so implicates him in it.
and
Yes, free the president from his flacks, fixers and goons — his posse of smirky smart alecks and provincial rubes, who were shrewd enough to beat the slow, pompous Clintons in the mano-a-mano primaries but who seem like dazed lost lambs in the brave new world of federal legislation and global statesmanship.
And she voted for him.
Have to agree with Paglia on the inability of Obama nd co. to navigate federal legislation.
The Democrats have the house, the senate and the executive branch. There is no need for town halls. The consultation already happened – it’s called an election and there were a few, for different spheres of the gov’t that gave the Democrats the votes necessary to pass reforms.
The election is over.
Now is time for the the vici part NOT vidi part of the old Roman veni, vidi, vici.
I am deeply suspicious of these town hall strategies. It seems like an all to convenient excuse for the Democrats to blame the completely neutered Republicans for failure of health care reform. The Republicans are irrelevant to the discussion. The votes are there just do what needs to be done. The Republicans will do what all minority parties do – oppose – that is their function in a democracy.
You seem to be assuming that this number is above zero. But there’s a missing premise: can you name a private insurance plan that covers elective abortion in the first place?
Studebakaer: My argument would be easily brushed aside were it not the case that a significant number of health insurance policies cover abortion. I must run to a day long meeting, but here is something I found following Nancy’s link above.
http://www.lifenews.com/nat3920.html
46 percent leaves enough room for more than zero principled refusals of health care coverage.
Yes – they will work for a plan that is consistent with Catholic teaching on abortion.
The question is, will they support one that isn’t?
Back to the same old, same old – catholic social justice principles (universal healthcare as a right; coverage for the poor, unemployed/underemployed; etc.) vs. abortion only stance.
Do you take a broader picture and work for help all citizens to give access to all; to improve health for all…….or do you put abortion above all else?
Do you make the perfect the enemy of the good? (shades of the role of catholic social justice in a pluralistic society)
I wish the town hall disrupters were more polished, but I think they’re right in wondering whether the party that works hard to make life so very easy to terminate and end will be careful to protect those whose lives are more expensive than most.
Questions have also been raised about the openness of the town hall meeting format: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou7SGNo5QHE
Aside from the life issues and the socialism, there is also the important question of how to pay for healthcare, given our economic situation. Although the Onion offers this solution to our current problems: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRgRz3nSG7o
The 46% statistic is meaningless to me: 46% of what? What’s being counted as a “plan”? Every employer that self-insures with some insurance company as an administrator? What’s the number of actual people covered by these alleged policies? And what forms of abortion are covered — elective abortion, or just medically required abortions? Just in April, Kathleen Sebelius testified to Congress that “most private plans do not cover abortion services except in limited instances.”
Anyway, I’ve never seen any evidence — meaning not unsourced or ambiguous claims, but actual policy documents — of a private insurance plan that covers elective abortions.
I am very interested to see if the private insurance plans allowed into the insurance exchange will be required to cover things like abortion, IVF, and contraceptives. I believe in Massachusetts the state plan requires that participants contribute to coverage for IVF. I know that Rep Mark Souder introduced two amendments in committee, the first asking that private insurers in the exchange not be required by the secretary of Health and Human Services to cover abortion, and the second asking that tax money not be used to fund abortions. Both amendments were rejected.
What brought these issues to mind was that recently the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic college, was required to cover oral contraceptives in their employee health care plan on the basis that to not do so would be sexual discrimination. If this is any indication of what’s to come in the health care plan exchange, I don’t think coverage exemptions for religious beliefs will abound.
An article entitled “A Primer on the Details of Heath Care Reform”, on the NY Times website, has this to say about abortion, Federal dollars and private insurance plans:
“Opponents of abortion, like the National Right to Life Committee, say the legislation would use tax dollars to subsidize insurance that could cover abortion.
“Under a bill approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, health plans, including the new government insurance plan, could choose to cover abortion. But they generally could not use federal money to pay for the procedure and instead would have to use money from the premiums paid by beneficiaries.
“Douglas D. Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, said, “Under either the Senate bill or the House bill, the federal government would run a huge system of subsidizing elective abortion.”
“Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, said the bill would keep current restrictions on the use of federal money for abortion, but “would not expand the prohibitions, as many Republicans want to do.” ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/health/policy/10facts.html?em
Bill DeHaas, why do you believe that elective abortion should be included in Health Care reform when the purpose of Health Care is to preserve Human Life to begin with?
Btw, in case anyone didn’t check out the links that Paul Moses provided, it may be worth clarifying that, in Catholic Charities’ eyes, any solution that funds abortions or quashes respect for conscience is a deal-killer.
“Catholic Charities USA states unequivocally that it does not support any plan to reform health care and/or any proposed legislative provision that allows or promotes the funding of abortions or that compels any health care provider or institution to provide such a service. In fact, Catholic Charities USA will continue to work with the Catholic Health Association and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to ensure that any health care reform legislation will not include such provisions.”
Jim
The NYT version is deceptive. The House Bill is silent on abortion. It would require coverage of basic health services as defined by a federally appointed board. Given that Obama will appoint the board and the AMA and other medical establishment’s positions on abortion (notwithstanding most of their members wil not perform abortions) everyone – including abortion rights proponents – expects that the public option will include abortion coverage.
Riddle me this -
“Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, said the bill would keep current restrictions on the use of federal money for abortion, but “would not expand the prohibitions, as many Republicans want to do.” ”
Huh?? How exactly would that work? If there is an effective ban on federal funding foir abortions that this new law would not affect, why would the Republicans need to expand any restrictions?
This is exactly the kind of shell game the Dems are playing. No we’re not implementing single-payer, we’re just putting in a system thart will make it a lot easier to do. There is nothing about abortion in this bill – we just put in an administrative board that will do it for us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTYvK4h44RU
Hi, Sean, interesting point about the administrative board.
“Huh?? How exactly would that work?”
What I took away from the Times snippet was that Federal funds couldn’t be used for abortion, but premiums paid by the customers themselves wouldn’t be out of bounds for abortion. In essence, this would put it on the same footing as (some) current group insurance policies.
Whether Republicans are actively trying to make the bill more restrictive – e.g. no abortions funded, period, for any coverage that receives the benefit of Federal funding – I don’t know.
Jim
Really? So when the Times howls at the suggestion that CitiGroup executives were getting their bonuses from the non-federal money they were wrong?
That’s the beautiful thing about money – it’s fungible.
Hi, Sean,
Medicaid may be an interesting example of the problem. The Hyde Amendment prohibits federal Medicaid funds being spent on abortion, except in cases of rape, incest or danger to the mother’s life. But because Medicaid is a joint federal-state program, states can pay for abortions in other circumstances with their share of the Medicaid funds. The table in this article breaks it down by state and what gets paid for by state Medicaid funds:
http://www.prochoice.org/about_abortion/facts/public_funding.html
As you say, money is fungible. Whether there is any attempt to segregate federal Medicaid funds (restricted by the Hyde Amendment) from state fund (not under Hyde Amendment restrictions), I don’t know.