As President Barack Obama prepares to address Congress on health care reform, America's pro-life movement is gassing up.
If Mr. Obama hasn't liked the tenor of town-hall meetings, wait until he meets pro-lifers at full throttle. They're planning a major drive to try to stop federal funding of abortion as allowed under proposed health care legislation.
Mr. Obama has partly invited this havoc by not being completely forthright about how health care reform, as currently proposed, would provide taxpayer funding for abortion.
For the past couple of weeks, Mr. Obama has been dogged by fact checkers, including FactCheck.org at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, following a comment he made Aug. 19 that charges of government-funded abortions in the health care bill were "fabrications."
Not really. Somewhere between hysterical claims that Americans will be forced to pay for abortions and assertions that no federal funds will go toward abortion is a more-nuanced, if less interesting, truth.
Although the bills before Congress don't require federal funding of abortion, they do allow for funding in indirect - possibly disingenuous - ways. This, at a time when more Americans consider themselves pro-life (51 percent) than pro-choice (42 percent), according to a Gallup Values and Beliefs survey in May. Meanwhile, 20 House Democrats have signed a letter expressing concern about the abortion funding.
Essentially, there are two areas of concern.
One lies in the proposed public option in the House leadership's bill (H.R. 3200), which allows federal funding of abortion only in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother, thanks to an amendment by California Democratic Rep. Lois Capps. It leaves open the possibility for funding elective abortion at the discretion of the secretary of health and human services. Given the pro-choice record of Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, whose mock-motto among Republicans on the Hill is "everyone should be aborted at birth," there's little question how she would rule.
Abortion funding, moreover, would be in sync with Mr. Obama's stated position that reproductive health constitutes "essential care." It also would be consistent with the spirit of his campaign promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would remove all obstacles to abortion. While the act has assumed a lower priority on Mr. Obama's to-do list, the House bill is a significant step toward accomplishing the same thing.
