Obama Admin Lobbies Faith Leaders for Pro-Abortion Obamacare

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jan 27, 2011   |   11:35AM   |   Washington, DC

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is holding a conference call today in what is a new bid by the Obama administration to lobby religious leaders to support the Obamacare law in the face of a congressional repeal effort.

With the House having already voted for the repeal bill and Republicans in the Senate moving on two fronts to promote it there, the Obama administration is feeling the heat over the health care reform law, which fails to stop abortion funding with taxpayer dollars or rationing.

The administration bills the call as one helping “faith and community leaders to discuss how the Affordable Care Act is helping Americans across the country gain more freedom and control in their health care choices.”

Some religious left leaders who have upset pro-life Christians over their support for Obama and his pro-abortion agenda will join Sebelius on the call — including Rev. Joel Hunter of Northland Church in Florida. Others participating in the lobbying effort include Rev. Linda Hanna Walling of Faithful Reform in Health Care; Right Rev. Barry Howe, an Episcopal bishop; Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman of Temple Israel in Minneapolis; and Bishop Roy Dixon of the Church of God in Christ denomination.

But Deal Hudson, the head of Catholic Advocate who has conducted religious outreach on the presidential level, says there is no whitewashing the fact that the Obamacare legislation allows abortion funding.

“Secretary Sebelius, sadly, has become a tragic character in the sad tale of the health care debate. Sebelius, like other notable Catholics has deliberately blinded herself, like the ancient Oedipus, to what everyone else, including the USCCB, knows about the health care bill,” he told LifeNews.com today. “It requires federal funds to help subsidize and promote health plans that cover elective abortions, and all purchasers of such plans will be required to pay for other people’s abortions through a separate payment solely to pay for abortion.”

“That Secretary Sebelius does not want to see what she is administering is understandable, because it will become a veritable slaughter of the innocents, all funded through her department of Health and Human Services. I hope those religious leaders on the conference call will be aware of the magnitude of the evil they are witnessing and will be moved to call it by its proper name,” he said.

Father Frank Pavone, the national director of Priests for Life, concurred.

“As many legal analysts have pointed out, unless funding for abortion is explicitly excluded from health care legislation, it will in fact be included,” he told LifeNews.com. “But there’s a further consideration. Why would we even want to tamper with doubt when the fundamental principle of civilized society – the protection of human life – is at issue?”

“This is not a game or a debate; it’s an absolute. Any health care legislation we support should have an exclusion of abortion funding that is so clear as to bring an end to any reasonable disagreement. Why should faith leaders be willing to settle for anything less?”

When Congress passed the government-run health care bill, it did so without any limits on abortion funding and language mandating taxpayer financing of abortion in certain circumstances.

Obama eventually issued a controversial executive order supposedly taking the abortion funding issue off the table.

However, virtually every pro-life group said it would not mitigate the abortion funding because it doesn’t have the effect of law, could be reversed in the future, and because it didn’t tackle much of the abortion funding in the bill. The Obama administration could also ignore the order and not put it in place when the health care law goes into effect.

Arizona, Tennessee, Mississippi, Missouri, and Louisiana have passed similar bills that have already been signed into law by governors in those states and several other states are expected to consider legislation in their upcoming legislative sessions. Governors in Oklahoma and Florida vetoed similar legislation.