Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- During his health care reform speech last night, President Barack Obama faced one member of Congress who said he told a "lie" about one section of the government-run health care plan. Now, pro-life advocates are calling Obama on the carpet for misrepresenting the abortion funding in the current bills.

In his address to a joint session of Congress last night, Obama said "One more misunderstanding I want to clear up -- under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions."

But Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, says federal dollars will definitely pay for abortions under HR 3200 and the Kennedy bill in the Senate.

"Barack Obama needs to learn that the mere repetition of a verbal formula does not change reality," he told LifeNews.com late Thursday.

"The reality is that the Obama-backed House bill would explicitly authorize the federal government insurance plan to pay for elective abortions and would explicitly authorize subsidies for private abortion insurance -- and all with federal dollars, which are the only kind of dollars that the federal government can spend," he said.

Johnson explained that the "Hyde Amendment" would not apply to the new programs that would be created by the Obama-backed health bill, H.R. 3200, and would not be able to stop taxpayer-funded abortions.

He also told LifeNews.com that all of the funds spent on elective abortions under the bill, and all of the funds spent to subsidize private insurance plans that cover abortion, would be "federal funds" in both the legal sense and in the sense in which those terms are used throughout the government.

"The claim that a federal agency would be spending private funds on abortion, not federal funds, is absurd on its face, a political hoax," Johnson said.

Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life women's group, told LifeNews.com that an amendment Obama and pro-abortion Democrats are trumpeting as a compromise to stop abortion funding actually allows it.

"Many of the supposedly 'pro-life compromises' have made the situation worse and still allow for government funding to pay for abortions," she said. "Of particular concern is the Capps Amendment, which officially requires that the official in charge of the public option increase the premium for each enrollee enough to pay for the aggregate cost of all the abortions - effectively a mandatory abortion surcharge."

"What will certainly result from the Capps amendment is a huge check written from the government to the abortion clinics every month," she continued.

Related web sites:
National Right to Life - http://www.nrlc.org
Susan B. Anthony List - http://www.sba-list.org

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