Bipartisan Amdt Expected Tuesday to Stop Obama’s Tax-Funded Abortions in DC
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
July 3, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Lawmakers from both political parties are working together to offer an amendment to a Congressional spending bill that includes President Barack Obama’s request to fund abortions in the nation’s capital. A House committee is expected to vote on the amendment on Tuesday.
As LifeNews.com has repeatedly reported, a House subcommittee pushed forward Obama’s budget request to rescind the Dornan amendment, which, for most years since 1988, has prohibited taxpayer funding of abortions in Washington, D.C.
Republican congressman Todd Tiahrt, of Kansas, and Democrat Lincoln Davis, of Tennessee, will offer an amendment to the FY 2010 Financial Services appropriations bill to stop Obama’s abortion-funding agenda.
The Tiahrt-Davis amendment would be offered in the full House Appropriations Committee, which is considering the bill before it heads to the full House floor.
The National Right to Life Committee issued a letter Thursday from Douglas Johnson, its legislative director, urging support for the amendment.
"Unless the traditional pro-life provision is restored, the National Right to
Life Committee is compelled to urge you to oppose the Financial Services
appropriations bill," he said.
If the committee fails to endorse the Tiahrt-Davis amendment, the pro-life organization will ask members of the House to vote down the appropriations bill.
"A vote in favor of the bill, so long as it contains the new language that guts the pro-life policy, will be accurately reported in NRLC’s annual congressional scorecard as a vote to fund abortion on demand with funds appropriated by Congress," Johnson explained.
Johnson’s letter also exposes the accounting sleight of hand that abortion advocates used to make it appear taxpayer funds are not being used to pay for abortions.
"The subcommittee-reported bill contains new language that would allow the city government to pay for abortion on demand with so-called ‘local’ funds appropriated by Congress," Johnson sayid in the letter provided to LifeNews.com.
He says the taxpayer-funding of abortions allowed in the bill would result in an additional 1,000 abortions in the nation’s capital.
"The true cost of enacting this change would be in the loss of approximately 1,000 extra human lives during each fiscal year that government — funded abortion is available," Johnson said.
From 1988 until 1993, Congress annually included the ban on the use of congressionally appropriated funds to pay for abortions in the District of Columbia.
The ban was rescinded during the early years of the Clinton administration and reinstated in 1996, though Johnson points out that the Washington city government illegally continued to pay for abortions for two subsequent years.
During the congressional debates of that era, evidence was cited that indicated that the city’s abortion-funding policy was among the most permissive in the nation, and was not even limited to Medicaid-eligible clients, Johnson explained.
In fact, in 1994, then-Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly authorized the use of $1,000,000 from the Medical Charities fund, originally set up to help indigent AIDS patients, to pay for abortions.
Although Congress has banned taxpayer-funded abortions in D.C. for years, the budget request Obama released in May asked, on Appendix page 1209, for Congress to repeal the ban.
ACTION: Contact members of the Appropriations Committee and ask them to restore the Dornan Amendment to stop tax-funded abortions in DC. Find a list of members here. https://appropriations.house.gov/members111th.shtml
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