Lawmakers Credit Pro-Life Movement for Stopping Pro-Abortion Health Care Bill
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 25, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Key pro-life lawmakers in Congress credit the pro-life movement for stalling a pro-abortion health care bill that appeared to have enough steam to make it to President Barack Obama. They say the focus on the abortion funding in the bill has caused enough dissension to health the legislation for now.
As LifeNews.com is reporting today, the status of the pro-abortion health care bill is uncertain in the wake of the Massachusetts election.
Rep. Mike Pence told CNS News that the abortion battle played a "critical role" in temporarily stopping the bill.
CNS News asked him, "Do you think the abortion language had anything to do with the bill being dead now?”
"I do believe it did,” Pence responded. "I want to give great credit to the pro-life Republicans and Democrats who took a stand in the House of Representatives on the traditional language that was encompassed first in the Hyde Amendment and then in the Stupak-Pitts Amendment — so, I think it played a critical role."
“But I also believe that the recent election in Massachusetts, the clarion call by the American people to return this nation to common sense and common values, has played a role in bringing that version of health care reform to an end,” he said.
Pence told the conservative news web site "it’s disappointing to hear liberals in Washington, D.C., continuing to talk about health care reform when the American people want us to focus on fiscal discipline and jobs.”
Meanwhile, pro-life Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican who has led efforts to combat abortion in the Senate, also credited the pro-life movement is thwarting the bill.
“You have changed hearts and minds. We have just won a debate on healthcare in that they are not going to have abortion funding in this bill and that’s because of your interest in it,” he told more than 300,000 people at the March for Life.
Family Research Council president Tony Perkins also cited abortion as a big reason the health care bill may have to be completely reworked.
“She lost Cao (and Wexler) — she didn’t have the votes," he said of pro-abortion Rep. Robert Wexler who recently resigned and pro-life Louisiana Rep. Ahn “Joseph” Cao, the lone Republican who voted for the bill in the House the first time around who has changed his mind because the Senate measure funds abortions.
"And there were 37 Democrats who voted for the Stupak, who voted for the bill but have very strong pro-life records that I would be very surprised if you could get all 37 of them to vote for the Nelson language; you would probably have half of them peel off,” Perkins said.
Perkins said that without the phones calls, e-mails, rallies and other activities of pro-life groups that the bill would have become law.
“You stopped it, and you took a stand on the most principled aspect of the healthcare takeover initiative and that was stopping your fellow Americans from enforcement pay of an abortion, that one issue, more than any other, stopped, derailed what was attempted on the other end of the city,” Perkins told a group of pro-life advocates from Ohio gathered at the Capitol.
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