White House May Unveil Pro-Abortion Health Care Proposal Before Summit
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
February 18, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The Obama administration is supposedly fostering bipartisanship at next week’s White House health care summit, but it will likely be floating its version of the pro-abortion health care bill this weekend. The proposal will likely be designed to guide the House and Senate in the controversial reconciliation process.
John Rother, director of policy for the AARP, which is working closely with the White House on the proposal, says it could be unveiled this weekend.
“That’s going to be the White House version of the deal between House and Senate leaders on what they think the bill should look like,” he told CQ. “That will in effect be the starting point for the conference on the 25th."
The summit will supposedly give Republicans a chance to participate because Congress moves ahead with reconciliation, but it appears more likely each day that Democrats will attempt to railroad the pro-abortion health care bill through Congress.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a top Democrat who is an assistant to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi admitted to CQ that, “The House and the Senate have been very close to completing an agreement."
But he also said, “I don’t know whether the president is going to put one particular piece of legislation on the table" — casting some doubt on whether Obama can get the proposal done in time for the summit.
The idea behind reconciliation is for the House to approve the Senate bill, which contains massive abortion funding and other pro-abortion problems.
Then, both the Senate and House would approve a "corrections" bill that would make changes to the Senate bill (but not revoking the abortion funding) so members of the House are more likely to vote for the Senate bill.
That would make it so Senate Democrats only need 50 votes, including the support of Vice President Joe Biden, to get the corrections bill passed in the chamber.
Some political observers say the passage of the corrections bill is not guaranteed in the Senate as some Democrats may defect on the vote.
Leading pro-life advocates have said Obama has made false promises to Americans about not wanting abortion funding in the health care bill.
"The president promised from the get-go to maintain the national consensus that rejects public funding of abortion. He has yet to live up to it," Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser says.
She said the health care summit is a great time for Obama to retreat on demanding the government-run health care bill fund abortions.
"So in this new conciliatory mode, if he ignores the 80-percent consensus opposing abortion coverage in healthcare, the most intractable and divisive issue thus far, he reveals what many have suspected from the beginning – that abortion ideology is more precious to this president than his top domestic priority," she adds.
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