Battle Continues Against Allowing Abortions at Tax-Funded Military Base Hospitals

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jun 11, 2010   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Battle Continues Against Allowing Abortions at Tax-Funded Military Base Hospitals

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 11
, 2010

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The battle is continuing over whether Congress should support an amendment that would open up taxpayer-funded U.S. military base hospitals to doing abortions. A ban has been in place for years that prevents such abortions and the last time it was lifted, military doctors refused to do abortions.

As LifeNews.com reported last month, pro-abortion Sen. Roland Burris of Illinois attached an amendment to a bill in the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The measure received a 15-12 vote, with Democrats supporting it except for Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who joined all of the committee’s Republicans in opposition.

The next step in the fight is a battle on the Senate floor and abortion advocates are optimistic they have the numbers to prevent removal of the Burris amendment from the legislation.

That would take the fight to the House, where Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey, the head of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, tells LifeNews.com he will strongly oppose the amendment on the House side and he expects to defeat it there.

“Our military facilities should be a place of hope and healing, not intentional destruction of innocent human life,” he said. “This amendment will mean that as many as 260 military medical facilities worldwide will now be in the abortion business."

“We will stand very firm," Smith added. “I believe there will be an overwhelming vote in the House to keep our military hospitals as nurturing centers, not abortion mills.”

The House version of Department of Defense Authorization passed last month and did not contain language similar to the Burris amendment and Representative Ike Skelton, the Missouri Democrat who leads the Armed Services Committee, typically votes pro-life and is opposed to it.

The House has repeatedly rejected similar efforts in the past and, most recently, a bipartisan majority defeated an amendment by Rep. Robert Andrews to allow abortion in overseas military facilities by a vote of 237-191.

Shortly after President Bill Clinton took office in 1993, he signed a memo allowing abortions at military bases but Congress eventually banned the practice by 1996.

The Burris amendment has the support of leading pro-abortion groups like NARAL and Planned Parenthood, which have urged President Barack Obama to aggressively promote abortion.

Since Obama was elected, the U.S. government has moved swiftly to allow the use of U.S. taxpayers money to fund abortion groups all over the world by rescinding the Mexico City Policy first instituted in the 1980s; to enable China’s coercive population control program by funding the United Nations Population Fund, and; to roll back restrictions on funding for human embryo-destroying stem cell experimentation.

The Administration is also in the process of altering federal regulations to roll back the nation’s existing conscience protection laws that protect the rights and freedoms of healthcare providers (such as Catholic hospitals, physicians and nurses) who are opposed to performing abortions on personal or moral grounds.

And it hasn’t implemented the executive order that supposedly will stop some of the abortion funding in the health care bill, though pro-life advocates dispute that claim.

ACTION: Contact your senators at https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm and urge them to vote to remove the Burris amendment and oppose abortions at taxpayer funded military bases.

 

Sign Up for Free Pro-Life News From LifeNews.com

Daily Pro-Life News Report Twice-Weekly Pro-Life
News Report
Receive a free daily email report from LifeNews.com with the latest pro-life news stories on abortion, euthanasia and stem cell research. Sign up here. Receive a free twice-weekly email report with the latest pro-life news headlines on abortion, euthanasia and stem cell research. Sign up here.