Pro-Abortion Obama Health Care Bill Takes Major Hit, Proposition C Passes
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 4, 2010
Jefferson City, MO (LifeNews.com) — The pro-abortion health care bill President Barack Obama signed received a major blow on Tuesday from voters in Missouri. They voted overwhelmingly to reject a federal mandate to purchase health insurance — important because some of the plans in the program will pay for abortions with federal funds.
Proposition C passed by almost a 3-1 ratio as Show Me State residents voted to exempt Missouri from the insurance mandate in the new health care law.
Sen. Jane Cunningham, a Republican who was one of the prime sponsors of the measure, lauded the vote afterwards.
"The citizens of the Show-Me State don’t want Washington involved in their health care decisions," she said, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "I’ve never seen anything like it. Citizens wanted their voices to be heard."
Missouri was the first of four states seeking to opt out of the insurance purchase mandate portion of the health care law Obama pushed and the vote on Tuesday could prompt others to move forward.
"It’s like a domino, and Missouri is the first one to fall," Cunningham said. "Missouri’s vote will greatly influence the debate in the other states."
Proposition C is a non-binding referendum on ObamaCare that asked voters whether state law should be amended to "deny the government authority to penalize citizens for refusing to purchase private insurance or infringe upon the right to offer or accept direct payment for lawful health care services."
Conservative writer Ed Morrissey of HotAir talked about the ramifications of the vote for the national health care debate.
"One meme had materialized over the last couple of weeks that ObamaCare had begun to get more popular with voters. Using a couple of carefully-selected media polls, the White House had started this claim and the press seemed willing to ignore the avalanche of other polling showing that solid majorities favor repeal of the overhaul and the candidates who argue for repeal,’ he explained.
"That meme died in Missouri, where almost three-quarters of the voters who came to the polls cast votes for a largely symbolic measure repudiating one of ObamaCare’s key provisions,’ he said.
Morrissey says the polling data showed 58 percent of Missouri residents support the repeal of the pro-abortion health care law and the results of Missouri’s referendum suggests that number may be larger.
"If anything, this shows that opposition to ObamaCare is growing, not receding, but that’s probably not what actually happened. While general-population and registered-voter samples may have seen a bit of softening to ObamaCare opposition, those aren’t the people turning out to vote this year," he said.
"Prop C got more votes than the combined voting in both Senate primaries — which tells us something even more about the passion in the electorate," he said. "Democrats may have to hit the panic button after seeing the results from this swing state. ObamaCare set fire to the electorate last year, and that may be an inferno for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in November.."
On Monday, a federal judge ruled that a Virginia-based lawsuit against the mandate should move forward, rejecting an attempt by the federal government to have the case thrown out on procedural grounds.
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