Vice President Mike Pence is reportedly meeting with pro-life advocates at the White House soon to make sure there is no taxpayer funding of abortions under Obamacare.
Congressional Republicans have already approved in committee a bill to defund Planned Parenthood and repeal Obamacare. What pro-life advocates want to make sure doesn’t happen is that tax credits given under the replacement bill are able to be used to pay for abortions. That was the situation under Obamacare.
White House officials have invited a handful of social conservative groups to a “listening session” on Friday to discuss concerns they have about the possible use of taxpayer money for abortions under the Republican healthcare bill, multiple sources familiar with the planning told the Washington Examiner.
“They’re going to expand this to bring in social conservatives who are worried about the Hyde Amendment and this refundable tax credit,” said one source who received an invitation.
Groups that have long supported anti-abortion legislation or lawmakers — like the American Conservative Union, Family Research Council and Club for Growth — were made aware of the listening session on Wednesday. Several invitees were told Vice President Pence will preside over the discussion.
Currently, the House bill stops the government from funding abortion through universal tax credits or other healthcare subsidies. But many religious and social conservative groups worry that such restrictions could be eliminated if part one of the three-phase Obamacare replacement makes its way to the Senate.
As Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council explains, the tax credits are a source of contention.
Already, House conservatives are showing just how fragile the peacekeeping process may be, as at least two Republican caucuses and a handful of senators pushed back on the pillars of Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wisc.) American Health Care Act (AHCA). As the Wall Street Journal explains, “Their objections focused on a new program of tax credits, replacing the existing health law’s subsidies, which GOP leaders say would help a wider set of people buy insurance if they don’t get it at work.”
In some members’ opinion, the tax credits are too similar to the subsidies in the law they’re trying to replace. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has been outspoken in his objections, calling the plan everything from Obamacare Lite to Obamacare 2.0. Others, like Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), are taking a more proactive posture and suggesting alternatives of their own. The objections are causing plenty of heartburn on the Hill, where Ryan and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) need every ounce of GOP support to get a bill across the finish line. Unless Democrats suddenly decide to listen to voters and work to scrap the law, leaders can’t afford to lose more than two senators and 22 congressmen on the plan.
But not everyone thinks the tension in Republican circles is a bad thing. “If they have 218 votes, we won’t get any change. That will be the bill,” Senator Paul told reporters. “If they don’t have 218 votes, there will be a negotiation and conservatives will have a seat in the table.” Like a lot of conservatives, FRC agrees with portions of the AHCA. It eliminates two of the problems with the healthcare Hydra: the individual mandate and taxpayers’ forced partnership with the abortion industry. What’s troubling is that the GOP seems to be surrendering to the view that health care is a government entitlement. Somewhere along the way, they succumbed to the idea that the government has to provide health care. As Holman Jenkins writes for the Journal, “Even under a GOP plan, health care will remain a heavily subsidized industry in relation to everything else Americans might rationally prefer to spend their money on.”
Fortunately, the White House seems to understand the severity of the divide and says it’s open to suggestions for improvement. House Freedom Caucus Chair Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) left a meeting with the Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney last night encouraged that the administration hears their concerns. “We obviously enjoyed the exchange with Director Mulvaney,” Meadows told CQ. “This is not something that is in stone, and [the White House indicated] that they are open to finding a way that best protects people and truly makes health care affordable.” It’s time, Meadows agreed, “to negotiate and really look at things we can coalesce around.
As LifeNews.com reported this week, President Donald Trump made an offer to the Planned Parenthood abortion company that it would not only keep its funding but would increase its taxcpayer funding if it would stop killing babies in abortions and focus on legitimate non-abortion healthcare. But Planned Parenthood said no.
As a result, Republicans in Congress have released the American Health Care Act. Their plan to repeal Obamacare includes provisions that would revoke funding for Planned Parenthood. Under the legislation there is a provision in the bill that prohibits states from using “direct spending” on “prohibited entities” with federal funds allocated from the legislation and those entities include any entity that “provides for abortions.” That means the nation’s biggest abortion corporation — Planned Parenthood.
And it’s not happy.
In an email Planned Parenthood sent to its supports, the abortion giant said: “The threat we’ve been warning about has just hit the House of Representatives. Republican leadership introduced a bill that would cut millions of patients off from care at Planned Parenthood health center.”
The new language also prohibits premium tax credits from being used to purchase plans that offer elective abortion coverage — the abortion funding component of Obamacare. Between 2018 and 2020, under the proposal, the small business tax credit generally is not available with respect to a qualified health plan that provides coverage relating to elective abortions.
SIGN THE PETITION! Congress Must De-Fund Planned Parenthood Immediately
A recent survey found that community health centers not only provide more comprehensive health care than Planned Parenthood, excluding abortions, they also outnumber the abortion group’s facilities by 20 to one.
The U.S. Senate took the first step in paving the way for a vote on defunding the Planned Parenthood abortion corporation in early January. The Senate approved on a party-line vote a budget resolution bill. This repeal resolution is the first step in the process to re-direct Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding to legitimate health care entities and repeal Obamacare using the budget reconciliation procedure.
President Donald Trump promised to sign a bill that would defund the Planned Parenthood abortion business.
Recent polls also indicate Americans support the defunding efforts. New polling found 56 percent of Americans in battleground states want Planned Parenthood defunded.
The expose’ videos catching Planned Parenthood officials selling the body parts of aborted babies have shocked the nation. Here is a list of all twelve:
- In the first video: Dr. Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood commented on baby-crushing: “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
- In the second video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Mary Gatter joked, “I want a Lamborghini” as she negotiated the best price for baby parts.
- In the third video: Holly O’Donnell, a former Stem Express employee who worked inside a Planned Parenthood clinic, detailed first-hand the unspeakable atrocities and how she fainted in horror over handling baby legs.
- In the fourth video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Savita Ginde stated, “We don’t want to do just a flat-fee (per baby) of like, $200. A per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.” She also laughed while looking at a plate of fetal kidneys that were “good to go.”
- In the fifth video: Melissa Farrell of Planned Parenthood-Gulf Coast in Houston boasted of Planned Parenthood’s skill in obtaining “intact fetal cadavers” and how her “research” department “contributes so much to the bottom line of our organization here, you know we’re one of the largest affiliates, our Research Department is the largest in the United States.”
- In the sixth video: Holly O’Donnell described technicians taking fetal parts without patient consent: “There were times when they would just take what they wanted. And these mothers don’t know. And there’s no way they would know.”
- In the seventh and perhaps most disturbing video: Holly O’Donnell described the harvesting, or “procurement,” of organs from a nearly intact late-term fetus aborted at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte’s Alameda clinic in San Jose, CA. “‘You want to see something kind of cool,’” O’Donnell says her supervisor asked her. “And she just taps the heart, and it starts beating. And I’m sitting here and I’m looking at this fetus, and its heart is beating, and I don’t know what to think.”
- In the eighth video: StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer admits Planned Parenthood sells “a lot of” fully intact aborted babies.
- The ninth video: catches a Planned Parenthood medical director discussing how the abortion company sells fully intact aborted babies — including one who “just fell out” of the womb.
- The 10th video: catches the nation’s biggest abortion business selling specific body parts — including the heart, eyes and “gonads” of unborn babies. The video also shows the shocking ways in which Planned Parenthood officials admit that they are breaking federal law by selling aborted baby body parts for profit.
- Unreleased Videos: Unreleased videos from CMP show Deb Vanderhei of Planned Parenthood caught on tape talking about how Planned Parenthood abortion business affiliates may “want to increase revenue [from selling baby parts] but we can’t stop them…” Another video has a woman talking about the “financial incentives” of selling aborted baby body parts.
- The 11th video: catches a Texas Planned Parenthood abortionist planning to sell the intact heads of aborted babies for research. Amna Dermish is caught on tape describing an illegal partial-birth abortion procedure to terminate living, late-term unborn babies which she hopes will yield intact fetal heads for brain harvesting.
- The 12th video in the series shows new footage of Jennefer Russo, medical director at Planned Parenthood in Orange County, California, describing to undercover investigators how her abortion business tries to harvest intact aborted babies’ bodies for a local for-profit biotech company and changes the abortion procedure to do so.
