This is a tricky topic, and I’ve seen so many confusing and misleading statements on it. Much of it comes from not thinking carefully enough about how health insurance works. Let me try to describe the coverage of abortion in five hypothetical systems, all mirroring real world examples. Let us assume that the legal status of abortion is the same in each country. And let us assume that all countries have universal coverage.
(1) Single provider. This is a case where the government runs the healthcare system. It runs the hospitals and it pays the staff. The closest real world example would be the UK National Health System. In this country, you can get an abortion either through the public system without paying, or you can pay for it at a private clinic. As far as I know, this is how it works in the UK. In a single-provider model, one can make the case that the government is cooperating directly in each and every abortion. And taxpayer funds are used directly to fund abortion. This is probably the most extreme case. And yet – are the UK bishops campaigning to shut down the NHS?
(2) Single payer. This is a case where healthcare providers are private, but insurance is managed by the government. Let’s assume that it is funded by a special social security contribution. Both revenue and expenses are treated as part of the government budget. Here, if a person has an abortion, the government’s involvement is one step removed. The person pays for the insurance through her own contributions, and the government entity pays for the procedure. This is problematic, but not as bad as (1). How does the Church in Canada and France deal with this?
(3) Unsubsidized private insurance with a public option. In this case, everybody must purchase insurance from a list of private insurers, or a public option (either through employers or on an exchange). For this thought experiment, the nature of the public option is very important. Let’s assume (because it is in accord with recent proposals) that it is a ”weak” public option - just like its private competitors, it must negotiate with providers directly. It cannot use government muscle, and it cannot set single payer-style reimbursement rates (in the US context, this means it cannot use Medicare rates). It is also not subsidized by taxpayers, and is fully supported by premiums. How is this treated in an accounting sense? Best practice would suggest it be not be included in the budget, or treated as part of government at all (because it is run on a commercial basis). So if the public option pays for abortion, it is not the same thing as a single payer system paying for abortion. It does not come from the budget, or from the general revenue pool. It’s basically like a private insurer that is managed by the government. Now again, this could be problematic, but not as bad as (2).
(4) Unsubsidized private insurance without a public option. In this case, everybody must purchase insurance from a list of private insurers (either through employers or on an exchange). These private insurers cover abortion. For reasons that I cannot understand, very few people point to the moral implications of this. The US insurance market is presently dominated by a small number of large companies. Most of them cover abortion somewhere. So even if your individual plan does not, you are contributing funds to a company that in all likelihood is paying for somebody’s abortion. In a recent “gotcha” moment, Time’s Amy Sullivan shows that Focus on the Family’s insurance comes from a company that pays for abortion. I see little distinction between paying a dedicated tax to a single payer fund, paying a premium to a public option, or paying a premium to a private insurer. I would say this is at least as problematic as (3), but not at all on the pro-life radar.
(5) Subsidized insurance. One of the main components of the reform is not the public option, but the subsidies to allow people fulfil the individual mandate and get health insurance. Various bills suggest various subsidy levels, some more generous than others. Since you’ll get the subsidy whether or not you choose the public option, let’s set this distinction aside. In this case, the taxpayer is giving a subsidy to a person to purchase an insurance plan that may cover abortion. Yes, there is an issue here, but let’s think about it. Again, it’s the issue of fungibility. Already, the government provides funds to Planned Parenthood, on the understanding that this money does not fund abortion – but isn’t it fungible? Already, Medicare makes payments to hospitals that provide abortion – but isn’t it fungible? Already, the federal government allows states to fund abortions through Medicaid, even if there’s no federal money – but isn’t it fungible? Note also a standard Republican health reform proposal – tax credits – also involves using taxpayer money to subsidize private insurance that covers abortion. Where was the pro-life industry on that one? And we can really push this even further. What is the government provides unemployment benefits and the person uses that money to pay for an abortion? What if tax cuts are used to fund abortion? Clearly, a problem, but a whole murky grey area.
My point here is that there is a whole lot of confusion on this issue. In systems where the moral link between the taxpayer and abortion is more clearcut, the Church does not seem to spend any energy fighting the health insurance system. In the US, the main issue seems to be the fungibility of money and the direct subsidization of abortion. But why is this not also an issue with private insurance?
Don’t get me wrong. I would like the proximity of the healthcare system and the incidence of abortion to be as remote as possible. I fully support the efforts of Bart Stupak, and I hope he succeeds. But how can this be a deal breaker? This is what I have trouble understanding. The late Cardinal Dulles once argued that:
“[a] vote [for an appropriations bill that includes some provisions for funding abortions] might arguably be licit if the funding for abortion were only incidental and could not be removed from a bill that was otherwise very desirable.”
To me, this sums up the current situation perfectly. I have yet to see a compelling moral case over why the treatment of abortion ought to be a dealbreaker, given the remoteness, the consistency with treatment of private insurance, and the experience of other countries.
Does the constant votes to keep abortion in the health care bill move us towards or away from continued legalized abortion? Is the defeat of the health care bill due to the pro life cause going to strengthen the voice of the pro-life movement or weaken it?
This bill is another step in the wrong direction. There are many problems with insurance, as you point out, and pro-life groups ought to address them. But those problems do not justify getting us another set of problems that just move us further away from ending a critical piece of the culture of death.
The emerging compromise is to apply the reach of the Stupak committee amendment (including private insurance bought on the exchange with a subsidy) to the health care bill but as an appropriations rider (subject to annual renewal) rather than as authorizing language.
Is the defeat of the health care bill due to the pro life cause going to strengthen the voice of the pro-life movement or weaken it?
If the health care bill is defeated solely over the issue of abortion, I can only imagine that the anger against pro-lifers will be intense. I don’t think it will happen, though.
There are many problems with insurance, as you point out, and pro-life groups ought to address them.
I wouldn’t hold my breath. I can’t honestly see anything less than a demand that any pro-life advocate who has an insurance policy that covers abortion, or has an insurance policy from an insurance company that covers abortion in other policies, be required to give up the policy. That would probably be telling millions of people they have to give up their employer-provided health insurance and buy their own coverage, at least in the short term.
Kurt: I’m curious, how do you know that? I’m not being snarky; I just haven’t seen that reported anywhere.
Another option is to stop seeing money as fungible. For whatever reason, one group is able to see money as not fungible when it comes to funding private schools and soup kitchens run by religious organizations but sees it as fungible when it comes to family planning programs and adoption programs run by organizations that perform abortions.
Nice summary MM.
Mickey,
It is one of those strange Washington things where a proposal is being circulated to congressional offices with no acknowledged author. The Virgin Birth of legislation :)
The plan would be to add it to the health care bill as part of the managers amendment. It seems that there is a problem with individuals on the Rules Committee.
This is an interesting analogy, but it would seem to be contrary to what the USCCB has said on the topic (I know that MM is fond of citing statements made by the USCCB several decades ago as if they were decisive on political topics; how about what they said last week?)
Now wait a minute, I fully support the Stupak amendment. I just don’t think it should be a deal breaker and I haven’t seen a convincing moral argument that it should be. Of course, from a strategical standpoint, it might make no sense to let people know you will cave on this. But I’m not interested in the politics here, only the morality.
I’m also afraid that the USCCB might not fully understand the various insurance distinctions I’ve drawn out here. For example, the flyer says “Americans would be forced to subsidize abortions through their taxes and health insurance premiums”. But the vast majority of health insurance premiums are (and will continue to be) to insurance companies that provide abortion. Is the conference saying that we can no longer pay premiums to any insurance company that provides abortion?
I’m not getting this deal breaker issue. Support the Stupak Amendment. If it fails, then there are the votes to pass health care without the Stupak Amendment supporters. If it is not made in order, vote against the Rule. Again, if the rule passes, then there are not the votes to block health care reform. (The GOP can also offer the Stupak Amendment as a motion to recommit. They only can offer one such motion, so they will be tested as to what issue they find ‘non-negotiable.’)
In Italy we have (1), you can get an abortion only through the public system without paying, you cannot get it at a private clinic. I never heard Italian Bishops campaigning against public health care.
MM your post started out well by distinguishing different levels of involvement in abortion, but by the end you were bunching them all together again. Funding an insurance *plan* that covers abortion is clearly more proximate than funding a *company* that elsewhere covers abortion. And claiming that the funds *to that plan* aren’t really funding abortion is more susceptible to simple redescription than actual distinction. You say we already fund Planned Parenthood so what’s the big deal, but pro-lifers do oppose government funding of Planned Parenthood and rightly so. There is little in common between supporting tax money for the largest abortionists in the country, and purchasing a non-abortion plan from a company that in other plans, to an unspecified degree, covers abortion.
You also fail to mention the difference between the existence of funding of companies, plans, and premiums that cover abortion, and the *government requirement* that people fund companies, plans, and premiums to cover abortion. Moving from the first to the second is a massive shift. You say you don’t think it’s a good idea to tell people that abortion funding is no deal breaker, but guess what, that’s exactly the message you are and have been sending to liberal Catholics and their congressmen who won’t hear from them because they won’t send the message that the USCCB is recommending.
Therefore, it is distracting when you keep asking about what bishops are doing in countries where government is more heavily involved in promoting abortion, as if it is an exact parallel to what bishops should be doing in a country that doesn’t currently promote abortion in these ways. The issue is, what would those bishops be doing if they could go back to the time when their countries weren’t yet promoting abortion to that degree.
The bottom line is that the USCCB has taken a principled stand for health reform and against current plans. You can’t smear them as right wing extremists who oppose health care anyway. It turns out that you are the one, who insisted that pro-lifers speak from a pro-health care position, but when they do it you oppose their pro-life advocacy anyway. Just as Deal Hudson was never going to support Dem. health reform anyway, you were never going to support the USCCB’s consistent life ethic on health care anyway. So if Deal shouldn’t be listened to, why should you?
Matt,
You raise some good issues, but I still claim that many of these distinctions are murky. For example, you allude to the individual mandate when you say that there will be a “government requirement” to purchase health insurance. And yes, an individual mandate is essential if this is going to work (it’s about risk pooling and cost control). If you are going to argue that a person should be allowed to opt out for moral reasons, then shouldn’t you also be advising people today to “opt out” of employer-based insurance today, given the near certainty that the large insurance companies they deal with are somehow funding abortion?
You also distinguish funding a “plan” and a “company”. I assume you refer to subsidies on the exchange. But as I pointed out, the argument is based on fungibility, and we can take that fungibility argument to absurd levels. It’s not funding, it’s giving people money to help them purchase health inusrance. The current tax system benefits employer-based insurance, and some of these “plans” cover abortion – is this also the government funding abortion?
As I said, I support the USCCB on this. I support the Stupak amendment and I pray it passes. I’m just having problems seeing the moral argument that it should be a deal breaker. I think the only real argument is that it will lead to a massive spike in the abortion rate, but this is an empirical question.
But the vast majority of health insurance premiums are (and will continue to be) to insurance companies that provide abortion.
Is there any evidence for this whatsoever? (The Amy Sullivan “gotcha” didn’t have a working link to the supposed evidence.) And do try to distinguish between abortion that is medically prescribed to save a woman’s life vs. elective abortion.
Well, a central part of the USCCB’s and Stupak’s position is not just that abortion should be removed but that if it is not removed (per the USCCB) or if an amendment to remove it is not allowed to go to a vote (per Stupak) then that is a deal breaker and the resulting plan must be opposed. So whether you support the USCCB depends on whether you are willing to agree with them that it is a deal breaker. It’s just not reasonable to say that it’s merely incidental, qua Dulles, to change from the current situation to a situation where every woman will have abortions for free through government mandates and the public plan. It’s massive, and studies show that tens if not hundreds of thousands of abortions will occur that don’t occur now due to Hyde.
The idea that fungibility can be taken to extreme ends doesn’t mean that some fungibility is more proximate, and legitimately opposed as deal-breaking, than other hypothetical fungibility. Just because tax credits for schools which allow parents to choose or not choose a school leads to some of the money going to support a school and its religious mission but doesn’t constitute government establishment of religion, doesn’t mean there is no such thing as more proximate levels of government support that do constitute government involvement in the thing funded. The Capps amendment method of covering abortion in the public plan, requiring all enrolled in that plan to pay premiums to cover the abortions, paying abortionists for their abortions covered by the plan, and requiring a private plan in every region to cover abortion, is federal government funding and involvement in abortion at a level unprecedented in this country. Whether Focus on the Family’s insurance plan, which does not cover abortion, comes from a company that in other plans with unspecified numbers do cover abortion, is not an argument that the Capps proposal is unacceptable government funding of abortion.
sorry, that should say “doesn’t mean that some fungibility is not more proximate” etc.
SB:
Guttmacher has claimed that “87% of typical employer-based insurance policies in 2002 covered medically necessary or appropriate abortions”.
In this post, I’m talking about directly-procured abortion. Guttmacher notes specifically that coverage of abortion in very limited circumstances (such as to save life) is very rare.
Bottom line – why does nobody care when a private company does it, but it takes on a whole new dimension when the government gets involved, no matter now indirectly?
What are we talking about, then? An insurance plan that covers medically necessary abortions (probably common) isn’t even remotely the same as an insurance plan that covers elective abortions (I’ve seen no evidence that there’s even a single such insurance policy in America). But the latter is what Obama’s electoral base hopes to push through.
The bottom line is that the study you cite talks about policies that cover abortion, not how many people actually have the coverage. There can be policies that companies offer and employers are free not to choose. Instead, the study says that only 46% of employees have abortion coverage.
Right now, companies can choose policies that don’t cover abortion, including religious entities or even companies run by Christians. Government mandates will require it, for the poor who have to be in the public plan (which is the point–these are the women who aren’t getting abortions because they don’t have coverage, and these are the abortions that will increase under our “abortion reduction” version of Catholic politicking). And it will require participation for everyone once the public plan results in single payer. Government mandates establish a standard of what is good medicine and what is basic care, driving medical policy and public policy in a pro-abortion direction. Government mandates require citizens to be involved because all that the government does is citizen connected. Government mandates don’t get repealed, their power is not ceded, so that next time, when we are presented with the choice of whether to become one of those more pro-abortion countries you discuss above, people will argue that hey, the proposal isn’t much worse than our current governmental mandates, so why is this a deal breaker? They won’t compare that future abortion double-down to the current situation, just as you are comparing the UK’s bishops current activity in a different situation than ours here.
Matt,
We need to clarify some things. There is no proposal for single payer. The proposed pubic plan incredibly far from single payer – not only is it really small with restricted availability, but it is precluded from using single payer (medicare) negotiated rates and will be financed solely through premiums, not taxes. It’s basically an arms-length government-owned plan.
There are no “mandates” to cover abortion, and not even those most opposed to the Stupak amendment would claim so. All want “abortion neutrality” – it’s just that people have different interpretations of what that means. In the current proposals, the clearly problematic area will be the subsidies. These will bring those without coverage into the system, and some of these might choose plans with abortion. This is the issue – let’s not lose track of it by talking about mandates and single payer systems.
You claim that now, companies can choose policies without abortion. Of course they can, because the company (for whatever reason) decides it will not pay for abortion and designs a plan accordingly. But the insurance company that is administering the plan will have plenty of other clients (the majority) who have no problem including abortion. This is one company with one accounting system – one could reasonably argue that this “carve-out” is as fictitious as the one Capps proposes for the exchanges.
Oh, on numbers, Guttmacher says 86 percent, Kaiser says 46 percent. Looking at the methodology, I think Kaiser is more sound. But let’s split the difference and say 66 percent, two thirds. That’s an awful lot of abortion coverage.
In my state, even private plans are prohibited from covering abortion except to save the life of the mother. It works fine and I see no reason why that policy could not extend to the policies under the new system. It works.
CTD: I’m fine with that, but why focus on the “new system”? Why not the “old system” where the pro-life movement has been largely silent while private insurance companies very actively pay for abortions?
CTD –
The Republicans just introduced a bill to do away with that.
BTW, I hear the NRTL Committee is about to go public that they have been cut out of the process of negotiating over this!!
Well, because it is public, not private.
There is something different at stake here – whether we, as citizens, want to give official sanction to abortion services through government action. The nexus between pro-life individuals and the abortion coverage/funding is arguably greater than it is for payers in a private system precisely because it is our government.
Also, by its nature, concerns about private coverage are less public. Before moving to this state, I worked at a business whose employer-plan covered abortions. Several employees complained. Such actions are not going to make the headlines.
As for the bishops, I know that they, too, have fought insurance companies for policies that do not cover abortion, contraception, and sterilization. Again, such actions do not make headlines. Too often, dioceses do not have the bargaining power to negotiate such plans.
In short, I would not presume that the pro-life movement or the bishops have been silent when it comes to private policies.
Regarding other countries, I don’t think we can interpret the alleged silence of bishops as indicating that there is not a problem with covering abortion in those programs. If the bishops of those countries thought that they could prohibit funding, they might very well act on it. If they were, as we are in the U.S., facing the creation of a new system at a time when abortion is legal and considered a “right,” they might take the same approach as the U.S. bishops. As it is, their situation is different. Probably in most cases, government supported health care in those countries came before the acceptance of abortion.
Again, very actively pay for WHICH abortions? The very rare medically required ones? That’s all that any insurance company currently covers. And under the double effect teaching, it’s not clear why anyone has an obligation to object.
MM, I don’t want to get off on a tangent about single payer. You asked what the danger is of government involvement, and one danger is that economic pressures will lead to the abortion-including public option being the only one. Regarding Guttmacher, it isn’t 87% or 46%, it’s both; 87% of *plans* cover it, but only 46% of employees are enrolled in such plans.
In any event, the health care plans that the Bishops are opposing are indeed government mandates of abortion. Abortion will be in the public option by order of the government. Either the bill will order it or the bill will let HHS order it, but it will be ordered. All enrollees in the public option will either be mandated to pay premiums that cover those public option abortions, or will be too poor to pay them so they will get the abortion coverage for free. The public option will be mandated to pay abortionists from the US Treasury for their abortions. The bills mandate that one private plan in each region cover abortion. The overall mandate of the bills is that every woman who doesn’t have abortion coverage now, including the tens of thousands who aren’t having abortions as a result, will have the coverage. Those abortions will happen. It’s a massive change in the status quo of who has abortion coverage and the government’s involvement therein. It isn’t neutral, and it certainly isn’t “abortion reduction,” which liberal Catholics promised this regime’s approach would be to abortion.
The bishops are right to oppose this as a deal breaker, and if liberal Catholics can’t break with the Democrats and stand with them at least on that position (I haven’t even mentioned conscience violations yet), then they don’t have any basis for dismissing conservative Catholics as Republicans first and Catholics second.
Which abortions?
Here’s what Guttmacher said: “Importantly, the 87% of plans that covered abortions did not include plans that offered abortion coverage only in very limited circumstances (such as rape and incest, or to protect the woman’s life). Only a very small number of respondents offered such limited coverage, and they were not included in the study’s findings.”
Interestingly, if you look at the fine print, they do note that some of the 87 percent interpreted “abortion coverage” in the narrower sense that Guttmacher did NOT mean.
I’m not sure if I understand your question, “Which abortions?” I’m talking primarily about the tens or hundreds of thousands of abortions that don’t happen *because* those women don’t have Medicaid coverage of abortion. All those women will have public option and federally funded abortion coverage under the health care reform plans on the table.
It’s a large abortion increase, caused by government provided coverage, which means a massive change in the status quo. There are relatively easy ways to fix this, including the Stupak amendment, and the Hatch amendment in the Senate Finance Committee which explicitly allows private companies to offer and citizens to purchase abortion insurance separate from government funded plans. But the Democrats are blocking all these measures, and the President is breaking his September 9 promise of no federal funding–he knows there is and was federal funding, he’s not pressuring to stop it, and he’ll be pleased to sign such measures. The goal is to universalize abortion coverage, provided by the government, for people who aren’t having abortion due to lack of coverage, and eventually for everyone. It fills abortionists’ pockets, and it creates gargantuan public policy shift to mainstream abortion as health care and push government involvement in supporting it.
If this isn’t a deal breaker, there’s no such thing as Catholic pro-life policy.
Name one private medical plan, anywhere, that covers elective abortion, and provide a link to a specific plan website.
Matt –
You seem to desparately want to use abortion to stop a health care bill you oppose with or without any particular abortion provision.
There is no issue of dealbreaking. There will be either a vote on an amendment, a vote on the Rule so there can be an amendment, and/or a motion to recommit (if the Republicans allow it). The anti-abortion side will either prevail or not on those votes. If they do not prevail, then their votes are not needed.
From http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/07/ap_botches_abortion_statistic.asp
Well, SB, if your contention is true (that private insurere do not fund elective abortions), then we really have nothing to worry about, because the key concern is giving people federal subsidies to purchase private plans that include elective abortion. The NRLC committee’s main talking point is about “the use of federal funds (public funds) to pay directly for elective abortions and to pay for insurance plans that cover elective abortion”. The first point is simply wrong – it misinterprets the public option. In reality, it will be funded by premiums in full. If the public plan allows abortion, it will still funded by premiums, though possibly subsidized. Subsidies are the key issue. And even the pro-choice side says they want this bill to be abortion-neutral. So if you are right, then we have no problem. I would that were the case, but I remain unconvinced.
Kurt, you claim I oppose the plan whether or not it covers abortion, without knowing what my views are on health care reform or what other kinds of reform-that-provides-universal-protection-to-some-degree I would support. Yours is a convenient way to avoid interacting with the USCCB’s position, or with responding to the fact that the present plans will cause government coverage of all the multitude of women who currently don’t have abortions because they aren’t covered, and therefore are inconsistent with abortion reduction. And your position is self-defeating, since it’s also true that liberal Catholics who claim to oppose abortion in health care would support the plans anyway. If conservatives who would oppose health care plans anyway are to be dismissed and their arguments as Catholics ignored, then liberals who would support the health care plans anyway (because abortion isn’t a deal breaker for them) should be similarly dismissed and ignored, by your logic.
In any event, there will not necessarily be a vote on whether Rep. Stupak’s amendment can get a vote. That is why Rep. Stupak has had to lobby the Speaker for a vote. And it is why he has had to make it a deal-breaker if he doesn’t get a vote. One either stands with the USCCB (or with Rep. Stupak), or one doesn’t. If he doesn’t, fine, but don’t say that Catholics who do are to be dismissed as partisan, while you hold an untouchable high ground.
MM I think I understand your position better, based on your last comment. You think the public option isn’t federal funding of abortion, and that since “pro-choice” representatives say they want abortion “neutrality” it must be true. If the public option is funded by premiums that doesn’t make it “not federal” provision of abortion. The plan is itself a federal agency. The premiums are sent to the government, and are paid out to abortionists by the goverment. It is our government funding abortion. Moreover, participants will be forced to give premiums to cover abortion–forced by the government–and offset for the poor participants. And this public option will make it so that all the women who don’t have government run health coverage of abortion and therefore don’t have those abortions, will suddenly have it–under a government run plan, mandated by the government to cover abortion.
This is federal funding and coverage of abortion. Adding a line to your bill that says “we hereby declare that the federal funding and coverage of abortion is not really federal,” doesn’t change anything.
House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise M. Slaughter said that the rule for considering sweeping health care legislation will encompass anti-abortion language put forward by Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-IN)
The Ellsworth language would become part of the bill (HR 3962) if the House adopts the rule for floor consideration, Slaughter said. The proposal would explicitly prohibit federal funding for abortions and guarantee patients access to “pro life” insurance plans that would not cover the procedure.
Slaughter said she expects the House to consider the legislation during a rare Saturday session on Nov. 7. She predicted a final vote will come about 6 p.m. that day.
By allowing the Ellsworth language, House Democratic leaders hope to nail down support from anti-abortion Democrats who have balked at voting for the bill as currently drafted.
The Ellsworth language basically tracks the Hyde amendment that has banned federal funding for abortion since the 1970s except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the woman.
Kurt: from what I’ve been able to find about the Ellsworth amendment, it does not prohibit the public plan from funding abortions. Therefore, it does not mirror the Hyde Amendment. I’m sure Ellsworth is well-intentioned: he has a 100% pro-life voting record, and I certainly sympathize with his desire to find a compromise that will allow pro-life Democrats to support real health care reform. I’m as pro-life as they come, and I too want to support the current House bill. But the bottom line is that the Ellsworth amendment amounts to little more than one more accounting gimmick. An acceptable substitute for the Stupak Amendment it is not.
Matt is right in saying that “if conservatives who would oppose health care plans anyway are to be dismissed and their arguments as Catholics ignored, then liberals who would support the health care plans anyway (because abortion isn’t a deal breaker for them) should be similarly dismissed and ignored.” I don’t like saying this, because I am a Democrat and I want health care reform. But our only hope of getting reform that does not increase the number of abortions is to stand firm behind the Stupak amendment as a deal-breaker, without compromise or equivocation. If we don’t, we’ll end up with a “reform” that victimizes the most vulnerable among us. And nothing is worth that.
Many pro-life Catholics voted for President Obama because of his promise to work for abortion reduction. I was too young to vote at the time, but I probably would have done the same (hindsight being 20/20, I very likely will not be voting to re-elect, though that doesn’t mean I’ll be going Republican). Federal funding of abortion, whether it comes from “taxpayer money” or premium payments on a public plan, will increase the number of abortions. This is a test both of President Obama’s commitment to abortion reduction and his Catholic supporters’ commitment to holding his Administration accountable to this promise. It seems like a no-brainer to me.
Why the change of heart on Obama, Mickey? If you cut through the nihilistic fog of the Palin-Beck right, and appreciate the great difficulty in getting anything done in the current US political system, then I think he has accomplished quite a lot in less than a year.
I’m trying to do some research on the Ellsbugh Amendment. It’s hard, because most of what you find on the internet is crap from the NRLC and its fellow travelers. The NRLC has always opposed universal helathcare, laregly because they have allied themselves withe the GOP. Ignore them.
Here’s what Ellsburgh says, in his own words:
Ellsworth’s proposal would make 5 key pro-life changes to the bill; effectively preventing federal tax dollars from being used to fund abortions and ensuring Americans have access to pro-life insurance options in the proposed Health Insurance Exchange:
•Explicitly prevents all federal tax dollars from being used to provide abortions in the public option;
•Prohibits any funds from the US Treasury from paying for abortion services in any of the plans purchased through the proposed Health Insurance Exchange-private or public;
•Establishes clear, strict rules for separating public funds from the premiums of private individuals (ensuring that no public funds are ever used to pay for an abortion in any health plan offered on the Health Insurance Exchange);
•Guarantees every American participating in the Health Insurance Exchange will always have access to a pro-life insurance option;
•Expands conscience protections to prevent the government from discriminating against pro-life health insurance plans
MM says ignore NRLC because they oppose Dem. health reform anyway. He doesn’t say, here is their argument on point x and here is why it is wrong. Is this intellectually honest? Is it a rigorous pursuit of the truth? Is it dignified dialogue with those who disagree? Kurt says ignore me too, for reasons he can’t cite. MM to his credit has allowed and engaged my arguments rather than ignoring them. But if MM or Kurt would vote for Dem. health reform anyway even if the federal government covers and expanded abortion by making it free for all those women who don’t get abortions becasue they don’t have coverage, why shouldn’t they also be ignored like NRLC or me, by their own logic? Is this question, too, one that must be ignored?
Here is an attempt to engage in MM’s points regarding the Ellsworth amendment, rather than ignoring him, as he counsels everyone to ignore those (pro-lifers only) who disagree with him.
If a bill *labels* something as not being federal, or as anything, that doesn’t change what it is—you have to look at what it is, not what people call it, especially when the labelers have political reasons for changing what things are called. We all know that euphemisms are used to cover up injustice, such as in war or against prisoners, and yes in abortion politics too. One word to note here is “tax”—not that no “federal” funding will occur, but no federal “tax” funding. Interesting. But when a federal agency (the public option) runs a program, what it is doing is federal and public no matter what you call it or if it is also “tax,” and moreover, the people getting paid to run the program, at some level, are paid with tax dollars–Sebelius is paid with tax dollars.
Also, it says there will be strict standards to separate the funds? But this is simply not ontologically possible in a situation where the federal government is running a health care plan that covers abortions, that collects and distributes mandatory premiums to cover those abortions, and that is covering the abortions of ***80,000 poor women who don’t currently have abortions because they lack coverage***.
How can I say this another way—you can’t formally cooperate with something by intention (federal plan covering abortion), and then successfully separate it from our federal self by manipulating material circumstances. Look, the federal government will be setting a standard that will push ALL policy with it—abortion, for any reason or no reason, is standard care that everyone deserves for FREE. Good heavens.
What difference does it make if they say, instead of handling the blood money ourselves we’ll hire a company to handle the money? It’s still the *federal government* hiring the company to handle the money, according to this new federal standard that abortion free for everyone is deserved medical care! This is a seismic shift—it ain’t neutrality, and it ain’t abortion reduction. Call it good for other reasons, but don’t claim this to be consistent with “abortion reduction” pro-life Catholic politics.
I am interested in the alleged consceince provisions, but odds are they still fall short–as stated they only apply to insurance plans not to providers and employers, and for all we know, not in a comprehensive fashion.
Matt,
First of all, I don’t even get to vote for a member of Congress, let alone vote on the bill. If I did have a vote, I would vote for whatever pro-life amendments are presented including a vote against the Rule if it was for the purpose of making a pro-life amendment in order. But if I lost on any or all of those, it would mean there are already the votes to pass health care reform without myself and others who would vote for anti-abortion amendments. So this “dealbreaker” talk is for no purpose.
And while I would support any and all anti-abortion amendments, I’m just not into this fetish of what is as what is not taxpayer subsidy. There isn’t one member of Congress (on either side of this issue) that would take an oath that he would apply the same criteria used here to define taxpayer funding to all future (non-abortion related) matters.
If we can in any restrict access to abortion in any way, great. I don’t need to know any more, I support such a move.
Is the premium a person pays for the health insurance they buy “taxpayer money” if the government also pays part of the premium? I don’t know. The premium Church employees pay for their health insurance certainly isn’t acknowledged as a contribution to the Church.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have been asked by the Archbishop to call my elected officials to get them to renew the Opportunity Scholarship Program so that taxpayer funds can be given to the Catholic Church to finance the secular aspects of education of children in the parish schools. I need to make those calls.
“this “dealbreaker” talk is for no purpose”
This idea does not deal with political reality. If there may or may not be votes for something, an ultimatum can be effective. The ultimatum itself can change the climate. Who is voting for and who is voting against is not static. But the lack of an ultimatum changes the climate too. “Those pro-lifers are going to vote for our abortion expansion bill anyway,” known in advance, kills the project before it begins. And, by the way, there is a little thing called principle. As in, I won’t vote for a bill that massively expands abortion in number and in prominence and in federal involvement. If there is any concept of making the Democratic party more friendly to members who actually vote pro-life, they have to, you know, actually vote pro-life.
I am again perplexed [a usual state for me].
There seems to be much talk about reducing the number of abortions, as a good. The fatuity of this position is made clear by a simple question: what would a good reduction be? 10,000 less? 100,000 less? 1 million less?
Surely the emphasis is in the wrong place. Abortion is a grevious sin, committed by the persons involved. Therein lies the harm.
And it is like any other virus. Once permitted in no matter how limited a circumstance, it will spread. As it has done.
The discussion should be about whether we will permit our polity to lapse back into this barbarity.
More movement.
Talk has it that Stupak has offered a modest compromise — he will allow insurance policies sold on the exchange to offer abortion services so long as it only goes to purchasers that do not receive subidies. This is a break from the conservative stance regarding undocumented immigrants that say even unsubsidized insurance sold on the exchange must be prohibited because federal funds are used to set up the exchange.
It is not clear if USCCB and/nor NRTLC support the modified Stupak Amendment or if Stupak cares if they do.
Rules Committee has approved the bill. Historic.
Negotiations continue on the abortion issue with the USCCB part of the negotiations and the NRTL Committee a non-player. 25 Democrats and all Republicans voting against health care even if it has perfect pro-life language. 3 pro-life Democrats content with Ellsworth language. 15 still in play.