There is a temporary impasse about abortion funding in the House, with pro life Democrats balking at the current bill because it could have federal money fund abortion. From the story:
House Democrats are at an impasse over whether their remake of the nation’s health care system would effectively allow federal funding of abortion. At least two dozen anti-abortion Democrats believe it would, and while their opposition is unlikely to stall the legislation in the end, they are at odds with Democratic leaders just weeks ahead of anticipated floor action on the bill.
Lawmakers on the other side say they’ve compromised as far as they can to address the anti-abortion lawmakers’ concerns by specifying that people receiving government subsidies to buy health insurance couldn’t use that money for abortions.
Negotiations to find common ground have not yielded fruit. “We have a difference of opinion at the moment we cannot bridge,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where the abortion language was approved. “We have done everything we can to ensure that there will be no federal funds for abortion services.”
No they haven’t. Waxman is so disingenuous. They could spell out explicitly that non therapeutic abortion is not to be covered by any public plan or by any policy which is fully or partially paid for by public subsidies or vouchers. They could require that abortion coverage be a rider, the cost of which would be fully paid for by the insurance policy holder. They could revoke the Capps Amendment that gave the bureaucrats the power to determined whether abortion would be a covered service under the plan. They could make sure that the bureaucrats—who will put in most of the dirty details—cannot cover abortion.
They could, but they won’t. They want abortion to be covered, I think, more than they want a health care bill to pass.
