The passage of a law in the U.S. House yesterday that will prevent all coverage of abortion in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) has drawn the usual histrionics from pro-abortion lawmakers and the promise of a veto from President Obama.
The bill, known as The Protect Life Act, and sponsored by U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) and Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL), passed yesterday by a 251-172 vote. The bill prohibits any funds authorized or appropriated under the PPACA, including tax credits and cost-sharing reductions, from being used to pay for abortions. Individuals and states who want the coverage would have to purchase a separate elective abortion rider that must be paid for with their own private funds. It also includes a measure ensuring that all state laws protect conscience rights and prohibits any healthcare institution that receives federal funds from discriminating against workers who refuse to participate in abortions or abortion referrals.
The bill's passage sparked the usual outrageous distortions by pro-abortion politicians, with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) taking the prize for the most disgraceful misrepresentation of the law.
"Under this bill, when the Republicans vote for this bill today, they will be voting to say that women can die on the floor and health care providers do not have to intervene if this bill is passed," she said. "It’s just appalling.”
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) took a similarly over-the-top tack while speaking on the House floor before the bill's passage.
"I was pregnant, I was miscarrying, I was bleeding," Speier said. "If I had to go from one hospital to the next trying to find one emergency room that would take me in, who knows if I would even be here today. What my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are trying to do is misogynist."
Continuing its tradition of tone-deaf responses to the massively unpopular PPACA, the White House was quick to issue a statement promising to veto the new law even though the majority of Americans are against tax-payer funded abortion.
"The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 358 because ... the legislation intrudes on women's reproductive freedom and access to health care and unnecessarily restricts the private insurance choices that women and their families have today," the statement said.
Of coures, it makes no mention of the fact that at the same time the Administration is defending women's right to choose abortion coverage, they are feverishly passing mandates that will force millions of women who don't choose abortion to pay for it.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins set the record straight in a statement issued shortly after passage of the bill yesterday afternoon. "Despite misleading comments by abortion proponents, the Protect Life Act simply removes abortion funding and funding for health plans that include abortion. It ensures that Americans who want health care insurance with abortion coverage or supplemental abortion coverage can purchase it, but not with federal dollars. This was the long standing policy of the Hyde amendment until Obamacare bypassed this 30 year-old provision by directly spending money on new programs without any abortion funding restriction and creating tax subsidies for plans with abortion. The Protect Life Act restores this principle.
"The bill also provides conscience protections for health care workers who oppose abortion, something that is being undermined by the government and pro-abortion forces who want health care providers to pay for, cover, or participate in abortion procedures. Now that the House has acted, the Senate should follow suit and remove abortion from the controversial health care law," concluded Perkins.
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