I didn’t see this one coming, did you? I mean, Obama was so adamant about his promise that his health care plan would continue the ban on federally funded abortions. He said so in countless speeches, including one before a joint session of Congress. He said so in his “myth-busting” teleconferences with Pastors and Rabbis, last August, and in this “myth-busting weekly address from August 22…See how far you can get through the video before you start retching…:
I started at the point where he accused ObamaCare opponents of making “willful misrepresentations and outright distortions” while pointing his finger at the camera. He was referring to pro-life groups, Sarah Palin, and other assorted people who had actually read the bill, all of whom were right, as it turns out.
This particular “outrageous myth circulating the internet” has gone through somewhat of a metamorphosis. ..by Feb. 2010 “outrageous myth” was downgraded to a Republican “talking point”….By March, in order to pass the bill, Obama signed an Executive Order promising no federal, taxpayer funded abortions, which he knew would not hold up in court…so “outrageous myth” became farce.
LifeNews reported, today, on the latest mutation….as “outrageous myth” becomes reality:
The abortion funding comes despite language in the bill that some pro-abortion Democrats and Obama himself claimed would prevent abortion funding and despite a controversial executive order Obama signed supposedly stopping abortion funding.
The pro-life community strongly opposed the executive order and said Rep. Bart Stupak and other House Democrats who voted for the pro-abortion health care bill in exchange for it were selling out their pro-life principles. This first case of forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions under the new law appears to prove them right that the bill language and executive order were ineffective.
Proving the point further that the abortion funding comes from federal taxpayer dollars, Johnson explained that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has emphasized that the high-risk pool program is a federal program and that the states will not incur any cost.
On May 11, 2010, in a letter to Democratic and Republican congressional leaders on implementation of the new law, DHHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote that “states may choose whether and how they participate in the program, which is funded entirely by the federal government.”
Johnson says that on June 28, Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario (a member of the appointed cabinet of Governor Edward Rendell, a Democrat) issued a press release announcing that the federal Department of Health and Human Services had approved his agency’s proposal for implementing the new program in Pennsylvania.
“The state will receive $160 million to set up the program, which will provide coverage to as many as 5,600 people between now and 2014,” according to the release. “The plan’s benefit package will include preventive care, physician services, diagnostic testing, hospitalization, mental health services, prescription medications and much more, with subsidized premiums of $283 a month.”
Johnson says the “much more” Ario refers to is abortion funding.
The section on abortion (see page 14) asserts that “elective abortions are not covered,” though it does not define elective — which Johnson calls a “red herring.”
The proposal specifies coverage “includes only abortions and contraceptives that satisfy the requirements of” several specific statutes, the most pertinent of which is 18 Pa. C.S. § 3204, which says abortion is legal in Pennsylvania. The statute essentially says all abortions except those to determine the sex of the baby are legal.
“Under the Rendell-Sebelius plan, federal funds will subsidize coverage of abortion performed for any reason, except sex selection,” said NRLC’s Johnson. “The Pennsylvania proposal conspicuously lacks language that would prevent funding of abortions performed as a method of birth control or for any other reason, except sex selection — and the Obama Administration has now approved this.”
Kathryn Jean Lopez noted at The Corner:
House Minority Leader John Boehner sent a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius last month asking: “Has the Department provided guidance to states to implement the president’s Executive Order on abortions? When does the Administration expect to issue the directive on abortions? Will the new federal high-risk pools touted by the Administration also ensure that abortions will not be covered? Millions of Americans care deeply about this aspect of the new law and its implementation, and no progress report is complete without detailed information about it.”
Sebelius eventually responded with a bit of a non-response response: She said the administration was working on guidance, no specifics. Boehner, I am told, subsequently raised similar questions with the president and got nowhere. Sebelius’s progress report on Obamacare last week mentioned nothing about it.
And so here’s your first answer of substance about just what Bart Stupak & Co. got out of the White House in the name of the unborn: Nothing. But Democrats still can’t own up to it. Where’s the dignity in that?
Dignity? Not from this bunch. Not from a the most viciously pro-abortion President we’ve ever had, either – A man who would lie even to the Pope about abortion has no shame, honor, or decency, either.
Hat tip: Gateway Pundit
Nice Deb 