Hailed as the biggest expansion in abortion since the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, thousands of pro-lifers began mobilizing last month against President Obama’s proposed bill to reform the American health-care industry, called America’s Affordable Health Choices Act.

 

In a nationwide webcast on July 23, over 35,000 participants listened while 20 speakers, including various pro-life group leaders and members of Congress, sounded the alarm for urgent action against the health-care proposal.

 

David Bereit, national director of 40 Days for Life and webcast moderator, reported the webcast as the largest online pro-life event in history.

 

“We are gathered in a critical time in America.…We are at a time when polls are documenting that 71 percent of Americans are opposed to taxpayer-funded abortion,” Bereit told listeners, referring to a recent Zogby poll. “But in the midst of all these circumstances right now … a crisis has arisen. Washington bureaucrats and powerful abortion lobbyists are working right now to hijack and exploit the current heath-care reform debate in an attempt to impose their radical abortion agenda on you and me—people of faith and conscience.”

 

Bereit said the current proposals being considered in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate “would result in the biggest expansion of abortion” since Roe v. Wade.

 

“These proposals would mandate taxpayer funding on abortion and mandate you and virtually every other American be forced into a health plan with mandatory abortion coverage,” he said.

 

James Dobson, founder and chairman emeritus of Focus on the Family, labeled the legislation “a freight train” that must be stopped.

 

“…It would require that health-care providers who are opposed to abortion violate their own conscience and perform abortions at the risk of losing their own jobs,” said Dobson in a pre-recorded message.

 

Noting that the bill does not specifically contain the word “abortion,” many webcast presenters decried the bill’s use of deceptive language.

 

Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of Americans United for Life, charged the bill was a move by the Obama administration to invoke the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) by stealth.

 

“The ultimate objective of the abortion lobby is to elevate abortion to the status of a fundamental right at the same level as the freedom of speech and freedom of religion,” Yoest said.

 

Despite Roe v. Wade, Yoest explained that Americans still have the ability to regulate or restrict abortion, leaving the door open to reverse the court decision through legislation.

 

 

 “The abortion lobby wanted to use FOCA to shut down that path and put abortion beyond the reach of the American people. Then the pro-life community mobilized, and they haven’t even been able to introduce FOCA in this Congress. Now they are turning to health-care to impose FOCA by stealth”

         -Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of Americans United for Life 

 

 

“The abortion lobby wanted to use FOCA to shut down that path and put abortion beyond the reach of the American people. Then the pro-life community mobilized, and they haven’t even been able to introduce FOCA in this Congress. Now they are turning to health-care to impose FOCA by stealth,” Yoest explained, warning that pro-abortion politicians are “expanding” the definition of abortion as a “mandatory category of care,” making it “morally equivalent to a tonsillectomy.”

 

“We have listened to them for years describing the horror of abortion as ‘reproductive health.’ Now they are reaching their ultimate objective of removing the ‘reproductive’ adjective, making it mandatory health-care, making abortion beyond our ability to regulate it at all.”

 

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, called for abortion-neutral language to be added to the bill.

 

“Politically appointed bureaucrats and political officials have filled in the blanks when we don’t, and this legislation calls on just that group of people—an unelected group of Obama appointees called the Health Advisory Committee,” Dannenfelser said, noting that the group falls out of the jurisdiction of the American public. “They define what essential benefits are for our health-care.”

 

Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, noted that while the president has sidestepped addressing the abortion debate in his proposed bill, top officials in his administration have been courting abortion lobby groups urging them to support the health-care bill.

 

“One of the top directors in the Obama administration, just last week, met with 400 activists at the Planned Parenthood summit. And she assured them that President Obama is committed to abortion and urged them to get back in campaign mode and lobby Congress to ensure that the abortion mandate was in the health-care bill,” said Wright, referring to Tina Tchen, director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.

 

In unison with other presenters, Wright called the American public to action while warning them against fake amendments to the proposed plan “that appear to be pro-life but are instead empty promises.”

 

In recent weeks, pro-life members of Congress have tried to pass several amendments designed to explicitly prohibit taxpayer funding of abortion. While most of these attempts have failed in committee hearings, Congressman Chris Smith, R-N.J., called on pro-lifers to continue to insist on “air-tight” language in any amendments to the health proposal.

 

“We need to be exceedingly wary and alert concerning bogus legislation language that purports to be pro-life,” Smith said. “While pro-life amendments are straight forward, unambiguous and transparent, I am deeply concerned that any change or alteration in either of these pro-life amendments by the Obama team would result in legislative language that President Obama will be able to interpret and construe to get abortion coverage in private insurance plans and public funding of abortion.”

 

Smith also warned against false compromises made by the Obama administration in an effort to pass the reform before the August recess.

 

“As we all know, elastic terms like ‘health’ have been employed time and again to undermine meaningful restrictions on abortion and on abortion funding,” he said. “So, the potential for deceit is high, and we must guard against it.

 

Congressman Joe Pitts, R-Pa., agreed, calling for explicit language excluding abortion in any health-care plan. “Abortion is not health-care. Health-care is about saving and nurturing lives, not taking it,” Pitts said.

 

DEMOCRAT LIFE ALLIES

Opposition to the Obama health-care reform in Congress has not been completely partisan. Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats For Life of America, lauded the efforts of the over 20 pro-life Democrats in the House of Representatives and Senate for their “herculean” efforts to stop the abortion mandate in Obama’s bill (a number that by one count included 39 Democrats by early August). Most of the original 20 Democrats signed their names to a letter of opposition against abortion-funding in the bill that was sent to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Day reported. 

 

Because the abortion mandate touches every American, Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, encouraged the public not to leave the fight against the proposed bill to pro-life congressional members alone.

 

“And if this Obama-backed health-care bill passes, federal law will declare that virtually every health plan, government or private, must include specially-mandated essential benefits. I guarantee you that abortion will be on that list,” Johnson said, reminding listeners that in 2007 Obama told Planned Parenthood that abortion was at the heart of his health-care plan.

 

“Even if that didn’t happen, the nearest federal judge will order abortion to be included unless Congress has explicitly excluded it. And then, every health network would be required to prove to federal officials that they are providing adequate access to this now-federally guaranteed service,” Johnson said.

 

“And on top of that, huge new populations—30 to 40 million people, perhaps more—would receive new subsidies for health-care, including abortion. These federal funds would not be governed by the Hyde Amendment,” Johnson said.

 

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, called pro-life individuals from all denominations to act to ensure abortion is not included as an essential benefit in any health-care plans.

 

“If we don’t specifically and categorically make it clear that abortion is not to be included as an essential benefit, then we know the bureaucrats who aren’t accountable to the people will put abortion in there. This is the goal of pro-choice and pro-abortion movement. It has been their goal all along,” Land said. “They are going to take money out of our pockets and force us to participate in health insurance programs that will subsidize and underwrite the baby-killing industry.”

 

Calling it the “Planned Parenthood bail-out bill,” many presenters pointed out that Planned Parenthood reported a $1 billion revenue surplus in its annual report last year, 34 percent of which came from government money. The report, which is posted on the non-profit organization’s website, acknowledges receiving over $349.6 million in government funds and grants as well as $85 million in excess after revenue expenses. And as the country’s largest provider of abortions, it would stand to inherit the lion’s share of government funds from the proposed bill.

 

Tom Minnery, senior vice president of Government and Public Policy for Focus on the Family, said Planned Parenthood sees a “gold mine” in the health-care reform.

 

“Just after President Obama was elected there was a wish list sent to his office by Planned Parenthood and 50 other pro-abortion groups,” Minnery said. “They handed that wish list to him and one of their goals was comprehensive benefits in all health matters must include access to the full range of reproductive health services.”

 

Minnery rebuffed the president’s claim to reduce the number of abortions in America. “If abortions are subsidized, we’ll get many thousands more abortions. Many more thousands of unborn children will die.”

Day Gardner, founder and president of The National Black Pro-Life Union, said all Americans, and especially members of the black community, should stop Planned Parenthood from receiving any taxpayer funds, noting that abortion is one of the top killers of African Americans.

 

“Killing centers are still purposefully placed in minority and inner-city areas,” she said.

 

Gardner called attention to recent allegations of corruption and racism lodged against Planned Parenthood in the last year.

 

“Last year, a YouTube video exposed the blatant racism of Planned Parenthood when employers of centers in Ohio, New Mexico, Idaho, and Oklahoma stated they were happy and even excited to take money specifically earmarked to kill black babies by abortion,” Gardner said.

 

Peggy Hartshorn, president of Heartbeat International, said the health-care proposal would also negatively impact the work of pregnancy help centers around the nation.

 

“We’re seeing thousands of wounded women and men suffer who are suffering from the effects of abortion, and we would see thousands and thousands more” if the bill is enacted, said Hartshorn. “The Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, estimates in their research that when abortions are funded by taxpayers they are increased by 30 percent.”

 

With many more women in need of abortion recovery assistance, Hartshorn lamented the proposal could potentially decrease the resources of pro-life pregnancy centers.

 

“I believe pregnancy centers could also eventually be pressured, perhaps forced, through legislation to refer for abortion,” she said. “I’m sure we would become a target, as well as the whole pro-life medical community, doctors and nurses and so forth. Those who are heroically staffing, often as volunteers, our pregnancy help medical clinics—these people might be forced to stop practicing medicine because they couldn’t in good conscience refer for or provide abortions.”

 

Melinda Delahoyde, president of Care Net, the largest network of pregnancy care centers in the nation, warned that the proposal would also impact pregnancy care centers indirectly, rendering void state laws that restrict abortion.

 

“Those laws give us that added opportunity—that precious window of time—when we have a chance to talk to that woman when she is reflecting. And she can sit with one of our counselors to understand her options,” Delahoyde said. “So when we lose those state laws, and we will lose them under this bill, we lose that added opportunity.”

 

To listen to the full Stop the Abortion Mandate webcast or for more information on the abortion mandate in the proposed health-care bill, visit stoptheabortionmandate.com. The website includes an action list and directions on contacting local representatives.