Good news on health care reform

By Jennifer J. Foster

Published: July 30, 2009

There is some good news tonight on the health care reform front.

From the Associated Press:

Lawmakers have amended a sweeping health overhaul bill to ensure it does not require coverage of abortions.

The anti-abortion measure was approved late Thursday in the House Energy and Commerce Committee as conservative Democrats banded with Republicans to support it.

The amendment says health care overhaul legislation moving through Congress may not impose requirements for coverage of abortion, except in cases where a woman’s life is endangered or her pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.

Abortion-rights advocates have said that they have NO IDEA where pro-lifers would get this idea that sweeping health care reform might open the door to government-funded abortions.

I’ll tell you where they get the idea: Because the liberal Democrats leading the health care reform efforts have refused to explicitly exclude abortion coverage from the bill.

That’s important, because the leading reform bill moving through Congress would “kick the can” down the road on specific coverage decisions. A committee would be charged with deciding what would and would not be covered under the public health insurance option.

So, no, the bill doesn’t currently say that abortions must be covered. But until tonight in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, it didn’t say that it couldn’t, either.

I consider this development a big step forward for the bill itself. I don’t understand how abortion-rights advocates can say on one hand that they believe the decision about whether to seek abortions should be a private one and then, on the other hand, expect millions of Americans who have moral objections to abortion to pay for them.

Way to go, conservative Democrats.

This seems like an opportune time to mention once again an organization called Democrats for Life. Yes, they exist, and they are more numerous than you probably think.

Check them out.

Democrats are fond of saying that Republicans have fallen out of touch with mainstream America on economic issues.

That may be true. But don’t be fooled by their apparently-innocuous sound bites: Liberal Democrats who oppose from their perches in Washington just about any conceivable state abortion restriction are out of touch with mainstream America on those policies.

That is the plain, unvarnished, incontrovertible truth.