Health Reform & Pro Life
There’s a great blog post on Sojourners by Rev. Dr. Richard Lowery, about how health reform can help save lives:
I write as a minister and Bible teacher to urge pro-life members of Congress to vote for health insurance reform.
A recent study estimates that 45,000 Americans die each year because they don’t have health insurance. That figure does not count the number of pregnancies that end in miscarriage or the number of children born with life-threatening conditions because the mother lacks access to prenatal care. According to the 2009 CIA World Fact Book, the United States ranks dead last among industrialized countries in infant mortality rates. We are just behind Guam, Cuba, Italy, and the Isle of Man.
Rev. Lowery makes an important point. A recent report showed that 6,000 Virginians died because of a lack of health care over the past 15 years. By 2019, without reform, we could lose another 5,600 lives. We must reform our broken system to save lives in Virginia.
A big question many people of faith have is: Will tax money be used on abortions in health reform? Rev. Lowery addresses this in his post as well:
I’ve read the pertinent section of the Senate bill (Section 1303. Special Rules) very carefully. It explicitly bans federal funding of abortion and requires people who want insurance that covers abortion to pay for that additional coverage out of their own pockets. Insurance companies even have to keep abortion insurance payments separate so they don’t “mingle” with federal funds they receive for other things.
Virginia Congressman Tom Perriello came to the same conclusion:
As health care experts and pro-life leaders agree, the abortion language in the Senate bill upholds the Hyde Amendment standard. The Senate health care bill prevents federal taxpayer dollars from funding abortions, as the Catholic Hospital Association and legal experts have recently stated and as my own research has confirmed.
Furthermore, several key yet unadvertised provisions of the bill are likely to reduce the number of abortions in this country in ways that move beyond politics toward a real impact on the culture of life in our country, such as those that provide $250 million for programs to support vulnerable pregnant women and increase the adoption tax credit, also making it refundable, so that lower income families can access it fully.
The Catholic Health Association also supports health reform, saying:
The Catholic Health Association (CHA) has a major concern on life issues. We said there could not be any federal funding for abortions and there had to be strong funding for maternity care, especially for vulnerable women. The bill now being considered allows people buying insurance through an exchange to use federal dollars in the form of tax credits and their own dollars to buy a policy that covers their health care. If they choose a policy with abortion coverage, then they must write a separate personal check for the cost of that coverage.
You can watch a video of CEO Sr. Carol Keehan talking about why health reform is pro-life.
For folks not familiar with how abortion has been handled legislatively in Congress I’ve compiled some information below.
The compromise for the past several years has been something called the Hyde Amendment which prevents using federal funds to directly fund abortions. Over the course of the health reform debate, there have been much back and forth about what the proper abortion language should be. There has been the Capps Amendment and the Stupak Amendment.
Now that we’re at the end of the process, many faithful Virginians who are pro-life are wondering, does the current version of the bill use federal funds to promote abortions? the answer is No.
A fact check from ABC World News Tonight shows that claiming health care reform will use tax money to cover abortions is “wrong.”
Of course, the best thing you can do is read it for yourself. Scroll down and read pages 2069 – 2077, this is where Section 1303 Rev. Lowery mentioned starts.
