In answer to the question "Will the healthcare proposals lead to government funding of abortion?" factcheck.org gives a resounding "yes."
President Obama said Wednesday that’s "not true" and among several "fabrications" being spread by "people who are bearing false witness." But abortion foes say it’s the president who’s making a false claim. "President Obama today brazenly misrepresented the abortion-related component" of health care legislation, said Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee. So which side is right?The truth is that bills now before Congress don’t require federal money to be used for supporting abortion coverage. So the president is right to that limited extent. But it’s equally true that House and Senate legislation would allow a new "public" insurance plan to cover abortions, despite language added to the House bill that technically forbids using public funds to pay for them. Obama has said in the past that "reproductive services" would be covered by his public plan, so it’s likely that any new federal insurance plan would cover abortion unless Congress expressly prohibits that. Low- and moderate-income persons who would choose the "public plan" would qualify for federal subsidies to purchase it. Private plans that cover abortion also could be purchased with the help of federal subsidies. Therefore, we judge that the president goes too far when he calls the statements that government would be funding abortions "fabrications."
There follows a transcipt of comments made by Obama.
The White House did not post any transcript of the president’s words, but sponsors of the conference call, a coalition of faith-based groups supporting an overhaul of the health insurance system, posted the full audio of the president’s call on its Web site. His words come near the very end of the recording, and we transcribed them from the recording.
Abortion foes quickly denounced Obama’s statement as untrue. The NRLC’s Johnson said "the bill backed by the White House (H.R. 3200) explicitly authorizes the government plan to cover all elective abortions." And our analysis shows that Johnson’s statement is correct. Though we of course take no position on whether the legislation should allow or not allow coverage for abortions, the House bill does just that.We can’t say what anyone will do in the future. But Obama himself said on July 17, 2007, that "[i]n my mind, reproductive care is essential care" and would be covered by his public insurance plan. . .Obama did not use the word "abortion," but a spokesman for the campaign said later that abortion would be included, according to the Chicago Tribune. The NRLC has posted an unedited video of Obama’s response on YouTube (along with some comments which are the group’s opinions and not necessarily those of anyone at FactCheck.org). . .
As for the House bill as it stands now, it’s a matter of fact that it would allow both a "public plan" and newly subsidized private plans to cover all abortions.
