Calling on Sen. McCaskill to Keep Her Promise

With her vote against the Nelson-Hatch amendment, McCaskill has broken her promise to Missourians. McCaskill promised she would not support legislation that included federal funding for abortions. The Nelson-Hatch amendment would have prevented funding for abortions in any new public option for health care and prevented federal subsidies for any plan that included abortion. Her vote against this amendment allows Sen. Harry Reid’s health care proposal to retain such funding.

McCaskill excuses her vote by saying the Hyde amendment already prevents such funding and that the Nelson-Hatch amendment prevents women from using their own money to buy abortion coverage. Both statements are false.

The Hyde amendment only prevents funding for abortion through annual appropriations to the Department of Health and Human Services. Congressman Henry Hyde proposed this amendment in l977 to prevent taxpayer-funded abortions through Medicaid. Before this amendment, more than 300,000 abortions were performed each year through Medicaid. However, the Reid bill creates new streams of funding that would not flow through the Department of Health and Human Services, so they would not be covered by the Hyde restriction.

The Nelson-Hatch amendment would not prevent women from purchasing coverage of abortion with their own money as long as no federal subsidies were also used to purchase that coverage.

Missouri taxpayers do not want to pay for abortion. We call on McCaskill to keep her promise.

–Pam Fichter, president Missouri Right to Life

Senate Pro-Life Vote Imminent

Pro-life Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Ben Nelson (D-Ne.) plan to soon file – possibly today! – an amendment to the bill, which will be supported by the NRLC and other major pro-life groups. The Hatch-Nelson Amendment would make the same critical policy changes to the Reid bill that were accomplished in the House of Representatives by adoption of the NRLC-backed Stupak-Pitts Amendment to the House version of the health care legislation (H.R. 3962) on November 7.

Thus, the effect of the Hatch-Nelson Amendment would be to prevent the proposed new government health insurance program — the “public option” — from paying for abortions, and also to prevent federal funds from being used to subsidize the purchase of private health plans that pay for elective abortion.

Time is short! Please telephone the offices of Claire McCaskill and Kit Bond. Urge them to support the Hatch-Nelson Amendment to the health care bill (H.R. 3590). The Washington offices of all U.S. senators can be reached through the Capitol Switchboard, 202-224-3121. In most cases, you can also obtain fax numbers, and phone numbers for senators’ in-state offices, through the NRLC Legislative Action Center at this internet address: http://www.capwiz.com/nrlc/dbq/officials/

After the Senate has voted on the Hatch-Nelson Amendment, there will be other critical votes on the health care legislation! The legislative situation may change rapidly. Any time you want to check the current status of the legislation, visit this page on the Legislative Action Center:
http://www.capwiz.com/nrlc/issues/alert/?alertid=13157881&type=CO

For further information on the abortion-related issues the health care legislation, go to:http://www.nrlc.org/ahc

For further information on the rationing-related issues on the health care legislation, go to: http://powellcenterformedicalethics.blogspot.com/

Will Senator McCaskill Keep Her Promise?

Dear Senator McCaskill:

Will you keep your promise?

At a town hall meeting in Jefferson County last summer, you promised not to support health care legislation that included funding for abortion. With your elderly mother at your side, you also promised not to support health care rationing. Yet you voted to advance Senator Reid’s bill that includes massive abortion funding and rationing of care for the elderly and disabled.

The Senate bill establishes a public option and authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to require coverage of any and all abortions throughout the public option program. (pg. 118) The bill also creates new government subsidies to purchase private health plans that directly pay for abortions. (pgs. 116 –124)

You claim that the Hyde Amendment prevents federal funding of abortion. In fact, the Hyde Amendment affects only funds allocated through the annual appropriations bill for the federal Department of Health and Human Services. The funding for both the House and Senate bills would not flow through the DHHS, and thus would not be covered by the Hyde Amendment.

Senator McCaskill, you oppose the Stupak-Pitts amendment passed by the House (with 64 Democrat votes) claiming that it prevents private plans from offering abortion coverage. In fact, that amendment prohibits coverage of abortion services only in the public health insurance option and private plans that receive federal subsidies. It does not prohibit individuals from purchasing plans with their own money that offer abortion services.

Instead, the Senate is supporting a re-wording of the Capps’ amendment, originally proposed but rejected in the House. Capps sets up an accounting scheme to hide government-funded abortions based on the ludicrous notion that money spent by the federal government is not federal money.

The Senate bill also contains numerous elements that would result in rationed medical care. It severely limits senior citizens’ ability to purchase supplemental insurance for care not covered by Medicare by empowering the federal government to exclude plans whose bids it doesn’t like. (pg. 920). In effect, this denies senior citizens, like your mother, the ability to use their own money to save their own lives.

Also, state commissioners of the new health insurance exchanges would be given the power to deny people who are trying to obtain policies in the insurance exchange the option of choosing health plans less likely to deny treatment by limiting what they would be allowed to pay for such policies. (beginning on pg. 37)

While your colleagues in the Senate avoided including the “advance care planning” provisions in the House bill, they achieve a similar result under the title “Shared Decisionmaking,” which funds and promotes “patient decision aids” to “help” patients make treatment decisions. (begins pg. 1106). These measures could “nudge” patients to reject life-saving treatment to save costs.
The Reid bill establishes a Medicare Advisory Board to force Medicare payments below the rate of medical inflation resulting in reduced medical care or forcing providers out of the Medicare program altogether. (begins on pg. 1000).

These elements, combined with inadequate funding and drastic cuts to Medicare, would result in rationing life-saving treatment.

Senator McCaskill, the question all Missouri citizens must ask now is will you keep your promise?

Pam Fichter
President, Missouri Right to Life

Please contact Senator McCaskill and ask her to oppose Senator Reid’s Health Care Reform legislation and any effort to include federal funding for abortion or any elements that would lead to rationing of care.

Thanksgiving Greetings/Reminders

At this time when we pause to reflect on our many blessings, we want to thank all of our loyal members for their support and prayers throughout the year. We have so much to be grateful for! While we face tremendous challenges at both the state and national level, we are so very grateful that we live in a country where involved citizens can make a difference. We pray that your Thanksgiving will be filled with love of family, love of country, and love of God. With grateful hearts, we ask God’s blessings on our work.

“Dismiss all anxiety from your minds. Present your needs to God in every form of prayer and in petitions full of gratitude. Then God’s own peace, which is beyond all understanding, will stand guard over your hearts and minds, in Christ Jesus.” (Ph 4:6)

A few important reminders:

Christmas cards to benefit MRL Education Fund are still available. Help us raise money for literature, fair booths and all educational activities.

The broadcast premiere of “Thine Eyes,” a powerful documentary on last year’s March for Life, will be on Wednesday, November 25, at 9:00 PM (CST) on Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN).

Over this Thanksgiving holiday, please contact Senator Claire McCaskill and ask her to oppose Senator Reid’s health care reform bill. Ask her to keep her word to oppose federal funding of abortion and to oppose rationing of health care.

For complete information and updates on health care reform legislation, please visit National Right to Life

Reid Bill Provisions Threaten Rationing

Folks, there’s much more to be concerned about with the current Senate health care reform bill than just federal abortion coverage. National Right to Life has an analysis:

Senior citizens’ ability to use their own money, if they choose, to avoid involuntary denial of medical treatment under Medicare could be severely limited.

State commissioners of the new health insurance exchanges created by the bill would be given power to deny people who are trying to obtain policies in the exchange the option of choosing health plans less likely to deny treatment, by limiting what they would be allowed to pay for such policies.

In response to public reaction over the summer denouncing efforts to encourage patients to agree to reject treatment as a way of saving costs, the Senate avoided including the “advance care planning” provisions still in the House bill. Instead, it has sought to achieve a similar result under a different name, Under the title “Shared Decisionmaking,” the bill funds and promotes “patient decision aids” to “help” patients make treatment decisions.

A Medicare Advisory Board is established to force Medicare payments below the rate of medical inflation.

Read more

Even more details and documentation can be found here: http://www.nrlc.org/healthcarerationing/reidsubstitute.html and at the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics blog

Urgent: Call McCaskill and Bond!

Health care reform is quickly making its way through the United States Congress. After passing the House just two weeks ago, the Senate is set to begin the voting process on health care reform tonight.

From NRLC:

According to Majority Leader Harry Reid, on Saturday the Senate will begin consideration of sweeping health care restructuring legislation which, as pro-lifers have explained at length, is riddled with pro-abortion language. Please go to http://nrlactioncenter.com to get the complete background on the language inserted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid into the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” and directions how to contact your two senators to urge them to oppose the Act because of it.

Given how thorough the information is at http://nrlactioncenter.com, there are just a couple of points I’d like to highlight.

First, Reid and his pro-abortion cohorts were not bound to insert the pro-abortion language favored by the Obama White House and the army of pro-abortion advocacy groups. In spite of clear warnings from National Right to Life and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Reid chose not to include the Stupak-Pitts language which the House had inserted.

Just so we are clear: the Stupak-Pitts Amendment plows no new ground. By prohibiting both direct federal funding of abortion by the “public option” and the use of federal subsidies to purchase private plans that cover elective abortion, the Amendment merely maintained longstanding federal policy on abortion-funding.

Of course that is precisely why pro-abortionists want it deleted. They ardently desire coverage of abortion on demand in two big new federal government programs.

Second, as bad as the House bill was before amended, the Reid bill is worse. For starters, they had the advantage of the educational phase, if you will, in which pro-lifers patiently pointed out to Congress the path down which it oughtn’t to go. Well, Reid blew off those polite warnings at the same time he pretends to be heeding them.

Naturally the White House fell all over itself praising Reid for his alleged statesmanship. In the words of White House health reform director Nancy Ann DeParle, the Senate bill “was carefully worked through by the leader, who cares a lot about making sure this maintains the status quo on abortion policy.” The AP paraphrased DeParle as saying “Reid struck just the right balance” to keep the bill “neutral on abortion.”

But in that same AP story, Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, said Reid’s “is actually the worst bill we’ve seen so far on the life issues.” Doerflinger called it “completely unacceptable,” adding that “to say this reflects current law is ridiculous.”

Please read go to http://nrlactioncenter.com and then call your two United States Senators. Time is short and the importance of your involvement at this critical stage can not be overstated.

Contact Senators McCaskill and Bond and urge them to vote “no” on cloture on motion to proceed to anti-life Reid bill at 8:00 EST tonight.

NRLC: Reid Abortion Language “Completely Unacceptable”

An update from the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), Federal Legislation Department, issued Wednesday, November 18, 2009, 9:30 PM EST. For further information: 202-626-8820, legfederal@aol.com, or visit http://www.nrlc.org/ahc

National Right to Life Committee Rejects Reid Abortion Funding Language as “Completely Unacceptable,” Calls for Enactment of Stupak-Pitts Amendment

WASHINGTON (November 18, 2009) — The following statement was issued by the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of right-to-life organizations in all 50 states, and may be attributed to NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nv.) has rejected the bipartisan Stupak-Pitts Amendment and has substituted completely unacceptable language that would result in coverage of abortion on demand in two big new federal government programs.

Reid seeks to cover elective abortions in two big new federal health programs, but tries to conceal that unpopular reality with layers of contrived definitions and hollow bookkeeping requirements.

Rep. Lois Capps (D-Ca.), who has a 100% pro-abortion voting record, said in a press release following release of the Reid language: “It appears that their approach closely mirrors my language which was originally included in the House bill.” The Capps language referred to was opposed by NRLC and other pro-life organizations and was deleted by the House by a vote of 240-194 on November 7, as 64 Democrats (one fourth of all House Democrats), along with 176 Republicans, voted to replace it with the Stupak-Pitts Amendment.

The Stupak-Pitts Amendment would prevent federal subsidies for abortion by applying the principles of longstanding federal laws such as the Hyde Amendment to the new programs created by the health care legislation. Those principles prohibit both direct funding of abortion procedures, and subsidies for plans that cover elective abortions, in existing federal programs such as Medicaid, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, and the military. Regrettably but predictably, Reid rejected the bipartisan Stupak-Pitts language. Instead, Reid has sought to please the militant minority that demands funding of abortion through federal programs, even though substantial majorities of Americans believe that abortion should be excluded from government-funded and government-sponsored health programs.

The Reid bill establishes a big new federal health insurance program, the public option (although now referred to in Reid’s bill as the “community health insurance option”). The bill authorizes (on page 118) the federal Secretary of Health and Human Services to require coverage of any and all abortions throughout the public option program. This would be federal government funding of abortion, no matter how hard they try to disguise it.

In addition, the bill creates new tax-supported subsidies to purchase private health plans that will cover abortion on demand.

National Right to Life will continue to fight for the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, and to oppose the stubborn attempts of congressional Democratic leaders to establish new federal government programs that will fund coverage of elective abortions.

For extensive further documentation on the Stupak-Pitts Amendment and other aspects of the issue, visit the NRLC website at www.nrlc.org/ahc

Pro-aborts Resurrecting Phony Pro-Life Amendments to Healthcare

Doug Johnson, Legislative Director of the National Right to Life Committee, issued this alert this week (h/t Jill Stanek):

Third Way attempts to resurrect Ellsworth Amendment

In an essay posted today on RHrealitycheck.org (a nexus for pro-abortion activist groups), Rachel Laser – a career pro-abortion activist who now works for the influential “messaging” group Third Way – attempts to resurrect the Ellsworth Amendment.

Even though there is hardly paragraph in Laser’s piece that does not contain some substantial distortion, Laser’s initiative is not to be taken lightly, partly because she and her group have close connections with White House staff.

Here is NRLC’s take on the Ellsworth Amendment. And here is a detailed critique by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), who impersonates a pro-life congressman, has also resurfaced predicting “compromise”. Most likely, he has a fresh script from Planned Parenthood in his pocket. For more details, see the special NRLC webpage devoted to “Tim Ryan, Impersonator.”

This is worth keeping an eye on as pro-abortion forces are pulling out all the stops to try to strip the real pro-life Stupak Amendment that is currently in the House HC reform bill. Your calls to Sen. Claire McCaskill encouraging her to keep the Stupak language in the bill when it is considered by the Senate are greatly needed. After initially stating that she could “live with” the language, she has changed her mind and come out full force in opposition to it and says it must be removed. She is also still under the mistaken assumption that the Hyde Amendment will apply to health care reform – it will not.

Did You Know: Missouri’s Ban on Ins. Coverage for Abortion More Restrictive than Ban in House Health Bill

From the St. Louis Beacon:

The anti-abortion provision included in the health-care bill that passed the U.S. House on Saturday is similar to the private insurance restriction that has been in place in Missouri for 26 years.

Still, some leaders on both sides of the state’s longstanding battle over abortion rights foresee possible changes if the federal provision becomes law.

The U.S. House provision in question bars any private insurance coverage of abortion services — except in cases of rape, incest and to save the life of the mother — in policies that are purchased with federal subsidies that would be available to low- and middle-income women and their families. It also bars any public insurance coverage of abortion. (The provision is an extension of the Hyde Amendment, passed in 1976, that bars the use of federal money to pay for abortion.)

An even stricter ban has been in place in Missouri since 1983, when the Legislature approved a bill — signed into law by then-Gov. Christopher “Kit” Bond, R-Mo. — that barred private insurance companies from offering coverage for abortion services, except to save the life of the mother, unless a separate rider was purchased.

That ban was upheld by a federal court in 1992. Missouri is among only a handful of states to impose such restrictions on private insurers. (Click here to see the Guttmacher Institute’s latest study on some states’ limits on private insurers, when it comes to abortions.)

Continue reading this article

Missouri Right to Life Applauds House Passage of Pro-Life Stupak Amendment

Missouri Right to Life commends the U.S. House of Representatives for its pro-life vote regarding the Stupak Amendment. “Congress has acknowledged, with this vote, that abortion is not healthcare,” said Pam Fichter, president of Missouri Right to Life. The U.S. House approved the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, 240-197.

The Stupak-Pitts Amendment protected life in the following way: (1) the amendment would permanently prohibit the new federal government insurance program, the “public option,” from paying for abortion, except to save the life of the mother or in cases of rape or incest; and (2) the amendment would permanently prohibit the use of the new federal premium subsidies (“affordability credits”) to purchase private insurance plans that cover abortion (except to save the life of the mother or in cases of rape or incest).

Missouri Right to Life publicly thanks the 6 of 9 members of the Missouri Congressional delegation for their pro-life vote.

Rep. Todd Akin (R), Congressional District 2
Rep. Ike Skelton (D), Congressional District 4
Rep. Sam Graves (R), Congressional District 6
Rep. Roy Blunt (R), Congressional District 7
Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R), Congressional District 8
Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R), Congressional District 9

All of the above congressmen also voted against the bill as amended which still contained life-threatening components.

Missouri Congressmen voting for federal funding of abortion were:

Rep. Lacy Clay (D), Congressional District 1
Rep. Russ Carnahan (D), Congressional District 3
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D), Congressional District 5

If your representative voted for the Stupak Amendment, please express your appreciation. And if your representative voted for federal funding of abortion, please express your disappointment.

Contact Your Congressman Here

“Missouri is a strongly pro-life state and Missourians are grateful today for a vote that reflects the views and values of our pro-life people,” said Fichter.

This is a great victory for the pro-life movement and was made possible only because so many of you remained vigilant and consistent in your efforts to educate and activate your pro-life friends, family, neighbors, classmates and church members. That same vigilance will be required if we are to see these anti-life threats turned back once and for all.

Much work remains to be done as the U.S. Senate continues work on versions of the bill which still include abortion funding, rationing of care for vulnerable Americans and other matters of serious concern to pro-life advocates.