No Federal Funding For Abortion

Floor Speech

Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, there was a wonderful gathering in Washington today of thousands of people from all over the country. Many of those people held up signs that said Abortion is Not Health Care. The American public is more intelligent than those in charge in this House.

Pro-life Members here in the House are continuing to stand up and speak out for the unborn, and we will, until we defeat this bill or stop Federal funds from being used for abortions through this bill. Pro-life Members have offered amendments to the majority's original health care plan, H.R. 3200, to permanently exclude Federal funding of abortion. All of these amendments were rejected by the majority. Minority whip Cantor's amendment to stop health care from funding abortion was rejected in the Ways and Means Committee on July 16, 2009. Representative Souder's amendment to stop abortion funding was rejected by the majority in the Education and Labor Committee on July 17, 2009.

Democrat Representative Bart Stupak and Republican Representative Joe Pitts offered another amendment to stop abortion funding in Energy and Commerce, and the majority rejected it on July 30, 2009. The reasons given by the majority for rejecting these amendments was that they were not needed as there was no abortion funding in the bill.

Now the contrast to that is the Republican substitute which will be offered has a permanent, government-wide Hyde amendment, meaning unequivocally, no Federal funds can be used for abortion anywhere in any bill that passes. Yet despite claims from the majority that abortion funding was not in the bill, the Energy and Commerce Committee voted on July 31, 2009, to include the Capps amendment to explicitly include abortion funding in the health care bill.

Recently, Speaker Pelosi unveiled H.R. 3962, her 2,000 page $1.3 trillion government takeover of health care. This bill also includes the Capps amendment, which will increase the number of elective abortions and gut the well-established government policy that prevents Federal funds from being used to pay for elective abortion known as the Hyde amendment.

Before the Hyde amendment was passed in 1976, Medicaid funded almost 300,000 abortions. In contrast, the Republican substitute again has a permanent government-wide Hyde amendment, meaning unequivocally, no Federal funds for abortion anywhere.

Section 222 of H.R. 3962 permits Federal funds to be used for abortion in the government insurance plan.

Section 4(a) refers to elective abortion procedures that are otherwise prohibited from receiving Federal funds in other government programs due to current Hyde amendment policies, but cannot be prohibited in the government-run public insurance plan.

Supporters of the bill assert that only private funds will be used to fund abortion in the government-run public insurance plan. This is not true. The bill places individual premium payments for the government-run public insurance plan into a Federal treasury account that may be used to pay for abortions. The bill also federally subsidizes private insurance plans that cover abortion in the government-run exchange.

Let there be no doubt that Pelosi's plan explicitly authorizes the government-run public insurance plan to pay for elective abortions and subsidizes private plans on the government-run exchange that cover elective abortion. Despite assurance from the majority that something would be done to correct this, the manager's amendment for H.R. 3962 does not contain any language regarding abortion funding.

The proposal outlined by Representative Brad Ellsworth of Indiana yesterday falls short of addressing these issues. In his plan, the government-run public insurance plan would still cover abortion, but would have to contract with private contractors to carry out the administrative functions related to paying for elective abortion. Rather than reducing the number of abortions, the majority seems content with overseeing legislation to create the largest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade. This is unacceptable.

Pro-life Members on both sides of the aisle want the opportunity to vote on the Stupak-Pitts amendment to apply the Hyde amendment and exclude the abortion funding in Pelosi's plan. The American people understand this. We should not be using our Federal funding to kill innocent life.

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