SBA List Statement on Senate Vote to Table the Pro-Life Nelson Amendment
December 9, 2009
WASHINGTON (MetroCatholic) – This evening the Senate voted 54-45 to table the pro-life amendment offered by Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, effectively killing the amendment. In response, Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser offered the following statement:
“Tonight Senator Reid invoked Henry Clay, posing as a great compromiser even as he denied the consciences of the majority of Americans. Yet Clay himself would have never blanched at Nelson’s amendment, a commonsense proposal backed by 61% of America. You can’t find greater common ground than the decision to restrict government funding for abortion on-demand. With his actions tonight, Harry Reid has effectively tabled the common ground.
“Senator Reid’s tabling of the pro-life Nelson Amendment is just the latest reason why incumbents like Harry Reid are becoming top political targets: the disconnect between their words and actions inspire a rising populist opposition. Senator Reid calls himself pro-life, yet he continues to advance the largest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade at taxpayers’ expense.”
As it stands today, there should be no question about opposing the Senate health care bill. If you call yourself pro-life and genuinely care about preserving true common ground, you cannot possibly vote for this bill. Pro-Life senators – the sponsors of Nelson’s amendment included – must oppose this legislation.”
As the debate continues, on behalf of the 280,000 pro- life Susan B. Anthony List members and activists nationwide, I call on Senator Casey to follow the unyielding leadership of his father, former Governor Bob Casey. Senator Casey and his Democratic colleagues now have the opportunity to honor the consistent pro-life ethic of his father.”
The Nelson-Hatch Amendment, which closely mirrors the Stupak-Pitts Amendment that passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 240-194, was co- sponsored by Sens. Robert Casey ( D-Penn.), Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), John Thune, (R-S.D.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) David Vitter (R-La.), and John Barrasso (R- Wyo.), and was supported by the Susan B. Anthony List.
Without the addition of the bipartisan Nelson-Hatch amendment, the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act explicitly authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to include abortion coverage in the public option. The bill also allows the use of government subsidies to purchase insurance policies that include elective abortion coverage.
As part of its Votes Have Consequences project, the Susan B. Anthony List has funded $130,000 in television, radio ads and educational phone calls across Nevada calling on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to defend Life in health care reform.
For the last several months, the Susan B. Anthony List has mobilized tens of thousands of pro-life Americans nationwide to urge Congress to exclude abortion from healthcare reform. Susan B. Anthony List activists have sent nearly 500,000 letters to Congress requesting an explicit exclusion of abortion from health care reform.
The Susan B. Anthony List is a nationwide network of Americans, over 167,000 residing in all 50 states, dedicated to mobilizing, advancing, and representing pro-life women in politics. Its connected Candidate Fund increases the percentage of pro-life women in the political process.
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Let’s do a thought experiment. Let us assume that the ” Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care ” Bill becomes law and all the pro-life protections demanded by the USCCB are in the law. Taxpayer paid abortions are out, conscience protections for health care workers and hospitals are guaranteed, school based health clinics are out, all undocumented aliens will be covered. What are we left with. We are left with a law which destroys Medicare, which has a government sponsored and supported health care option that will eventually destroy private health care options and force nearly all Americans onto the government health care option, Health Savings Accounts are gone, which fines and may send to prison anyone who refuses to buy a health care plan, which opens your health information to an army of bureaurcrats, which opens your bank accounts to the same bureaurcrats and empowers them to reach in and extract whatever they say you owe – with no appeal, which takes all your health care decisions out of your hands and your doctor’s and places them in the hands of unnamed bureaurcrats – also without appeal, which will seriously ration health care to the elderly and anyone who is chronically ill or disabled, which tramples under foot the principle of Subsidiarity, which starts taxing you now for ” benefits ” which you will not get before 2012 or 2013 ( and this trillion dollars will be dumped into the general fund and will have been spent by the time ” health care ” kicks in), which will be so expensive it promises to bankrupt the nation, which essentialy destroys constitutionally protected individual, corporate, and State rights, which takes a giant step toward turning America into a Socialist state and reduces the citizenry to the status of state dependent surfs. Did I miss anything?
The point is that even if all pro-life objectives are met, such a Law would be grossly immorial. I fail to see how the USCCB, the CHA, Catholic Charities, any Catholic or any Christian could feel good about such gross injustice.