More Catholic Groups Endorse Health Care Reform

It looks as though Rep. Bart Stupak is being increasingly marginalized for his position on health care even among his fellow pro-life Catholics. In addition to the Catholic Health Association and a group of Catholic and evangelical scholars, now a group representing 59,000 Catholic nuns has endorsed the bill.

Some 60 leaders of religious orders representing 59,000 Catholic nuns Wednesday sent lawmakers a letter urging them to pass the Senate health care bill. It contains restrictions on abortion funding that the bishops say don’t go far enough.

The letter says that “despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions.” The letter says the legislation also will help support pregnant women and “this is the real pro-life stance.”

And the editors of the Catholic magazine Commonweal also added their voice to the chorus calling for passage of the bill:

These critics point out that the bill departs from the Hyde Amendment’s ban on federal support for any health plan that covers elective abortion. They insist this is the only conceivable way for the government to subsidize insurance without paying for abortion. This is false, as the Senate bill itself clearly demonstrates. Under the bill, anyone who buys a plan that covers elective abortion would have to pay a separate, unsubsidized premium for that coverage. Such premiums would be segregated from premiums for all other services in a special account, which would have to cover the full cost of elective abortions and couldn’t receive a penny from the government. In other words, the bill would preserve the Hyde Amendment’s principle without applying its method.

Critics also claim that the money the bill appropriates for community health centers is not subject to the Hyde Amendment. No doubt the bill would be strengthened with the addition of language that clearly imposes the Hyde rule on any federal money given to health centers. But since such money will in any case be channeled through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where the Hyde Amendment obtains, there is no good reason to suppose that it will be exempt from the amendment’s constraints. Besides, if HHS really could spend any part of the new funding on elective abortions, it wouldn’t matter that the Hyde Amendment keeps it from using the rest of its money for this purpose: as the bill’s critics never tire of telling us, money is fungible—the Hyde Amendment works only if it covers everything HHS spends. It’s also worth mentioning that none of the existing health centers, which provide care to one in eight children born in the United States, has ever offered abortion services.

Many of the bill’s most prominent critics are lobbyists, and for the purposes of lobbying, a plausible falsehood is often as useful as the truth. But crying wolf is always a dangerous game. If prolife groups raise false alarms to bully politicians and scare up donations, they risk being ignored when a real threat arises.

Democrats are still hoping to hold a vote on the bill sometime this week.