Matt Bowman: $11 Billion for “community health centers” that won’t promote abortion? Don’t bet on it.
By Matt Bowman, Esq. ________________ Advocates of the Senate health bill have been saying that President Obama’s proposed $11 Billion for “community health centers” (CHCs) won’t promote abortion even though the bill contains no restriction on its use for abortion. Bill advocates also contend that the Senate bill doesn’t threaten to force doctors to assist abortions, even though the bill fails to restrict the government from violating conscience rights. Last week the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) assured the public that its centers don’t intend to perform abortions. NACHC’s intentions, however, should be viewed with scrutiny. In 2008 NACHC stood alongside Planned Parenthood to oppose President Bush’s regulations that would have merely enforced existing laws that protect pro-life health providers from being forced to assist abortions and other practices. Planned Parenthood proudly boasted that NACHC shared its same position against healthcare rights of conscience. NACHC clinics are on paper bound to follow federal conscience laws because of all the tax dollars they receive. But in its 2008 memo against obeying conscience protection laws, NACHC said that it opposed the prospect of having to comply with those laws if they are actually enforced against NACHC, because NACHC preferred not to limit its ability to require employees to provide services that the law mandates that providers don’t have to provide. NACHC specifically objected to obeying the law that says its clinics cannot discriminate against a health provider that “does not provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortion as part of the federal program for which it receives funding.” The federal Weldon Amendment requires NACHC clinics, in these exact, word-for-word terms, to refrain from such discrimination. Appropriations Act, 2009, Pub. L. No. 111-8, § 508(d). But, NACHC opposed President Bush’s regulation because it merely said that NACHC clinics must comply with this law if they want to receive the applicable tax dollars. NACHC’s said its clinics should not be subject to its legal obligation not to discriminate, because it wishes to provide services that it might not be able to provide if it complied with the law and refrained from coercing health care personnel in the way mandated by federal law. NACHC added that if it had to obey this law it would be impeded from working with other organizations to provide these kinds of practices. A simple web search shows that NACHC centers frequently partner with Planned Parenthood. NACHC further declared that its clinics should not be required to obey the law that prohibits them from discriminating against any “health care professional” because “he refused to perform or assist in the performance of a lawful sterilization procedure or abortion on the grounds that doing so would be contrary to his religious beliefs or moral convictions.” Again, because these clinics receive specific federal tax dollars, federal law bans them, word for word, from engaging in this discrimination. 42 U.S.C. § 300a-7(c). But NACHC repeated its objection that HHS should not require NACHC clinics to obey this law and refrain from discriminating against health providers who are protected by this law, because otherwise NACHC clinics can’t offer the kinds of services that health care providers would have a right to object to providing (if the clinic obeyed its legal obligations). NACHC’s lobbying efforts against conscience rights were successful. President Obama obeyed Planned Parenthood’s and NACHC’s pleas and issued a prompt notice to rescind these regulations, which would have done nothing but require clinics like NACHC members who receive these tax dollars to obey the law and refrain from violating their employees’ rights not to assist abortions and other practices. Meanwhile, as the President revoked this mere law enforcement rule, a district court in New York recently ruled (see also here) that pro-life victims of this discrimination can’t enforce the law themselves by suing the entities like NACHC clinics for violation of their rights. If the Alliance Defense Fund is not able to get that decision overturned, President Obama, Planned Parenthood and NACHC will have removed all obstacles to their desire to allow tax funded organizations to be free from any enforcement of their obligations not to force health professionals to violate their religious beliefs. NACHC boasts that it provides a “comprehensive continuum of care” including “obstetrics and gynecology,” “preventive health services,” and “voluntary family planning services,” and that it primarily cares for low-income and underserved populations. It is these populations, NACHC says, that its obedience to the law governing abortion and religious objections would negatively effect, by reducing the provision of services that employees are not supposed to be forced to dispense. Planned Parenthood targets the same populations as NACHC does for its “family planning services,” and abortion organizations (whose officials now fill HHS) have already begun lobbying to define “preventive” care to include abortion. The Senate bill allows federal government officials to define “preventive” care as including abortion. And Planned Parenthood is openly trying to become a “community health clinic” and receive federal funding to build massive abortion and “comprehensive” care facilities. So when NACHC says its clinics don’t intend to perform abortions, it should be taken with a grain of salt. NACHC clinics already partner with Planned Parenthood, and they successfully lobbied to be able to disobey federal law prohibiting them from violating health provider consciences, precisely so they could offer potentially affected “services” to low income women. Nothing in the Senate health reform bill stops them and new CHCs from using $11 Billion to pay for abortions. |
