Matt Bowman: $11 Billion buys a lot of abortions
By Matt Bowman, Esq. ________________ President Obama’s health bill provides $11 Billion to pay for abortions at community health centers. It is a legal fact that not only will the $11 Billion in tax dollars be available for abortion (because Democrats refuse to apply pro-life Hyde language to the funds via the Stupak Amendment), but the money will also be required to include abortion because courts define abortion as health care if a law doesn’t explicitly exclude it. But people may have a hard time wrapping their minds around about how big this abortion bailout is. It’s not $11 million, it’s $11 BILLION. Think about it this way. There are about 1.2 million abortions every year in America, at an average cost of less than $500. The Department of Health and Human Services could use President Obama’s $11 Billion to give away, for free, every abortion performed in America, and they would still have $10.4 Billion dollars left over. With the $10.4 Billion extra, they could build 500 brand new, abortion-performing community health centers at a cost of $20 million each. But even then they would have $400 million additional tax dollars left over, with which they could perform, for free, an additional 800,000 abortions in America. There is nothing at all in the President’s health bill, or in the old Labor/HHS Hyde-restricted bill, to prevent this $11 Billion of tax dollars from being spent on abortion even at existing CHCs (by segregating the funds), and on building new abortion-performing CHCs. Professor Timothy Jost of Washington and Lee School of Law (a MoveOn.org PAC donor), argues that old, non-statutory regulations (42 C.F.R. 50.301 et seq.) will prevent the CHC money from going to abortions. But those regulations explicitly rely on the Hyde amendment, so they won’t apply to this money. Nor can mere regulations created by HHS exceed the statutory authority bestowed by Congress. Courts will not allow HHS’s old regs to apply to this new, abortion-eligible CHC money. Likewise, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is devoutly pro-abortion and has already used the fullest extent of her statutory authority to attack life and conscience rights. Even now, existing CHCs contract with Planned Parenthood and have joined them to oppose merely obeying federal laws that protect their pro-life health workers from CHC discrimination. Planned Parenthood frequently visits the White House, and it uses every mechanism it can leverage to promote their abortion business as “comprehensive” care. It is certain that PP will maximize the abortion use of President Obama’s new $11 Billion abortion-industry bailout. No law will exist to stop them. |
