Catholics must act now to keep abortion funding out of health care bill
July 29, 2019 at 12:37 p.m.
Science has established as fact that every human life begins at conception, and our Catholic Church teaches us that every human life is sacred and should be protected from conception to natural death.
We Catholics need to do much more than simply pray for an end to abortion. We must engage in ‘Catholic action,’ and we must act now; time is running out.
(President Obama) and some of his supporters in Congress seem determined to include abortion subsidies in any final health care legislation they enact. To date they have succeeded in blocking all efforts by pro-life members of Congress to amend the various proposals to explicitly exclude abortions.
When a reporter questioned the president’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, about a letter the Catholic bishops recently sent Congress expressing their concerns that none of the current health care bills being considered would bar the use of federal dollars for abortion, Mr. Gibbs incorrectly responded that the Hyde Amendment will stop abortion funding. This is not true; the Hyde Amendment would not apply to a new bill. It only applies to a current program that provides health care funds for poor Americans, and it is not a permanent law.
It is merely a ‘limitation amendment’ that is patched on to the annual appropriations bill for Health and Human Services.
Only language written directly into the final health care reform bill would ensure that abortions would not be subsidized by our tax dollars. The reality is that without this specific language we taxpayers will be forced to pay for the killing of unborn children. Our right of conscience will be violated and countless babies will be destroyed.
Our bishops are to be commended for speaking out on this issue. We must follow their example. Abortion is not health care.
It is the painful and violent killing of children in the womb, and for anyone to say otherwise is to deny the truth. We need to act now.
Contact the offices of your Member of the House of Representatives and also Senators Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg. Let them know your position on this issue, and urge them to ‘vote no’ on any proposed health care reform legislation that does not explicitly exclude abortion.
Jill A. White
Hamilton
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Science has established as fact that every human life begins at conception, and our Catholic Church teaches us that every human life is sacred and should be protected from conception to natural death.
We Catholics need to do much more than simply pray for an end to abortion. We must engage in ‘Catholic action,’ and we must act now; time is running out.
(President Obama) and some of his supporters in Congress seem determined to include abortion subsidies in any final health care legislation they enact. To date they have succeeded in blocking all efforts by pro-life members of Congress to amend the various proposals to explicitly exclude abortions.
When a reporter questioned the president’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, about a letter the Catholic bishops recently sent Congress expressing their concerns that none of the current health care bills being considered would bar the use of federal dollars for abortion, Mr. Gibbs incorrectly responded that the Hyde Amendment will stop abortion funding. This is not true; the Hyde Amendment would not apply to a new bill. It only applies to a current program that provides health care funds for poor Americans, and it is not a permanent law.
It is merely a ‘limitation amendment’ that is patched on to the annual appropriations bill for Health and Human Services.
Only language written directly into the final health care reform bill would ensure that abortions would not be subsidized by our tax dollars. The reality is that without this specific language we taxpayers will be forced to pay for the killing of unborn children. Our right of conscience will be violated and countless babies will be destroyed.
Our bishops are to be commended for speaking out on this issue. We must follow their example. Abortion is not health care.
It is the painful and violent killing of children in the womb, and for anyone to say otherwise is to deny the truth. We need to act now.
Contact the offices of your Member of the House of Representatives and also Senators Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg. Let them know your position on this issue, and urge them to ‘vote no’ on any proposed health care reform legislation that does not explicitly exclude abortion.
Jill A. White
Hamilton