Reid Roils the Abortion Debate

Chuck Donovan / December 23, 2009

Far from maintaining the Hyde Amendment limitations on federal abortion funding, the Harry Reid (D-NV) “manager’s amendment” on which cloture has now been invoked in the Senate would begin to tear down the firewall that individual taxpayers now enjoy in various federal programs not to participate in abortion funding; establish a line-item process so that employees in many states will see a special “abortion debit” on their pay check stubs; create new health insurance plans offered through the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), one of which will almost certainly offer elective abortions; and open up a 50-state battle on abortion funding that could lead to the all-or-nothing inclusion or exclusion of such funding in each state.

The language included in the bill is not the “Casey compromise” that was floated over late last week on Capitol Hill in an effort to garner the support of Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who offered the Nelson-Hatch amendment rejected by the Senate 54-45 on December 8. Casey’s amendment, which failed to break the deadlock over abortion funding in the Senate bill and was strongly opposed by the national right to life groups and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, included two features that have been omitted in Reid’s manager’s amendment: a codification of the House-approved Weldon conscience language and an individual opt-out from abortion coverage. (more…)