[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 20]
[House]
[Page 26976]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    NO FEDERAL FUNDING FOR ABORTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, there was a wonderful gathering in 
Washington today of thousands of people from all over the country. Many 
of those people held up signs that said Abortion is Not Health Care. 
The American public is more intelligent than those in charge in this 
House.
  Pro-life Members here in the House are continuing to stand up and 
speak out for the unborn, and we will, until we defeat this bill or 
stop Federal funds from being used for abortions through this bill. 
Pro-life Members have offered amendments to the majority's original 
health care plan, H.R. 3200, to permanently exclude Federal funding of 
abortion. All of these amendments were rejected by the majority. 
Minority whip Cantor's amendment to stop health care from funding 
abortion was rejected in the Ways and Means Committee on July 16, 2009. 
Representative Souder's amendment to stop abortion funding was rejected 
by the majority in the Education and Labor Committee on July 17, 2009.
  Democrat Representative Bart Stupak and Republican Representative Joe 
Pitts offered another amendment to stop abortion funding in Energy and 
Commerce, and the majority rejected it on July 30, 2009. The reasons 
given by the majority for rejecting these amendments was that they were 
not needed as there was no abortion funding in the bill.
  Now the contrast to that is the Republican substitute which will be 
offered has a permanent, government-wide Hyde amendment, meaning 
unequivocally, no Federal funds can be used for abortion anywhere in 
any bill that passes. Yet despite claims from the majority that 
abortion funding was not in the bill, the Energy and Commerce Committee 
voted on July 31, 2009, to include the Capps amendment to explicitly 
include abortion funding in the health care bill.
  Recently, Speaker Pelosi unveiled H.R. 3962, her 2,000 page $1.3 
trillion government takeover of health care. This bill also includes 
the Capps amendment, which will increase the number of elective 
abortions and gut the well-established government policy that prevents 
Federal funds from being used to pay for elective abortion known as the 
Hyde amendment.
  Before the Hyde amendment was passed in 1976, Medicaid funded almost 
300,000 abortions. In contrast, the Republican substitute again has a 
permanent government-wide Hyde amendment, meaning unequivocally, no 
Federal funds for abortion anywhere.
  Section 222 of H.R. 3962 permits Federal funds to be used for 
abortion in the government insurance plan.
  Section 4(a) refers to elective abortion procedures that are 
otherwise prohibited from receiving Federal funds in other government 
programs due to current Hyde amendment policies, but cannot be 
prohibited in the government-run public insurance plan.
  Supporters of the bill assert that only private funds will be used to 
fund abortion in the government-run public insurance plan. This is not 
true. The bill places individual premium payments for the government-
run public insurance plan into a Federal treasury account that may be 
used to pay for abortions. The bill also federally subsidizes private 
insurance plans that cover abortion in the government-run exchange.
  Let there be no doubt that Pelosi's plan explicitly authorizes the 
government-run public insurance plan to pay for elective abortions and 
subsidizes private plans on the government-run exchange that cover 
elective abortion. Despite assurance from the majority that something 
would be done to correct this, the manager's amendment for H.R. 3962 
does not contain any language regarding abortion funding.
  The proposal outlined by Representative Brad Ellsworth of Indiana 
yesterday falls short of addressing these issues. In his plan, the 
government-run public insurance plan would still cover abortion, but 
would have to contract with private contractors to carry out the 
administrative functions related to paying for elective abortion. 
Rather than reducing the number of abortions, the majority seems 
content with overseeing legislation to create the largest expansion of 
abortion since Roe v. Wade. This is unacceptable.
  Pro-life Members on both sides of the aisle want the opportunity to 
vote on the Stupak-Pitts amendment to apply the Hyde amendment and 
exclude the abortion funding in Pelosi's plan. The American people 
understand this. We should not be using our Federal funding to kill 
innocent life.

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