Abortion Issue Feared as Top Health Bill Killer

Government funding of abortion, the issue that has proven the stickiest in each of the major turns of the health care bill, has again arisen.

P>WASHINGTON, DC (LifeSiteNews.com) - Government funding of abortion, the issue that has proven the stickiest in each of the major turns of the health care bill, has again arisen as the top clear enemy to Democrats attempting to ram the abortion-expanding measure through, reports NPR.

Hyde-amendment language banning all abortion funding in the House health bill was one of the key concessions made to win conservative Democrats over to the bill last year.  Therefore, majority leaders now fear those crucial votes will be lost when presented with the Senate bill, crafted under Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, which lacks the Hyde language.

Because of this disparity, reports NPR's Julie Rovner, "the abortion problem may be too difficult to surmount."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday attempted to dismiss the Reid bill's abortion problem. "I talked to the Catholic bishops about this .... there is no federal funding of abortion in this bill," she said.

But Richard Doerflinger of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has lobbied aggressively against the bill's abortion expansion, immediately shot back, "We do not know how anyone who has spoken to the bishops could conclude that the Senate health care bill does not fund abortions."

Democrats have laid out a game plan that would require the House to discard their bill altogether, and instead pass the Senate version unamended.  A later bill, intended to bridge gaps between the two bill versions, would then be offered to appease House Democrats dissatisfied with the more liberal Senate version. To take advantage of the budget reconciliation process, the second measure would be deemed a "budget" bill, and could therefore be passed in the Senate with only 51 votes.

While pro-life Democrats in the House may jump ship, the Wall Street Journal and other sources report that a handful of Democrats who voted "no" on the House bill are now undecided. Their votes could be just enough to tip the scales back in Pelosi's favor.

Despite the daunting odds, leaders are hoping to push the Reid bill through the House by March 19 and finish health care reform before the March 29 Spring recess, according to a Democratic memo cited by Inside Health Policy´s Julian Pecquet and Amy Lotven.

According to ABC's Jake Tapper, President Obama is expected to signal support for ramming the Senate bill fix through via the controversial reconciliation process - dubbed by some the "nuclear option" - by calling for an "up or down vote" on health care reform.

Republicans continue to object that, while their own party has used the reconciliation process before, doing so to pass a bundle of compromises meant to squeeze health care reform through Congress would be to flagrantly abuse Senate rules.

"This use of reconciliation to jam through this legislation, against the will of the American people, would be unprecedented in scope," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) in a Washington Post column Tuesday. "And the havoc wrought would threaten our system of checks and balances, corrode the legislative process, degrade our system of government and damage the prospects of bipartisanship."

The GOP has already cast a wary eye towards Senate parliamentarian Alan Frumin, who has the final say on whether the use of reconciliation is legitimate.

"I think clearly the majority leader has [Frumin´s] ear, and I've got concerns," said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), according to Politico. "I think if he does not look at that very careful - reconciliation is supposed to be very narrowly defined, large legislative things don't seem to fit in those parameters - I would think that reconciliation would make or break the perception of his objectivity."

When Frumin illegally cut off a Republican stall tactic in December, DeMint warned to the Washington Times that the majority party had "a parliamentarian in their back pocket."  

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