WASHINGTON – In his address to a joint session of Congress tonight, President Obama said, "One more misunderstanding I want to clear up -- under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions."
Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, commented: "Barack Obama needs to learn that the mere repetition of a verbal formula does not change reality. The reality is that the Obama-backed House bill would explicitly authorize the federal government insurance plan to pay for elective abortions and would explicitly authorize subsidies for private abortion insurance -- and all with federal dollars, which are the only kind of dollars that the federal government can spend."
The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) last week released definitive memoranda that demonstrate that (1) the "Hyde Amendment" would not apply to the new programs that would be created by the Obama-backed health bill, H.R. 3200, and (2) that all of the funds that would be spent on elective abortions under the bill, and all of the funds that would be spent to subsidize private insurance plans that cover abortion, would be "federal funds" in both the legal sense and in the sense in which those terms are used throughout the government.
"The claim that a federal agency would be spending private funds on abortion, not federal funds, is absurd on its face, a political hoax," Johnson said.
To read a September 8 NRLC media advisory that summarizes these issues, click here. The advisory contains links to the detailed memoranda that disprove the "Hyde Amendment myth" and the "government will spend private funds on abortions myth."
The National Right to Life Committee, the nation's largest pro-life group is a federation of affiliates in all 50 states and 3,000 local chapters nationwide.
