When the House sent a sweeping health care bill to President Obama Sunday, most of the nation’s leading pro-life groups slammed it as a proposal that would liberalize the nation’s abortion laws and increase the abortion rate.
But Democrats for Life America and its executive director Kristen Day were casting a dramatically different message, arguing that the bill was not only pro-life but that the nation’s abortion rate likely would decrease.
For months, Democrats for Life had been working on the same side of organizations such as National Right to Life, the Family Research Council and the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission in trying to ensure that the health care bill maintained the status quo on abortion law and did not federally fund the procedure. Yet when Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan announced a deal Sunday that lent his support if Obama pledged to sign an executive order, Democrats for Life was the only group not disappointed. It sent out a press release hours later saying it was “proud to support this historic health care legislation.”
“The goal was always to pass a health care reform bill,” Day told Baptist Press. “All these [pro-life] members and Democrats for Life supported health care reform, and the point of contention obviously was the abortion issue…. We’re proud that this health care legislation passed and we’re proud of the work that Bart did. We appreciate that the president signed this executive order that says the Hyde Amendment is the law of the land.”
The Hyde Amendment — which must be renewed annually — prevents Medicaid from funding elective abortions. President Obama signed the bill, named the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, into law Tuesday.
Generally, groups that oppose abortion have divided into two camps in theorizing how the bill will impact the nation’s abortion rates. National Right to Life and others argue that the nation likely will see an increase in abortions because lower-income women who currently are uninsured will be able to use tax subsidies to purchase insurance plans that cover elective abortion, making the procedure affordable and more accessible. (The new law’s allowance of tax dollars to go toward insurance plans that cover elective abortions is a break from longstanding policy.) Democrats for Life, though, says the abortion rate likely will decrease because uninsured women who previously would have had an abortion for financial reasons will be less likely to do so because they and their baby now have insurance coverage.
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