Wednesday, September 30, 2009

With all of the debates going on over the new health care bill, adding fuel to the fire is the ongoing battle over federal funding for abortions. The New York Times published an article September 28th covering the issue: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/health/policy/29abortion.html?th&emc=th
It spoke about republicans and moderate democrats wanting more restrictive language added to the new bill to ensure that abortion is not funded at all by tax-payer dollars.

The article didn’t do an adequate job explaining why the issue is so important. I understood that we had a 30-year-old ban on using tax-payer dollars to fund abortions, so I didn’t understand why the House and the Senate feel the need to change things now. I was also confused because Obama has been saying for months that the new health care bill will not give federal money to fund elective abortions, but the article seemed to have an underlying message that made me feel like I was missing something. The article makes a point that White House officials have declined to elaborate on what Obama means when he talks about federal funding for abortion. I didn’t get the whole picture until I found this article: http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/abortion-which-side-is-fabricating/

The article basically fills in the gaps of The New York Times article. It explains that there are loopholes to the bill that Obama is cleverly disguising, such as “reproductive health” being covered by his public plan, under which abortion is sure to be included. Obama is saying that federal dollars will not be used to fund abortions, but the reason that opponents of the bill want tightened, more restrictive language is because they feel that it is too easy for the president to manipulate regulations so, in fact, abortion will be covered by tax-payer dollars. In my opinion, the Factcheck.org article did a better job explaining the whole issue than The New York Times article that just left me confused.

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