The House of Representatives narrowly approved its version of health-insurance reform this past weekend, but the most important vote occurred earlier on Saturday evening, Nov. 7. Its result: a welcome and somewhat unexpected victory for values voters on the issue of life, as an amendment championed by U.S. Reps. Bart Stupak, D-Michigan and Joseph Pitts, R-Pa., passed with bipartisan support.

As a result, the House version of this important bill now prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion, and bans any requirement that a government-approved health-benefit plan includes coverage for abortion. That’s the way it should be, if we are going to have health-insurance reform at all.

Abortion advocates may have been blindsided by this development, but they won’t be again. Already, the disinformation machine in their camp has swung into overdrive in an attempt to remove the Stupak-Pitts language from the Senate version and ultimately, the conference report on this bill. It’s time to keep up the pressure!

Click here to send a message to your Member of Congress regarding the Stupak-Pitts amendment, and click here to ask your U.S. Senators to insist upon similar language in its version of the bill.

Late last Saturday night, the House passed what its leadership calls the Affordable Health Care for America Act by a 220-215 vote. It would make sweeping changes in how we pay for our health care, some of which activists on both sides of the issue are only beginning to understand. Before the vote, however, the Stupak-Pitts amendment was passed on the House floor by a vote of 240 in favor, 194 against and one member voting “present.” As a result, the official House version of health-insurance reform includes measures we’ve championed for months, including:

• An extension of the principles of the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits public funding of abortion in the Medicare program, to health reform.
• A specific exclusion of abortion as a covered service in health-benefit plans offered in a public option or using federal subsidies.

It’s impossible to overstate how good this news is. If you believe passage of some form of health reform during the Obama administration is inevitable, as we do, removal of these abortion mandates was critical. The amendment was the only one House leadership permitted to be discussed on the House floor, and it reportedly came after hours of closed-door meetings earlier in the weekend. Ultimately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi recognized the inevitable: without the Stupak-Pitts amendment, there wouldn’t be enough votes to approve any health-reform bill. CMC applauds the 240 members of both parties with the courage to stand up for the unborn in the face of what became – and will continue to be – massive political pressure to sell out the unborn with our tax dollars.

In the coming weeks you’ll hear how the Stupak-Pitts amendment “takes away women’s access to health care,” as Feministing.com shrieked Nov. 8, or “sells out women’s civil rights,” as Taylor Marsh whined Nov. 8 in the Huffington Post. It doesn’t. Access to abortion has never been at issue in this bill – merely who pays for the abortions that occur. The question is simple: should a government-run or government-regulated health-insurance system make abortion a covered service? Of course not. Abortion is not health care. Women seeking abortions have the right to obtain them, but not to stick the American taxpayer with the bill.

Despite the protestations of the abortion industry and their congressional acolytes, restricting coverage of abortion is hardly a revolutionary concept. Private health-benefit plans exclude specific services as purely elective. In many plans, for example, surgery designed to lead to weight loss and cosmetic procedures simply aren’t covered. A patient can have those procedures done, but he or she has to pay for the full cost. That’s what we’ve insisted upon, because of our conviction that government should not be in the business of approving of the termination of human life in the womb, even if the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the procedure be legal.

The argument posited by some, then, that because abortion is legal it should be a covered service simply isn’t worthy of dignifying. If Planned Parenthood is adamant that abortion should be made available to all persons regardless of ability to pay, it could offer the service on a pro bono basis, or find wealthy sponsors for the purpose. There is no justification for making the American taxpayers complicit in the killing of unborn babies – and a vast majority of Americans, including many who believe abortion should remain legal, agree with that position. It’s difficult to see any proposal without an outright prohibition of abortion mandates as anything other than a declaration that we should use federal funds for abortions.

As satisfying as this victory is, it’s important to remember that the House vote leaves at least two important legislative hurdles remaining for health-reform legislation. The Senate has to vote on its version of the bill, and then a conference committee is likely to arrive at a third version of health reform. Both houses of Congress must pass identical language before it goes to the president. And you can bet that abortion advocates will be spewing their misinformation about the Stupak-Pitts language all over Capitol Hill in the coming weeks.

Reasonable minds can disagree on the overall need for health-reform legislation, but there is no justification for a bill that will authorize, mandate and fund abortion in the name of health care. At least in the House, the bill is morally correct on that score, but diligent work remains to keep it that way.

CMC again calls for the Senate and President Obama to come together to assure that health reform legislation can be decided on its merits. Abortion is not health care, and the organizations that perform it do not need the massive economic boost that would come from its federal funding.

Click here to send a message to your Member of Congress regarding the Stupak-Pitts amendment. If your member supported the amendment, it will thank him or her and encourage him or her to stand firm on this issue. Click here to ask your U.S. Senators to insist upon similar language in its version of the bill.

Other ways you can support the fight to keep abortion out of health-care reform include:

• Pray for the success of the pro-life community in stopping an abortion industry bailout, and that elected representatives’ hearts would be turned to realize the moral correctness of our position.
• Click here to forward this article to your e-mail contacts.
• Copy the Web address (URL) of this story and forward it to your Twitter followers and Facebook friends, urging them to send e-mails to their elected representatives and local media.

We can win this important battle – let’s keep the pressure up!