UPDATED: Senate tables the Nelson-Hatch amendment 54-45,(Dem Senators Conrad, Bayh, Casey, Pryor, Dorgan, and Nelson voted in favor). Statements for the media from pro-life leaders are below. And the Family Research Council is holding a news conference call @ 6:05pm ET on the vote – call 866-939-3921 .
STATEMENTS FROM PRO-LIFE LEADERS ON THE VOTE TO TABLE THE NELSON-HATCH AMENDMENT
December 8, 2009
Tony Perkins
President of Family Research Council Action
“In rejecting the Nelson-Hatch amendment, pro-abortion Senators have broken the three decade long truce over government funding of abortion and have demonstrated they would rather have mandate federal funding for abortion than enact ‘health care reform.’
Wendy Wright
President, Concerned Women for America
“Nelson-Hatch is a reasonable amendment that does one thing: ensures federal funds are not spent on elective abortions. What the government funds, we get more of. Without this amendment, the bill will violate two of Pres. Obama’s promises: that the bill will not fund abortion and that he will work to reduce abortions. Since abortion costs less than delivery of a baby, it is not unlikely that bureaucrats, facing pressure to reduce costs, will sign off on paying for abortion but not for the health care that pregnant women and their babies need. If the bill does not explicitly bar the funding of abortion, bureaucrats and activist judges will require federal funding of this deadly procedure. If more children are aborted, who will pay for this massive government entitlement when it balloons in 20 years?”
Douglas Johnson
Legislative Director, National Right to Life Committee
“The focus now shifts to the all-important cloture vote on the Reid bill itself, which is a 60-vote hurdle. Let the message be heard clearly across the land: Any senator who votes for cloture on Reid’s bill is voting to establish two big new federal programs that will subsidize abortion on demand.”
Charmaine Yoest
President, Americans United for Life Action
“A vote to table the amendment is a vote against the Nelson-Hatch-Casey amendment. A majority of Senators effectively endorsed the abortion lobby’s goal of mainstreaming abortion as health care. The Senate health care reform bill explicitly allows the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to include abortion coverage in the ‘community health insurance option,’ and allows federal subsidies to go to private insurance plans that include abortion coverage. In addition, the bill also requires that at least one private plan in each exchange provide coverage for all abortions. The Senate had the opportunity to follow the House’s lead in ensuring that federal dollars are not used to pay for abortions. Instead, the Senate chose to reject the Nelson-Hatch-Casey amendment and continue down the road towards unprecedented federal funding of abortion.”
Ashley Horne
Federal Issues Analyst, Focus on the Family Action
“Today, the U.S. Senate failed to protect the preborn and ignored the will of the people they represent. Although 67 percent of Americans oppose the use of federal money to pay for abortion in any government-run healthcare, Senators nevertheless rejected the Hatch-Nelson amendment. Their vote would compel Americans who have moral and religious objects to abortion – and who now make up the majority of the country – to fund it. This is what Thomas Jefferson described as ‘tyrannical.’ Focus on the Family continues to oppose the health care bill because it fails to protect the most vulnerable among us – the preborn. We will keep working diligently to ensure that this faulty legislation does not pass by giving a voice to the millions of Americans who oppose the use of federal funds to pay for abortion.”
Steven Ertelt
Editor and CEO, LifeNews.com
“Senators who opposed the Nelson amendment should be ashamed of themselves for hypocritically calling for ‘choice’ yet forcing Americans to pay for abortions through the health care bill. Their real agenda is exposed through their own votes — they want unlimited abortions throughout pregnancy for any reason funded by the American people. That’s not pro-choice, it is radically pro-abortion.”
Jennifer Giroux
Executive Director, One More Soul
“Senators think they can dress up abortion and call it ‘healthcare’ but today God fearing American tax-payers have now been forced to pay for an infant holocaust for the first time in our nation’s history.”
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Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) described the debate this afternoon in the Senate on the Nelson-Hatch Amendment, which makes sure the government doesn’t fund abortions, as “unusual.” Why? Because the debate is supposed to be about healthcare, not abortion, and certainly not about abortion funding, especially since it has been precedent for the past 30 years that the government does not fund elective abortion.
What’s the big deal? The abortion industry has a lot to gain if the government starts funding abortion, as Charmaine Yoest writes in her open letter to Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards today:
“This Senate health care bill is a bailout for the world’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood. Their lobbying efforts are said to be about empowering women and advancing reproductive health but the bottom line is that Planned Parenthood needs the business.”
The Senate, by most accounts, will vote this afternoon on the Nelson-Hatch amendment. Have you called your Senator and told them to vote in favor of the Nelson amendment and against government funding of abortion?
Go HERE for contact info for your Senators.
Need talking points? Here are the main points we are using below. Feel free to send them to your family and friends and get the word out.
1) If the Senate healthcare bill is passes without Stupak or Nelson language, it will be the largest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade.
- Senators must be urged to vote against any procedure or bill that does not include language identical to either the Nelson or Stupak Amendments, which prevent the government from funding abortion.
- Abortion is not healthcare, as the abortion industry would like Americans to believe, and it should not be mandated under any health insurance plan, especially one that Americans will be forced to subsidize.
2) Government-Run Health Care = a bailout of the abortion industry, mandated government-funded abortion, and forcing Americans to subsidize abortions.
- Americans don’t want this. Recent national polls have all showed Americans don’t support government-funded abortions by wide margins.
- The proposed “public plan” would pay for elective abortions, which would be direct funding of elective abortion with federal funds. This abortion coverage would not be optional – no one would be able to enroll in federal insurance plan without paying an abortion surcharge.
- In addition, the federal government would subsidize the purchase of private health plans that cover elective abortion on demand — departing from decades of federal policy, under which health plans that cover elective abortions (for example, those covering federal employees) are not eligible for federal subsidies.
3) The bi-partisan Stupak-Pitts amendment and the Nelson-Hatch amendment do not change the status quo on abortion funding through the government; it IS the status quo. They both mirror the Hyde amendment which prevents the government from funding elective abortion.
Here are the writings of respected voices on the topic:
I am not for a moment about to suggest that this is the way God intended us to interpret this, but for those who happened to attend daily Mass on the Friday before the MA special election and the anniversary of Obama’s inauguration, you were treated to this story about how the people complained against Samuel and demanded that they be given a king to rule over them as other nations have.
According to a report in 
In her column today at 
