The health care legislation being pushed forward by President Obama would create a federally run insurance plan that would pay for elective abortion with government funds. The legislation also would provide massive tax-based subsidies to purchase private insurance plans that would cover elective abortions. Both of these new programs would represent drastic breaks with decades of federal policy against funding abortions in government-subsidized health programs.
Yet, in recent weeks, much of the news media have been manipulated by top Congressional Democrats and by the White House into denying or minimizing the abortion-related policy changes that are being advanced. Many journalists have casually adopted highly misleading characterizations of the abortion-related content of the legislation — characterizations that cannot survive careful scrutiny. For example, many journalists have been snookered into reporting that House Democrats amended their legislation (H.R. 3200) so that the proposed government-run insurance program would be paying for elective abortions with “private funds” — a claim that is absurd on its face, and that cannot survive thoughtful and skeptical scrutiny.
It is past time for the would-be factcheckers to stop acting as stenographers for the president and Speaker Pelosi on this issue.