The Capps Amendment Abortion Hustle

Implementing an abortion “head tax”

The “Healthcare Reform” hustle on abortion is now being aided and abetted by liberal religious organizations citing the Capps Amendment to HR 3200 as proof that President Obama has no intention to include abortion services in the “public option”. Congresswoman Lois Capps is seen at the left demonstrating against California’s Prop 8 initiative restricting marriage to one man and one woman.

Obamacare supporter Chris Korzen, executive director of Catholics United (Catholics-United.org) gave the group’s imprimatur to HR 3200 claiming “The inclusion of the Capps Amendment represents a positive step toward health care reform that preserves existing policies prohibiting federal funding for abortion services…”.

It remains to be determined whether groups like Catholics United, or Jim Wallis’s Sojourners, are intent on fooling themselves, bent on fooling others, or both. Even casual perusal of the text of the amendment bares it for what is intended to be. Legislative bait and switch, written in Clintonese and riddled with loopholes.

The “Capps Amendment” was actually written by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman’s staff. Congresswoman Lois Capps (D CA), “offered” the amendment. Neither being defenders of the unborn, both Waxman and Capps have received 0% ratings on pro-life issues from the National Right To Life Committee.

It doesn’t even seem to dawn upon Mr Korzen and Mr Wallis that this is, to say the very least, a rather unlikely team of legislators in which to trust the fate of America’s unborn under Obamacare. Congressman Waxman has personally squashed every amendment proposed by well known pro-life congressmen, both republican and democrat. Amendments that were written in such a way as to actually prohibit abortion from being any part, directly or indirectly, of a “public option”. Can Catholics United and Sojourners seriously believe that the good Mr Waxman has suddenly seen the light with the Capps Amendment?

Abortion IS the social justice issue of our time
Simple common sense renders statements of faith in the Capps Amendment, at best, gross naiveté in overzealous pursuit of a social justice issue. And adequate access to healthcare is a social justice issue. But a simple tax-payer funded plan, through a private insurer, could adequately address the problem of insurance for those unable to afford it.

So the insistence of Catholics United and Sojourners that it is a moral, even spiritual, obligation for Christians to support HR3200, rings hollow as nothing more than a politically motivated response to President Obama’s call for liberal and progressive religious leaders to help establish government control over healthcare in America.

And in leaving the fate of the unborn in the hands of prominent pro-abortion zealots such as Henry Waxman and Lois Capps, Christian liberal and progressive groups are effectively turning a blind eye to the greatest social justice issue, the greatest moral and spiritual outrage, of our time. The destruction of 50 million children by some of the most barbaric manners of death imaginable. Murders of Jesus’ “Little Ones”, which continue at the rate of over one million per year.

Doin’ the hustle
The opening line of the Capps Amendment is intended to seem blissfully straight forward: ABORTION COVERAGE PROHIBITED AS PART OF MINIMUM BENEFITS PACKAGE. It could of ended right there if that was the true intent of Mr Waxman and Ms Capps.

The amendment instead runs on ambiguously leaving a hole through the opening statement a mile wide:

“The plan is not required (or prohibited) under this Act from providing coverage of services..”

“Nothing in this Act shall be construed as preventing the public health insurance option from providing abortion services that would not be legal for Medicaid coverage…”

ABORTIONS FOR WHICH PUBLIC FUNDING IS PROHIBITED
“..is not permitted, based on the law as in effect as of the date that is 6 months before the beginning of the plan year involved”

ABORTIONS FOR WHICH PUBLIC FUNDING IS ALLOWED
“..is permitted, based on the law as in effect as of the date that is 6 months before the beginning of the plan year involved”

Nothing is required, but nothing is prohibited. If it’s ok for Medicaid, its fine under the public option. Everything and anything is open to change based upon however “the law” is rewritten six months in advance. Ironclad as Bernie Madoff’s handshake.

Exactly how much of this amendment did Misters Korzen and Wallis actually read before calling upon Christian America to clammer on the President’s healthcare bandwagon?

The abortion head tax
The Christian liberal and progressive accolades bestowed upon the amendment focus almost entirely on federal funding for abortion, now prohibited under the Hyde Amendment. As if that should be the only concern. Rep Capps claims that her amendment “preserves the status quo” in that area. This is a Clintonesque parsing of words.

Should the Hyde Amendment ever just happen to be repealed under a democratically controlled congress, the federal floodgates are opened.

For the time being, abortions covered under the public option would be funded by a surcharge added to the premium of every participant. The funds accrued under this levy will be segregated from the dollars flowing into federal coffers so that technically the government will not fund abortion procedures. This will be of great comfort, no doubt, to the babies whose lives are terminated by the vacuums, surgical shears and poisons of Abortion Incorporated via President Obama’s “public option”.

The Wall Street Journal concluded that such accounting flim flam amounts to nothing less than a slightly indirect method of taxpayer funding for abortions under the public option. “An amendment approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee would allow coverage of abortion”. Funding for abortions, The Journal confirmed, would “come from the portion of the premiums that are paid by the individuals. A sliver of those monthly premiums would be segregated and abortion services would be reimbursed from that separate account.”

The FactCheck web site, run by staff at the University of Pennsylvania, also verifies this conclusion pointing out that abortion services would be provided “so long as the plans took in enough private money in the form of premiums paid by individuals or their employers. The Capps language also would allow private plans purchased with federal subsidies ‘affordability credits’ for low-income families and workers to cover abortion.”

In short, the Capps Amendment amounts to nothing less than an abortion head tax on every participant in the “public option”.

In False Witness we reported upon President Obama’s arrogant assertion, during a teleconference call with liberal and progressive rabbis, that “we are God’s partner in life and death”. This virtually blasphemous statement, alone, should give Christian organizations such as Catholics United and Sojourners overwhelming grounds for concern over such a man’s intentions.

We remind Misters Korzen and Wallis that Christian Americans are united in spirit, under Our Savior, in the quest for social justice in every aspect of our society. Adequate access to healthcare is a goal that can easily be achieved without extending government’s inefficient, heartless, greedy grasp into America’s healthcare system. If that is the real goal here.

And it can be done without taking one step backwards in facing the challenge God has given us to achieve victory in the greatest social justice issue our time.