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MARCH 4, 2010 ARCHIVED STORIES:
WASHINGTON (BP)--Pro-life Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak said during a TV interview Thursday he and 11 other House members who voted for that chamber's health care bill in November will oppose the Senate version if it's not changed to prohibit federal funding of abortion, and he even named the page numbers that need to be tweaked.
"Let's face it, I want to see health care, but we're not going to bypass some principles and beliefs that we feel strongly about."
-- Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich. | A defection by 12 representatives could be enough to kill the bill in the House, because it passed by a razor-thin margin of 220-215 last year. That bill included an amendment sponsored by Stupak that explicitly prohibited tax dollars from funding abortion coverage; the bill that passed the Senate in December has far weaker language.
Stupak made his comments one day after President Obama made another push to get health care reform going. Asked directly on ABC's "Good Morning America" if he is prepared to take responsibility for seeing the bill defeated, Stupak, who is from Michigan, said "yes."
"I've been catching it ever since last fall," he said of his unpopularity among some Democrats. "Let's face it, I want to see health care, but we're not going to bypass some principles and beliefs that we feel strongly about."
Stupak's amendment in November had far more support than the bill itself, passing 240-194. But it wasn't added to the Senate bill. Stupak urged viewers to read pages 2,069-2,078 of the Senate bill, where it lays out how abortions would be funded under the government-subsidized insurance plans.
"You will find in there the federal government would directly subsidize abortions, plus every enrollee in the Office of Personnel Management plan has to pay a minimum of $1 per month for reproductive rights, which includes abortion," Stupak said.
Current federal policy prevents tax dollars from funding insurance plans that cover abortion. For instance, Medicaid is prohibited from covering elective abortions, as are insurance plans for federal employees. Congress' own insurance plans, for instance, cannot by law cover elective abortions. That would change under the Senate bill, which would set up a segregation of funding that Stupak and other pro-lifers say is unacceptable. Read More
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