Battle for life in the health care bill continues

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(LifeNews.com) -- Congressional Democrats and President Barack Obama have made it official: they will bypass a public, formal conference committee and negotiate behind closed doors on a final version of the pro-abortion health care bill.The decision will have the the pro-abortion Senate version of the health care bill as the basis for a merged legislation that may very well include abortion funding.Because the Senate approved the bill on a tenuous one-vote margin, there is less room for error there and little desire to subject the pro-abortion bill to additional 60-vote threshold votes.Instead, Democrats have now formally adopted the "ping-pong" strategy of sending the Senate bill to the House to be tweaked and approved and back again. Obama, pro-abortion Vice President Joe Biden and top Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid reached the agreement on strategy at a White House meeting Tuesday night. They hope to be able to get the pro-abortion health care bill approved by the end of the month or early February and have it done so Obama can announce its passage during a postponed State of the Union address next month.The decision to use the pro-abortion Senate bill as a basis for the final version of the legislation greatly concerns pro-life advocates

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(LifeNews.com) -- The number two Republican in the House has unveiled a strategy memo saying he thinks the abortion funding in the Senate health care bill will ultimately derail the legislation. Democrats can't afford to lose more than two votes in the House and he sees 37 lawmakers who could vote against the bill.House Republican Whip Eric Cantor says he believes "there is an opportunity to prevent this bill from becoming law.""In order to pass a final bill, Democrat leaders cannot lose a single vote of the 60 they gained in the Senate, nor more than two of the 220 votes they gained in the House. To get their bill to this point, Democrat leaders have made a series of contradictory commitments and deals, each of which has the possibility of derailing a final bill," he explains."On the issue of abortion funding, for example, Senate Democrats have indicated that they cannot agree to the House-passed language, which continues a long-standing prohibition of federal funding of abortions. Meanwhile, many pro-life House Democrats who voted for the final House bill because of the fixed abortion language have indicated that the Senate-passed language is insufficient," Cantor continued.Cantor says his team has identified 37 Democrats who he believes can be persuaded to vote against a final health care agreement.He says if the Stupak amendment, which appeared in the House bill and banned abortion funding, is not present in the final bill, he sees 11 Democrats who would almost assuredly vote no on the final legislation

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Mikulski Pro-Abortion Amendment to Health Care Bill Hurts Special-Needs Kidsby Kristan HawkinsIn the coming weeks we will watch as the House and Senate health care bills are somehow reconciled into one piece of legislation -- and abortion will be right in the middle of that debate.The Senate passed their version of the health care bill with an amendment by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) that requires health insurance issuers to provide coverage for “preventative care” for women and bars the issuers from imposing cost-sharing requirement on such care.If the final bill includes the Mikulski amendment, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) will be able to define abortion as “preventative care” in either all or some cases.Though it may seem far-fetched that abortion could be considered preventative care, it isn't the case.This year the National Abortion Federation stated in “Providing Abortion Care” that, “APCS [Advanced Practice Clinicians] are especially well positioned in the health care system to address women’s need for comprehensive primary preventative health care that includes abortion care.”In addition, when the Senator offered her amendment, it was backed by the major players in the abortion industry: NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood, Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, etc.