March for Life: Health Care and Abortion

We could not resist visiting with the crowd at the March for Life on the anniversary of Roe v Wade this past Friday. Throughout this debate on health care, anti-choice organizations have worked tirelessly to drum up fear that the proposed reforms will fund abortion. Any pro-choice activist will tell you that they knew years ago that this bill would never fund abortion with tax dollars. That is not happening.

But in convincing folks that the bill does indeed fund abortion, anti-choice groups have managed to build a large base of support around the Stupak amendment, which would prevent women who receive subsidies from the government for health care from purchasing abortion coverage with private funds. This would clearly be a step back from the compromise that this country has lived by of legal access to abortion and a strict mandate against federal funds.

What we are left with, is a large community of people who have repeatedly been told the health care bill funds abortion, but since it does not, they have absolutely no idea how to explain what in the bill would do that. We figured asking them to explain it would give us some great footage.

On Thursday, the day before the March, we got to test that theory out on Operation Rescue's President, Troy Newman at a press conference outside the White House:

Just so you all know, the health care bills, both the Senate version and the House's, are available online.