Tighter, Pro-Life Budget

The Washington Post reports that “Congress reached final agreement last night on a $388 spending bill… [that] codifies the stingiest budget for domestic departments since the late 1990s.” But, pro-aborts are furious because conservatives put a provision in the bill barring “federal, state or local agencies from forcing doctors, hospitals, insurers, HMOs or other health care entities to provide abortion services or referrals.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said:

Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, but Republicans are gutting it step by step.

Repubs said the bill wouldn’t “restrict access to abortion, but would prevent the government from ‘intimidating’ health care entities that did not perform abortions or provide training or referrals.”

Now, can there be any doubt which side is being intellectually honest here? Aside from your taste or distaste for riders being attached to bills, there is nothing substantively objectionable about this provision unless you believe the government ought to assume a pro-active role in encouraging abortion services.

Roe v. Wade had nothing to do with forcing health care providers to perform abortions. It had to do with the state’s right to regulate abortions. It is definitionally impossible that the provision in this bill barring government from forcing providers to perform abortions or provide referrals violates Roe v. Wade.

It is the pro-aborts, not the pro-lifers, who are getting more brazen every day. They say they’re merely pro-choice, but boy how they want to expand access to abortion!

Senator Dianne Feinstein disagreed, calling the provision as a “terrible, egregious abuse of power.” No, Senator, the practice of compelling health care providers, against their will — and sometimes their conscience — to perform despicable acts, is what is a “terrible, egregious abuse of power.”

Apparently, Republican and Democratic leaders later approved language to drop the provision. To me the article is a bit unclear about that. But if they did drop the language, why is it that Republicans cannot stick to their guns when they get challenged on these things? Either this is a matter of conscience and constitutional propriety, or it isn’t.

Remember during the campaign (and the entire last four years, to be truthful) the Democrats have been pretending to be deficit hawks. Well, let’s see how much squawking they do over this bill, which reduces the rate of spending, but is hardly austere. My guess is they’ll denounce a number of provisions as niggardly and uncompassionate. We’ll see how it plays out.

Update: La Shawn Barber has an excellent post on this subject. La Shawn’s post begins:

When did America’s decline begin? Surely long before child killing was made legal, right? Still, I wonder. When we devalue the life of the unborn, referring to life inside the mother as “fetus” or “clump of cells or tissue”, where do we draw the line?