Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Stupak Amendment

Pro-life proponents could be heartened by the passage of an amendment that added language to H.R. 3962, the government-run health care bill.

Wisconsin Right to Life explains the amendment:

On Saturday, the U.S. House of Representatives sidetracked President Obama's radical pro-abortion agenda by adopting the Stupak-Pitts Amendment to the House version of health care reform legislation (H.R. 3962).

The House passed the amendment by a margin of 240-194.

The Stupak-Pitts Amendment removed two highly objectionable pro-abortion components from H.R. 3962. The amendment would (1) permanently prohibit the new federal government insurance program, the "public option," from paying for abortion, except to save the life of the mother, or in cases of rape and incest: and (2) permanently prohibit the use of the new federal premium subsidies ("affordability credits") to purchase private insurance plans that cover abortions (except to save the life of the mother, or in cases of rape or incest).

Immediately after the vote, National Right to Life Legislative Director Douglas Johnson said, "The Obama White House and top congressional Democratic leaders spent months concealing and misrepresenting provisions that would directly fund abortions through a government plan and subsidize premiums for private abortion plans.

Today's bipartisan House vote is a sharp blow to the While House pro-abortion smuggling operations. But we know that the White House and congressional Democratic leaders will keep trying to enact government funding of abortion, and will keep trying to conceal their true intentions, so there is a long battle ahead."

Wisconsin Right to Life Legislative Director Susan Armacost commented, "Every right-to-life American must remain vigilant because the White House and pro-abortion congressional Democratic leaders will try every trick in the book to put the objectionable pro-abortion components back into health care reform legislation. We must make sure that does not happen."

However, pro-abortion advocate Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has already assured the Culture of Death crowd not to fear the Stupak amendment.

She says that language will be stripped from the bill.

From The Hill:

A top House Democrat said Monday she's "confident" that a conference committee will strip language in the House health bill on taxpayer funding for abortion.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the Democrats' chief deputy whip in the House, said that she and other pro-choice lawmakers would work to strip the amendment included in the House health bill that bars federal funding from going to subsidize abortions.

"I am confident that when it comes back from the conference committee that that language won't be there," Wasserman Schultz said during an appearance on MSNBC. "And I think we're all going to be working very hard, particularly the pro-choice members, to make sure that's the case."

The amendment, offered by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), won the support of Republicans and some centrist Democrats in the House. The amendment was allowed a vote in a concession to Stupak and other pro-life Democrats who had threatened to fell the House bill unless language on federal support for pregnancy termination was clarified.

When Obama made his nationally televised health care appeal to a joint session of Congress on September 9, 2009, Obama said:

And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up -- under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.

Throughout the health care debate, Obama declared that the federal funding of abortion wasn't included in his plan.

Interesting that the Stupak AMENDMENT was passed to deal with provisions that supposedly weren't in the bill in the first place.

And now, the Culture of Death proponents, like Debbie Wasserman Schultz, are guaranteeing that anti-abortion language will be stripped from the final bill.

I hope the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will pay attention.