Family Research Council: Sweepless in Seattle

Imagine a stranger knocking on the door and handing you a receipt. She’s decided to abort her baby and wants you to pay for it. Under the President’s policy, refusal is not an option. If you’re enrolled in a health care plan that includes abortion–you’ll be paying for the procedure whether you want to or not. How can it be “pro-choice” when there is no choice for people who object? Good question. One that more leaders are starting to ask. In the last few months, several states have rushed legislation to the floor to stop the administration’s abortion premium from coming to their borders. At least 15 of them have passed (and another 12 have introduced) bills that protect insurance companies that don’t want to offer abortion coverage from being required to.
Washington State, on the other hand, was headed in the opposite direction. There, the House pushed a measure, which, like the federal government’s new rules, would have ordered insurance plans to pick up the tab for abortions. U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) was one of the bill’s many opponents. In a letter to President Obama, she warned that the policy had “far reaching and alarming consequences” for the “unborn lives of the next generation.” “The state of Washington,” she wrote, “or any state… that receives federal funds is prohibited from mandating that insurance plans cover abortion…”
After squeaking through the Washington House 52-46, the debate shifted to Olympia’s state senate, where leaders felt pressure from pro-life voters to kill the bill. This week, they managed to do exactly that. After a long and drawn out budget battle, the state senate abruptly adjourned–but not before Republicans and three Democrats blocked the bill from hitting the floor. For the President, almost three thousand miles away, the defeat should sting. Even in a Left of center state, voters reject his abortion-as-health-care mentality. In a predominately liberal state like Washington, one of the four that legalized abortion before Roe v. Wade, the President’s policy should have been a slam dunk. But John Geis, who, along with the rest of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, helped dash the Left’s agenda, said that people understood what was at stake. “It violates the constitutional rights of citizens to freely practice their religion and their freedom of conscience.”

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