Obama sycophant SodaHead's July 15 blog-post headline blared, "Latest Right-Wing Lie Blows Up In Their Faces: NO FEDERAL FUNDING FOR ELECTIVE ABORTION."
SodaHead was attempting to beat back conservatives who were in an uproar over National Right to Life's finding that federal funding for Pennsylvania's health-insurance high-risk pool includes abortion coverage.
Pro-life Democrats voting for Obamacare had maintained this couldn't happen given Obama's executive order supposedly insuring a firewall between tax dollars and abortion.
They said the executive order had the same impact as the defeated Stupak Amendment, which would have imposed a blanket ban on federal funding of abortion in Obamacare.
Likewise, another of Obama's online guardians, Media Matters, quickly hurled a 1,700-word tome into the blogosphere with such cocky subtitles as (emphasis mine):
TRENDING: To DEI for
- "[Glenn] Beck repeats discredited claim that Obama admin has OK'd federal funding for elective abortions"
- "National Right to Life, Family Research Council falsely claim federal funds are going to fund abortions in PA"
- "Media chain: Right-wing blogs take the falsehood, gin up outrage"
- "PA, HHS, Stupak debunk notion that PA high-risk pools will cover elective abortions"
The only problem is the abortion industry agrees with (all) pro-lifers (other than Democrats) that Obama's executive order didn't apply to high-risk pools and were furious when in the wake of NRLC's discovery a busted White House quickly directed the Department of Health and Human Services to write rules ensuring that federal funds indeed would not go toward abortion in state high-risk pools – rules that have yet to be seen.
So while Obama rags were proclaiming his innocence, pro-aborts who had smartly remained silent during the executive-order sham could no longer contain themselves and began writing just the opposite.
Jessica Arons at the pro-abort blog RH Reality Check snapped, "But here's the catch, nothing in federal law actually restricts the use of federal or state money for abortion in [high-risk pools]."
Rebecca Sive at the same site was even more frank, astoundingly detailed. This is a long quote, but in it Sive lays Obamcareabortiongate all out (italics hers):
In fact, and as we all know, the executive order was nothing but a most willingly made sop to Rep. Stupak. For, after all … it was Mr. Stupak's vote that stood in the way of passage of the health-care reform law, the one for the history books the president most wanted.
As such, the executive order's creation and signing was a deeply hypocritical and cynical act. "Hypocritical," because it did not do (only) what the president's men said it would do – "codify" existing law, i.e., the Hyde Amendment. "Cynical," because the order's utility depended on the willingness of White House women-leader allies to suspend disbelief, and say: Oh, yes, we agree, when you say that this isn't going beyond the Hyde Amendment (knowing that it did).
Do you think for one minute that Bob Bauer, the president's campaign and personal, political lawyer, now his White House counsel, didn't know all the potential ramifications (read: opportunities) of the executive order – both for the law and for the politics – when he directed his staff to draft [it]?
Do you think for one minute that Don Verrilli, an associate White House counsel, rumored to be appointed U.S. solicitor general once Elena Kagan is confirmed as a Supreme Court justice – missed this either?
Not hardly: These guys are really, really smart. These guys don't miss these things: That's why they are doing what they are doing. That's why they are where they are.
Putting the best face on it, Mr. Bauer and Mr. Verrilli saw what the White House women-leader allies also saw, and, again, like the pro-choice leaders, didn't protest, for fear the whole health-care reform applecart would be upset.
But, make no mistake: Mr. Bauer and Mr. Verrilli also saw the executive order as a useful context for massaging federal health-care reform regulations that could help diminish dustups over abortion; dustups never good for a president or a president's men's futures.
Why was the executive order AT ALL NECESSARY if all it did was "codify" existing law? The answer is it wasn't, because it didn't. And now we're in the Dumpster. …
Now all the pro-abort groups, furious with Obama, are letting loose with the truth about Obamacare and Obama's executive order. Over the weekend, Planned Parenthood's CEO Cecile Richards wrote to supporters (bold highlight hers):
Now, a Stupak-like rule is back – and it came from the Obama administration. …
Nothing in the new health-care reform law requires a ban on abortion coverage in the high-risk pools. No law passed by Congress forced this decision. The Obama administration has chosen to place a new burden on ill and medically vulnerable women seeking abortion coverage.
Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL, e-mailed (bold highlights hers):
To our dismay, the Obama administration just announced it will exclude abortion coverage in the temporary health-insurance pools that will transition us into the new health-care system.
I am outraged that such a decision would come from a pro-choice president that we helped elect. …
Believe it or not, the administration's policy is similar to the ban proposed by anti-choice Rep. Bart Stupak.
Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU's D.C. office, wrote:
Remember all the hard work you and other ACLU activists did to defeat Rep. Stupak's draconian abortion-coverage ban during the health-care debate?
Well now, the White House has decided to voluntarily impose the ban for all women in the newly created high-risk insurance pools. What is disappointing is that there is nothing in the law that requires the Obama administration to impose this broad and highly restrictive abortion ban.
The complaints go on and on.
At this point, pro-lifers have the upper hand. Obama led Americans to believe federal funding of abortion would be barred from the federal health-care plan, and at present he's stuck with the lie.
And now Obama not only has to deal with the pro-life Democratic faction but also the media faction that wants to perpetuate the lie for him vs. the pro-abort faction demanding he give up the sham.
I can't say as I enjoy watching the spectacle, because babies' lives are at stake.
But I do note that increasingly we're seeing pro-aborts hoist on their own petard – and they're supposed to have the political advantage.