Obamacare's baby death panels, Part 1

My wife, Gena, and I mourn with the rest of the nation over the murder and maiming of innocent citizens and lawmakers in Arizona Saturday morning. We too pray for the victims and survivors. It makes us even more passionate in our fight for human life and reminding the world that, from the womb to the tomb, human life is precious and should be prized.

Last week, two questions dominated the political landscape regarding Obamacare. First, will the new 112th Congress repeal it? And, second, if Obamacare didn't offer advanced directives for end-of-life planning (aka "death panels"), then why did the Obama administration just repeal a Medicare regulation and reference for it covered under the new health-care law?

Those are both great questions. But the one question being overlooked by too many is: if the 112th Congress fails to repeal Obamacare, will it include "baby death panels" in the future? In other words, will federally-funded taxpayer monies be used to provide for abortions under the new universal health care law?

It's been coming down Washington's political pike for two years.

Remember, during the president's first year in office when the Senate tabled the amendment introduced by Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, that would ban federal funds from providing for abortion in their universal health-care reform bill?

The last Congress repeatedly rejected any amendments to the universal health-care bills that would prevent taxpayers monies to be used for abortions. In the end, even the Stupak-Pitts Amendment in the House and the Nelson-Hatch Amendment in the Senate were both sidestepped on the basis that the president would sign an executive order promising that federal funds would not be used for funding abortions.

Obama emphatically stated on Sept. 9, 2009, "Under our [health-care reform] plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions." And just a few months later he told ABC News, "I laid out a very simple principle, which is, this is a health-care bill, not an abortion bill. And we're not looking to change what is the principle that has been in place for a very long time, which is federal dollars are not used to subsidize abortions. And I want to make sure that the provision that emerges meets that test – that we are not in some way sneaking in funding for abortions. …"

Of course, Obama's presidential executive orders, like his word, aren't worth the paper they are printed on. Proof came last year when it was discovered that federal funds were, in fact, being funneled to provide for abortive services in Pennsylvania and New Mexico.

Then the House and Senate, on secret Sunday sessions, passed an omnibus bill and its provision that also overturned the 1988 Dornan Amendment, which prevented taxpayer dollars to fund abortions in Washington, D.C. (Tragically, that omnibus bill also appropriated $648.5 million for international family planning funding – an increase of $103 million over 2009 – and contained funding for Planned Parenthood and for the United Nations Population Fund, both of which have pro-abortion agendas.)

If Obamacare will fund abortions, Obama knows that he and his cronies must first remove all the stops that prohibit federal funding for the termination of life in the womb. The Dornan Amendment in Washington, D.C., was their start. Next will likely be the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the same through Labor, Health and Human Services, like Medicaid.

The truth is, when our country elected Obama as president, we placed a man in the highest office in the land that had the most liberal views and voting record on abortion of any president in American history.

As a state senator in Illinois, he led opposition three years in a row (2001-2003) to a bill similar to the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which prevents the killing of babies unintentionally left alive by abortion. He also opposed the ban on partial-birth abortion and strongly disapproved of the Supreme Court decision upholding the partial-birth ban. He does not support the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funding of abortion through Medicaid. He also voted to block a bill that would have required a doctor to notify at least one parent before performing an abortion on a minor girl from another state. Strangely, Obama even once said he would not want his daughters to be "punished with a baby" due to an unwanted pregnancy.

All of these pro-abortion actions were taken despite a nationwide survey revealing that four out of five U.S. adults (82 percent) would limit abortion's legality. One out of three (38 percent) would limit abortion to rape, incest or to save the mother's life. One out of three (33 percent) would also limit abortion to either the first three or first six months. Only nine percent said abortion should be legal for any reason at any time during pregnancy.

Since assuming the presidency, Obama has pushed the pro-choice agenda in ways that America hasn't seen since the original 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. He overturned the "Mexico City Policy," now allowing federal funds to support international family planning groups who provide abortions. Restrictions for federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research have been lifted. In addition, Obama appointed two progressive pro-abortion U.S. Supreme Court justices: Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. (In fact, Justice Kagan was recently accused of altering evidence in her own handwriting toward a pro-abortion favor in a case before the Supreme Court, while serving as the attorney defending partial-birth abortion for the Clinton administration.)

And if you are naïve enough to believe that Obama's pro-abortion mission is over, consider the recent special report, "Promise Audit: Tracking Obama's Progress on Campaign Promises," in which the National Journal examined Obama's abortion track record and gave him a 33 percent completion rating of his campaign promises regarding abortion. (Can you imagine if all the pro-abortion initiatives Obama has enacted represent only one-third of all he will do before the end of his term?)

Let there be no doubt about this: President Obama is also still hell-bent to obtain his crowning abortive achievement: to fulfill his promise to Planned Parenthood execs to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, or FOCA, which is a sweeping bill that would abolish all pro-life regulations across the nation, from parental notification laws to bans on all federal funding of abortion. And who knows, if we didn't have a new majority in the 112th Congress, they might grandfather it in some piece of legislation like they did the Dornan Amendment.

Our president, who once confessed on the campaign trail that estimating when a baby gets human rights was "above his pay grade," has graded human life in the womb in such a way that he has zero problem signing into law a piece of legislation that will terminate the lives of millions of more babies. He certainly wasn't joking when he told Planned Parenthood during his presidential campaign that he would "turn the page" on the abortion cultural wars.

Planned Parenthood has just filed a restraining order trying to keep you from discovering the information from a former Planned Parenthood Director (Bryan, Texas) and "Employee of the Year," Abby Johnson. Abby has already helped to expose the multi-billion dollar marketing of abortion in Episode 5 of the Emmy Award-winning, "Facing Life Head On," available to watch online. And tonight, Jan. 10, at 9 p.m. Eastern (8 p.m. Central, 7 p.m. Mountain, 6 p.m. Pacific), Johnson is blowing the whistle on her former employer, Planned Parenthood, and telling the shocking truth about everything she saw inside the abortion industry – and why she resigned her job to join the pro-life movement. The webcast is also a sneak peak of her new book, "Unplanned," which details her exposure of Planned Parenthood. You can get a free chapter from her book by simply signing up for tonight's free webcast.

Planned Parenthood is the long arm of government for the abortion industry. In fact, consider that from 2002-2008, Planned Parenthood, the largest but not only abortion agency to receive government funds, received $657,100,000 from federal taxpayers alone. But, in just a single year, from 2008-2009, Planned Parenthood received $363,200,000 in government grants and contracts, a $13,600,000 increase from the prior year, that resulted in 324,800 abortions.

And the question that I keep coming back to is the one Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, asked over a year ago: "Why should people of conscience be forced to participate in any aspect of abortion?"

To give you hope, my wife, Gena, and I would also encourage you to visit the website started by our dear friends Norm and Anne Miller, I Am Second website. In particular, please listen to the powerful testimony of Lisa Luby Ryan. It is well worth your couple-minute viewing.

Please also read the article, "50 ways to help unborn babies and their mothers," by my friend and prolific author, Randy Alcorn, one of a host of great resources at his website.

(Next week I'll not only explain how the pro-life Cavalry has come to Washington, but how you can assist them via three particular action items, just in time for Sanctity of Life Sunday on Jan. 23, 2011. I'm certainly honored too to fight for life in the chapter, "Reclaim the value of human life," in my New York Times best-seller, "Black Belt Patriotism," a free chapter from which is also still available at Chuck NorrisNewBook.com.)