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Abortion Language Creates Snag For Health Bill : NPR

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Abortion Language Creates Snag For Health Bill : NPR
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Abortion Language Creates Snag For Health Bill

November 3, 2009

[4 min 14 sec]

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November 3, 2009

As health overhaul bills head toward the House and Senate floors this month, the divisive issue of abortion is threatening to derail them. Already in the House, one anti-abortion lawmaker, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), says he has enough votes to block the bill's consideration unless he is allowed to offer an amendment to strengthen language in the bill banning federal abortion funding.

The issue is also causing headaches for the Catholic Church, where a long-standing opposition to abortion is running headlong into the church's equally long-standing support for a comprehensive health overhaul.

"I think in our files we have a letter from the bishops to Harry Truman urging comprehensive health care reform," says Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, referring to the unsuccessful mid-20th century fight in Congress to pass a health overhaul bill.

The Catholic Church is not just an advocate for health care, but also a major provider. "Our Catholic charities and Catholic hospitals outlets take care of millions of people," Doerflinger says. "I think it's been estimated that one-sixth of the people who go into a hospital every year are going into a Catholic hospital."

But so far, the church hasn't been able to support either the House or Senate versions of the health bills now being readied for floor votes because of their abortion language.

"We want health care reform very, very much, but we ...

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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120033183

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    • Geoffrey Ames Geoffrey Ames
      8 weeks ago


      When does society have the right to impose the morality of the few on the lives (and bodies) of the many? How do personal ethics relate to group morality? How do we apply situational ethics with regard to women's rights and the rights of the unborn? Should a woman be forced to give birth to the child of her rapist? If there's a loving, just, and merciful god, wouldn't he welcome the soul (is there a soul?) of an unborn child into eternal paradise whether that unborn were aborted or miscarried? If not, is that god just, loving, or merciful? If we have souls from whence do they come? Are they created or spontaneously generated at the moment a sperm and egg unite? Does each egg have a soul? Each sperm? If so what happens to all the souls of sperm and eggs that never get to that magic moment of conception?
      Ethics, Questions of, Politics, The American Dream?, Richard Dawkins, Faith is Irrational, U.S. Health Care -- Challenges and Solutions, Healthcare Policy in the United States
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