Abortion and health care reform

We find ourselves once again tangled over abortion as Congress debates its place in national health care reform. A number of lawmakers believe language in a House health care bill will lead taxpayers to fund abortion, and the discussion has pro-abortion interests once again using words to mislead.

I find it interesting, for instance, that the term "pro-choice" avoids talking about what one is choosing, which is to terminate the life of an unborn child. And when one says "freedom to choose," that sounds patriotic and as American as baseball and apple pie. Individual rights are important, but as many times as I've read the Constitution, nowhere in it have I found the right to an abortion.

I'm convinced that the Republican and the Democrat establishment wish this issue would go away. Both parties by and large use the abortion issue as a wedge issue, meaning, "Let's roll it out a couple of months before an election and push people's buttons one way or another and motivate them to vote for the preferred candidate."

However, there are rank and file members of the U.S. House of Representatives -- Republican and Democrat -- who understand that "freedom to choose" in the abortion issue means taking a life.

Just last week, 43 principled, pro-life Democrats announced they would refuse to vote for any version of health care reform that could lead to taxpayer-funded abortions. These leaders support an attempt by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., to attach to the health care bill the so-called Hyde Amendment, the long-standing policy that bars the use of federal funds to pay for most abortions.

This has resulted in NARAL Pro-Choice America -- the most radical of pro-abortion lobbies -- to produce a video attacking Stupak.

"The Speaker (Nancy Pelosi) is not happy with me," Stupak said recently on a C-SPAN interview. I guess not, because Stupak and other rank and file members of both parties are prepared to stand against Democrat leadership on the issue of abortion.

Kristen Day, head of Democrats for Life of America, says "our long-standing historical mission has been to protect the vulnerable and the weak and the disenfranchised, and we should be leading on this issue." Indeed, who is more weak and vulnerable than a pre-born human being? I applaud these courageous -- and correct -- Democrats.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., a long-time defender of the defenseless, calls the health care reform bill the "Abortion Industry Bailout Act of 2009." Smith points out that the health care bill will force every taxpayer and every insurance premium payer to pay for most abortions in America. Smith warns us that a "Health Benefits Advisory Committee" proposed by Democrats would be under the executive branch and shielded from congressional oversight. This doesn't bode well for the unborn.

The abortion issue has taken a dramatic toll on the United States. Lives have been lost in the red, yellow, brown white and black communities. However, none has been impacted more dramatically than the black community.

It's been estimated the black community has lost more babies to abortion since Roe v. Wade than the black community lost to the slave trade.

Maybe that's why Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, wrote, "We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population," according to a Dec. 10, 1939, letter in a collection of her papers at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.

And to this day, 62.5 percent of abortion clinics are located in the inner city and in neighborhoods where predominantly poor people and ethnic minorities live, according to Dr. Noreen Johnson, who quit performing abortions and became a pro-life advocate.

Thankfully, we have some rank-and-file Republican and Democrat members of Congress who ignore the consultants and pollsters, and who do the right thing concerning abortion. Indeed, Rep. Stupak once said he was willing to lose on this issue.

Since Jan. 22, 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion, the lives of more than 50 million pre-born babies have been extinguished, according to National Right to Life. More than 13 million of these lives were those of African-American descent, according to an analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control.

I know many in both major parties wish this issue would just go away. But abortion is a multibillion-dollar industry. Government grants and contracts provide more than $300 million every year to Planned Parenthood. Entrepreneurs, doctors and clinic employees profit from the abortion industry.

The abortion issue is politically charged and is a serious factor in nominating political candidates and Supreme Court justices. It even impacts international policy.

Until we recognize what we are choosing when one stands up for the "freedom to choose," sadly, this battle will go on.

J.C. Watts (JCWatts01@jcwatts.com), chairman of J.C. Watts Companies, a business consulting group, is former chairman of the Republican Conference of the U.S. House, where he served as an Oklahoma representative from 1995 to 2002. He writes twice monthly for the Review-Journal.