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 Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Two days after
LifeNews.com exposed an Associated
Press article that mislead its readers on the abortion funding contained in
the government-run health care plans, AP has backtracked. The news service is
now reporting that the bills Congress is considering will result in
taxpayer-funded abortions.
AP features a
new article today with the headline, "Gov't insurance would allow coverage for
abortion."
Reporter
Ricardo Alonsozaldivar writes, "Health care legislation before Congress would
allow a new government-sponsored insurance plan to cover abortions, a decision
that would affect millions of women and recast federal policy on the divisive
issue."
That's a far
cry from the weekend story where AP writer Charles Babington wrote a "fact
check" that claimed it is "not clear" if abortion funding is included in the
legislation.
The Babington
story was so bad that Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for the National
Right to Life Committee, told LifeNews.com, "We respectfully ask that AP retract
this distorted" article.
While the
first AP piece claimed the health care bill "could create a government-run
insurance program, or insurance 'exchanges,' that would not involve Medicaid"
that could involve abortion funding, the new piece says that is now the case.
AP admitted
that the Capps amendment a
House committee adopted last week "would allow the public plan to cover
abortion" with "dollars from beneficiary premiums." It added, "Likewise, private
plans in the new insurance exchange could opt to cover abortion."
Johnson told
LifeNews.com today that the AP piece "confirms what we've been saying: Under
both Obama-backed bills, House and Senate, the federal government would run a
huge system of subsidizing elective abortion."
The new AP
article includes comments from Johnson about the Capps amendment, which some
abortion advocates are falsely touting as a compromise that will prevent
abortion funding.
"It's a
sham," he said. "It's a bookkeeping scheme. The plan pays for abortion, and the
government subsidizes the plan."
It also
includes a quote from Richard Doerflinger, associate director of pro-life
activities for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
"We want to
see people who have no health insurance get it, but this is a sticking point,"
he says. "We don't want health care reform to be the vehicle for mandating
abortion."
"You can have
a result where nobody has to pay for other people's abortions," he said of a
real compromise that promotes health care without abortion funding or insurance
mandates.
The
Associated Press also admitted that the Senate bill covers abortions as well:
"Staff aides confirmed that the public plan -- and private insurance offered in
the exchange -- would be allowed to cover abortion, without funding
restrictions."
Although the
new article admits that abortion funding exists in the health care plan, AP does
not correct its misread of President Barack Obama's comments where it claimed he
doesn't want abortion funding included.
The first
piece had AP claiming that "Obama recently told CBS that the nation should
continue a tradition of not financing abortions as part of government-funded
health care.'"
But Johnson
told LifeNews.com: "If Obama had actually said that, it would have been a very
newsworthy statement indeed. But Obama didn't say it. AP has grossly distorted
what Obama actually said."
As LifeNews.com reported, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric
asked Obama, "Do you favor a
government option that would cover abortions?"
Obama
declined to answer the question and said he would "rather not wade into" the
issue of abortion funding in health care. He talked about the "tradition" of
excluding funding for abortions but did not say he supported the tradition.
Johnson commented on AP's failure to correct the false impression its original
story left.
"Unfortunately, the AP has not yet retracted its claim," Johnson said. "Indeed,
senior White House staff persons have been working against the pro-life
amendments that would prevent the bills from paying for abortion."
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