When describing her efforts to stop the health care reform law, Penny Nance of Concerned Women For America said she “literally chased Bart Stupak down the hall” in order to “defend babies.” Rep. Stupak (D-MI), was the leader behind the Stupak-Pitts Amendment which would have seriously undermined reproductive rights by “eliminating coverage of medically indicated abortions over time for all women, not only those whose coverage is derived through a health insurance exchange,” according to a George Washington University study. However, the Stupak-Pitts Amendment was removed from the final version of the bill after President Obama agreed to issue an executive order reaffirming “longstanding restrictions on the use of federal funds for abortion.”
Stupak and other anti-choice Democrats voted in favor of the final version of the bill, and the nonpartisan fact-checking group PolitiFact confirms that the health care reform “law does not provide full federal funding of abortions–and that’s clear.” In fact, Nancy Keenan of NARAL Pro-Choice America expressed her disappointment regarding the “restatement of the Hyde amendment, a discriminatory law that blocks low-income women from receiving full reproductive-health care.”
But Nance repeats the patently false claim that health care reform would lead to taxpayer funding for abortion after describing how she “chased Bart Stupak” down:
Everyday we’re working very, very diligently to try to keep the terrible Obama health care plan from coming into law. Of course, you know we eventually lost that fight but it was a good fight. I literally chased Bart Stupak down the hall the day he caved, right before that vote. I had my high heels clicking on the marble, but it was important: we had to defend babies and so I would do it all over again.
When Stupak addressed the House about the health care reform bill, Republican Congressman Randy Neugebauer of Texas shouted “baby killer!”
