A House Democrat from Illinois stood by fellow members of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus on the Hill Wednesday to declare that Americans are being misled on funding of abortion in Obamacare.
Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) was one of the backers of the Stupak amendment, crafted to overcome the last congressional obstacle in the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. Former Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-Pa.), who introduced the amendment, accepted a deal from President Obama after the amendment passed the House but got held up in the Senate. Obama promised an executive order banning federal funding for abortion under the bill if conservative Democrats would lift their opposition.
Lipinski was the only Illinois Democrat to vote against Obamacare.
“When we were debating the healthcare bill three and a half years ago here, I had stood up and helped to demand, and we got in the House originally, the Stupak Amendment. The language we have on abortion clearly is very different from what the Stupak Amendment said. And today we see that not only do we have the funding of abortion, but we really want to focus on, especially today, is the lack of transparency,” he said at a press conference.
“One of the biggest issues I remember in the whole healthcare debate was Americans deserve to have a clear, transparent understanding of what insurance companies are providing for them in their healthcare plans. That was one of the biggest priorities all along in talking about healthcare reform, health insurance reform. But we wound up with Obamacare.”
