General
Healthcare: Response to Professor Timothy Jost (2010)
What's Wrong with the Senate Health Care Bill on Abortion? A response to Professor Jost
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops supports authentic health care reform, but opposes the bill approved by the Senate (H.R. 3590), primarily due to its serious flaws on abortion and conscience rights. In our judgment, the House-approved health care reform bill (H.R. 3962) follows indispensable and longstanding federal policies on abortion funding and mandates, and conscience rights on abortion, while the Senate bill does not.
Circulating online and on Capitol Hill is a new analysis by Timothy Stoltzfus Jost of the Washington and Lee University School of Law, claiming the opposite – that there are no “significant differences” between the House and Senate bills on abortion.
In our judgment, however, the Jost analysis is wrong in most of its major claims. The Senate bill’s major flaws are as real as ever and must be addressed.