HOW IMPORTANT IS THE HOUSE VOTE ON THE HEALTH CARE BILL?

On abortion policy, the health care bill that Speaker Nancy Pelosi brought to the House floor last November was extremely bad (before the House fixed it by adopting the Stupak-Pitts Amendment) -- but the Senate health bill (H.R. 3590) is worse.

The Senate health bill is a 2,407-page labyrinth strewn with the legislative equivalents of improvised explosive devices -- disguised provisions that will result in federal pro-abortion mandates and federal subsidies for abortion. The so-called abortion limits that are in the Senate bill are all very narrow, riddled with loopholes, or booby-trapped to expire. Some of them were drafted more with the intent of misleading superficial analysts (which unfortunately includes some media "factcheckers") than actually effectuating a pro-life policy.

When all of the pro-abortion provisions are considered in total, the Senate bill is the most pro-abortion single piece of legislation that has ever come to the House floor for a vote, since Roe v. Wade. Any House member who votes for the Senate health bill is casting a career-defining pro-abortion vote. A House member who votes for the Senate bill would forfeit a plausible claim to pro-life credentials. No House member who votes for the Senate bill will be regarded, in the future, as having a record against federal funding of abortion.

All of those statements are true regardless of how many assurances or denials are disseminated by President Obama or by Speaker Pelosi, both of whom have sought throughout their political careers to undermine limits on government funding of abortion. House members who vote for the Senate bill will be accountable to their constituents for what the Senate bill contains.