Operation Rescue’s President Cannot Explain How Health Care Bill Funds Abortion

(Footage purchased from Sam Sumner, originally posted by Will Urquhart at Sum of Change)

As you may be aware, this weekend (tomorrow to be exact) marks the 37th anniversary of the passage of Roe v Wade, the supreme court decision that effectively legalized abortion nationwide. We have been working on a documentary about clinic escorts for some time now (tomorrow we will be making a big announcement about the film, sign up for our emails and you will be one of first to hear about it), so this weekend is a big chance for us to get some footage.

When I got back home from volunteering at the clinic, I saw an email from Operation Rescue announcing a press conference at the White House today. Luckily, I was able to track down a freelance videographer who sold us some great exclusive footage of Operation Rescue’s President, Troy Newman, failing several times to name a single part of the current health care bills that allows for federal funding of abortion (although he knows for a fact it does, he just cannot tell you how):

We took a little extra time to write up a transcript for the video-impaired among us:


SUMNER: Can you just give us a brief summary of what it is in this bill that allows for federal funding for abortion?

NEWMAN: Well, you know, nobody’s really read the bill. And that’s the ironic thing, you know, Obama has said that he’s going to make this available, it’s gonna be on C-SPAN, but nothing could be further from the truth. The bill that was brought through the house was radically changed by the time it was voting on. The bill that was running its way through the Senate and a lot of us had read was radically changed behind closed doors, so nobody really knows. One thing we do know, is that it contains abortion funding. In fact, I have been calling this health care system, this Obamacare, right from the very beginning, nothing more than an abortion clinic bail out fund. It’s all about abortion, it’s all about eugenics. And one need only look at the history of abortion and eugenics to know that that’s absolutely true. The people that are sitting in the White House today the people that are running congress, despise people of what they would consider to be lower means. It’s a detailed eugenic program that they’re trying to impress upon the American people.

(Note from Sam: “I have to admit, at this point I was a little caught off guard. I hear whacko things all the time, but does this dude seriously believe the Obama’s want to kill poor people? I quickly gathered myself, let it go, and continued pressing for an answer, how does this bill fund abortion?”)

SUMNER: Okay. When we were speaking to some of the escorts earlier, they said that this bill does not allow for federal funding. I mean, what do you say to that?

NEWMAN: Have they read the bill? The parts I read detail it explicitly.

SUMNER: I don’t know if they have read the bill. But can you explain what parts in the bill actually allow for the federal funding then?

NEWMAN: Well, you know, again, the bill has not even been made public, that has been the huge problem in this. But let’s take for instance, a hypothetical…

SUMNER: Aren’t both the bills available online though?

NEWMAN: …If you look at a hypothetical situation that, that this bill would not contain abortion funding, there’s already been a huge push to call abortion health care. And so it would just be a stroke of the bureaucratic pen to make sure that abortion is included in this health care bill. So any sort of revamp of health care that includes a government option of funding, it will include government funding of abortion. We already have government funding for aboriton in every single state through medicare.

SUMNER: But the bills are available online. Do you know what parts in the bill actually allow for federal funding?

NEWMAN: I don’t have the bill, the bill’s 2,000 pages long.

SUMNER: So you haven’t read it?

NEWMAN: I have read portions of it, and it does detail that… both the house bill did before the Stupak amendment, and the Senate bill did, the parts I read. But again, this has been revamped, it’s been rewritten and it is not available right now.”

There you have it: “One thing we do know, is that it contains abortion funding…” although… “the bill has not even been made public…” although… “I have read portions of it…” although… “the bill has not even been made public.”

So this super-secret bill that hasn’t been made public absolutely funds abortion and he knows it because he has read the super-secret bill that hasn’t been made public but is an attempt to kill poor people.