Abortion funding still seems to be the main focus of pro-lifers now that the Senate has approved a motion to begin debate on health care reform last night. However, I mentioned yesterday that abortion funding is not the only pro-life problem with federal health care reform. In a recent post, Wesley Smith gives us an example of what else we should be concerned about with regard to the bill to be debated in the Senate:
Get this clause under the section 1323 of the bill creating the public option (p. 183), beginning at page 186:
(F) PROTECTING ACCESS TO END OF LIFE CARE.—A community health insurance option offered under this section shall be prohibited from limiting access to end of life care.
If assisted suicide, or even euthanasia, are legally considered forms of “end of life care” in a particular state–as it is now in Oregon, Washington, and Montana–it seems to me that the area’s community health insurance option would be required to provide “access” to it under this clause. How else can the provision be read? And because it would have been passed later in time, this clause could be construed to subsume existing federal law that prevents federal funds from being used in assisted suicide.