During the Bush administration, President Bush displayed his concern for both mother and unborn child by putting an administrative rule in place allowing states to cover unborn children in the SCHIP program. On Thursday, the Senate rejected an amendment to make that administrative rule national law.
Pro-life advocates had strongly supported the Bush policy, in place beginning in 2002, because it promoted respect for human life and pregnant women without classifying pregnant women as children under the program.
They also say the health care support for unborn children, which entitles the pregnant mother to receive care as well, helped reduce the number of abortions for poor women who decide to have an abortion for financial reasons.
Sen. Orrin Hatch sponsored the amendment to codify the Unborn Child Rule and the Senate rejected his motion on a 59 to 39 vote.
The Senate vote on the amendment came down to the ideological divide on abortion in the chamber with pro-life lawmakers supporting it and pro-abortion senators opposing it.
Most Senate Republicans backed the Hatch amendment except a handful of abortion advocates while all Senate Democrats opposed the Hatch amendment, except Sens. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
Interestingly, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who supported the Unborn Child Rule before and whose state implemented it in their state version of the SCHIP program, voted against the Hatch amendment to make it federal law.
The vote came one day after lawmakers rejected an amendment to restore the Mexico City Policy, which President Barack Obama reversed to make taxpayers fund groups that perform or promote abortions in other countries.
Had the Hatch amendment been adopted, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), would have turned the Bush policy of allowing states to provide more help to poor pregnant women and their unborn children into federal law.
Under the amendment, unborn children covered under SCHIP could also
receive health care services through the program after birth as long as they qualify for economic reasons.
Filed under: Abortion, health care, Senate
