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House OKs limits on tax breaks for abortions


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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110504/ap_on_go_co/us_abortion_taxes

By LAURIE KELLMAN

AP

WASHINGTON – The House voted Wednesday to limit tax breaks for insurance policies that cover abortions.

The bill, which passed 251-175, was the latest Republican effort to chip away at President Barack Obama's health care overhaul and follow through on the GOP's campaign promise to keep taxpayers from underwriting abortions.

"Abortion is not health care," said Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb.

The measure has little chance of advancing in the Democratic-controlled Senate, and the Obama administration has threatened to veto it.

The bill would prevent people from deducting the cost of an abortion from their taxable income, except when the procedure is performed in cases of rape, incest or when a physician certifies that a woman's life would be in danger if she continues the pregnancy.

Current law, known as the Hyde Amendment, bars federal money for abortions, with the same exceptions as those in the bill. But the bill would make the Hyde Amendment federal law, rather than a provision added to other bills that must be voted every year.

Abortion opponents have charged that the health care overhaul contains a loophole for insurance policies. Obama's health care overhaul, passed last year, creates state marketplaces for insurance known as "exchanges." It allows participating plans to cover abortions, provided they collect a separate premium from policyholders and that money is kept apart from federal subsidies.

The bill disallows the tax credit for the expenses of a small employer health insurance plan that includes coverage for an abortion. Democrats said that amounts to a tax increase.

"I thought my Republican friends hated taxes, but apparently they hate reproductive freedom and women's rights even more," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.

Supporters of the bill passed Wednesday say the health overhaul doesn't go far enough to make sure that no tax money is used to subsidize abortions. Congressional estimates say the bill would raise only a negligible amount of tax revenue.

Opponents say the bill would make it difficult if not impossible for many women to obtain medical insurance that covers abortions — even if they pay for it themselves. They say the legislation could put the Internal Revenue Service in the position of determining whether women who get abortions were sexually assaulted, so the agency can decide whether the procedure is tax deductible.

Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., said the bill is really an effort to prevent insurance companies from covering abortions.

By law, people can deduct medical expenses that exceed 7.5 percent of their adjusted gross income, a threshold that increases to 10 percent in 2013. They can set aside tax-free money in health savings accounts and spend it on approved medical expenses. The IRS lists the cost of an abortion as an approved medical expense.

Although the House-passed bill is unlikely to go anywhere in the Senate, anti-abortion senators are pursuing similar legislation.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who is up for re-election next year, is leading a group of senators who this week are introducing a bill to write the Hyde Amendment into permanent law.

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Is that the same thing as this?!

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/04/house-gop-hr3/

House GOP Unanimously Passes Anti-Abortion Bill That Redefines Rape, Raises Taxes, And Creates Rape Audits

In a 251 to 175 vote this evening, 16 anti-choice Democrats joined every House Republican present in passing H.R. 3, the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act. A chief weapon in the House GOP’s “comprehensive assault” on women this bill proposes some of the most radical and draconian restrictions on women’s rights. They include:

– Redefinition Of Rape: The bill sponsor Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) faced serious backlash after he tried to narrow the definition rape to “forcible rape.” By narrowing the rape and incest exception in the Hyde Amendment, Smith sought to prevent the following situations from consideration: Women who say no but do not physically fight off the perpetrator, women who are drugged or verbally threatened and raped, and minors impregnated by adults.

Smith promised to remove the language and while it is not technically in the bill, Mother Jones reports that House Republicans used “a sly legislative maneuver” to insert a “backdoor reintroduction” of redefinition language. Essentially, if the bill is challenged in court, judges will look at the congressional committee report to determine intent. The committee report for H.R. 3 says the bill will “not allow the Federal Government to subsidize abortions in cases of statutory rape” — thus excluding statutory rape-related abortions from Medicaid coverage.

– Tax Increase On Women And Small Businesses: H.R. 3 prevents women from using “itemized medical deductions, certain tax-advantaged health care accounts or tax credits included in last year’s health care law to pay for abortions or for health insurance plans that cover abortion.” In doing so, the bill forces women and small businesses that provide health insurance that covers abortion to pay more in taxes than they would otherwise. Both economic conservative Grover Norquist and the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce noted that the bill is basically a tax increase.

– Rape Audits: Because H.R. 3 bans using tax credits or deductions to pay for abortions or insurance, a woman who used such a benefit would have to prove, if audited, that her abortion “fell under the rape/incest/life-of-the-mother exception, or that the health insurance she had purchased did not cover abortions.” Essentially, the bill turns Internal Revenue Service agents into “abortion cops” who would force women to give “contemporaneous written documentation” that it was “incest, or rape, or [her] life was in danger” that compelled an abortion.

– Bans D.C.-Funded Abortions: The most recent spending resolution contained a ban on abortions in the District of Columbia by redefining the D.C. local government as the federal government. Thus, health clinics in D.C. are banned from using public funds from D.C. taxpayers to provide abortion services. H.R. 3 “would enshrine the District ban into federal law.” According to the Office of Management and Budget office, such a restriction violates “home rule.”

Despite receiving nearly 135,000 signatures in opposition to the bill, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and the House Republicans leveled a serious blow on American women and their right to choose. Some Republicans even suggested holding the debt ceiling increase hostage over the passage of H.R. 3. The bill, however, is unlikely to pass as a standalone in the Democratic-led Senate. President Obama has also threatened to veto the bill.

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Whenever I see this:

anti-choice

I stop reading. I love because I'm pro-life, I'm labeled as "anti-choice."

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Labeling people who want to achieve an objective good (treating the unborn with basic human respect and dignity) as "anti" anything is spin. I wonder if instead of pro-choice if they'd enjoy being labeled in newspapers as "pro-infanticide" or "anti-child"?

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Labeling people who want to achieve an objective good (treating the unborn with basic human respect and dignity) as "anti" anything is spin. I wonder if instead of pro-choice if they'd enjoy being labeled in newspapers as "pro-infanticide" or "anti-child"?

"pro-death" or "anti-life"?

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Labeling people who want to achieve an objective good (treating the unborn with basic human respect and dignity) as "anti" anything is spin. I wonder if instead of pro-choice if they'd enjoy being labeled in newspapers as "pro-infanticide" or "anti-child"?

"pro-death" or "anti-life"?

I thought of those. But then I considered that so many folks who are fervently in favor of the right to snuff out life in the womb are inexplicably opposed to the death penalty. So those terms seemed to be too far reaching or broad to cover such a contradiction.

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