CQ Today Online News | Homeland bill Heading to Floor with Abortion Provision Included
May 6, 2012
Homeland Bill Heading to Floor with Abortion Provision Included
By Tim Starks | CQ Today Online News| June 5, 2012
The abortion battle that unexpectedly punctuated last month¹s committee
debate on the fiscal 2013 Homeland Security spending bill is unlikely to
be refought when the bill comes to the House floor later this week.
Although any House member could offer an amendment to remove the bill¹s
restriction on taxpayer-funded abortions, Democratic aides and
representatives of abortion rights groups said they are currently unaware
of any plan to force a vote on the issue.
As amended and approved by the Appropriations Committee, the bill (HR
5855) would prohibit U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from
paying for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or when a woman¹s
life would be endangered by carrying her pregnancy to term.
During the May 16 markup, Democrats accused the Republican majority of
including the language to play to the GOP political base. Homeland
Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Robert B. Aderholt, R-Ala.,
said the provision was not meant to be political. The provision would
formalize ICE¹s current policy, he said, and expand to the Homeland bill
language banning taxpayer funding of abortion that¹s been included in
other spending bills since the 1970s.
The Democratic aides and abortion rights lobbyists, speaking on condition
of anonymity, said some of the concern about the abortion language died
down after Virginia Democrat James P. Moran convinced appropriators
during the markup to amend the bill to include an exception for
pregnancies resulting from incest.
But with the bill headed to the floor under an open rule, aides and
outside organizations could not rule out some last-minute effort to
remove the language. And there were signs last week that Democrats would
still like to challenge the provision, perhaps even removing it without a
direct vote.
In the Rules Committee, Jim McGovern, D-Mass., tried to preserve an
option for Democrats to raise a point of order that the abortion language
violates the prohibition against legislative language in appropriations
bills. But McGovern¹s attempt to amend the rule governing floor debate on
the Homeland Security spending bill was defeated on a party-line vote.
Despite Moran¹s addition of an incest exception, some abortion rights
groups still find the bill¹s abortion provision objectionable. ³We know
all too well that opponents of women¹s reproductive health in Congress
put politics before women¹s health, but injecting politics into a debate
on national and homeland security should not be tolerated,² said Cecile
Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in a
written statement after appropriators marked up the bill.
Jessica González-Rojas, executive director at the National Latina
Institute for Reproductive Health, said the provision ³adds insult to
injury of the needs of women in detention who encounter sexual assault
and rape.