CHARLOTTE, September 7, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – A former Democratic Congresswoman, who considers herself a pro-life Catholic, had no trouble justifying her support for a president who supports taxpayer-funded abortion for all nine months of pregnancy: “He is pro-life,” she said.
At a forum during the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, former Pennsylvania Representative Kathy Dahlkemper said Barack Obama “actually signed the most pro-life piece of legislation that this country has ever seen,” referring to the president’s health care law, known popularly as ObamaCare. The bill, she said, would allow some without health insurance greater access to doctors and better preserve their health.
When Republicans point to Obama’s outspoken support for abortion-on-demand, “you can turn on them and say, ‘He is pro-life,’” she said.
“I voted for the Affordable Care Act because in my opinion it is the most pro-life piece of legislation that we’ve ever passed in this country,” she said at a forum during the DNC. She also appeared at a panel discussion hosted by Democrats for Life of America.
That support cost her, as the former one-term member of Congress lost her House seat to Mike Kelly, a pro-life Republican, in the 2010 Tea Party landslide.
“I was attacked by pro-life extremist groups for my vote for the Affordable Care Act,” she said.
Those “extremists” included Americans United for Life, the Susan B. Anthony List, CitizenLink, and the Pennsylvania Family Council, which bought ad time against her.
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“Abortion funding was a key issue in the passage of the health care bill,” said SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser at the time. “Dahlkemper traded those protections for a worthless executive order from the most pro-abortion president in our nation’s history.”
She went on to call the bill “the biggest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade.”
For her part, Dahlkemper has no regrets.
“I left office with my head held high as I knew I had helped pass one of the most pro-life pieces of legislation in history, a law that I believe will significantly reduce the number of abortions in our country,” she said.
She added that she “strongly supported and voted for the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”
The Democrats did not address the HHS mandate, which compels taxpayers to fund abortifacient medications such as Plan B and Ella.
Instead, Catholic University political science professor Steve Schenck forecast, “As the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) begins to roll out, all the evidence is that we will see similar reductions” in abortion nationwide. “That’s pro-life policy,” he said.
Another Catholic academic, Tom Berg of the University of St. Thomas, hailed “the European safety net,” a development Pope John Paul II condemned in his encyclical Centissimus Annus.
At the DFLA event, only former Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak addressed the HHS mandate, saying he was “perplexed” that the president had broken his promise and implemented the order, which Stupak considered “illegal.”