Remember when President Obama told us that the Pitts/Stupak Amendment should be rejected because his Executive Order would prevent abortion from being a part of ObamaCare? We told you then that not only was an Executive Order insufficient to replace a strong statutory protection like the Pitts/Stupak Amendment, but also that the language of the Executive Order itself did nothing more than set up an accounting scheme to hide the federal subsidies that would flow to abortions.

Everyone concerned about government promotion and funding of abortions should read this rule for themselves, but allow me to outline a couple of the basic components with regard to the abortion requirements.

First, beginning on page 453, this rule describes and reaffirms the “segregation of funds for abortion services” as required under ObamaCare. Essentially, insurance plans may include abortion services in a plan subsidized by federal taxpayer dollars. To justify this inclusion, the plan will collect a $1 “surcharge” from all policy holders. Of course this surcharge will be collected as part of a larger premium payment, and not as a part of a separate collection. Additionally, plans are entirely free to advertise the total cost of these plans without mentioning that $1 of the premium is specifically intended to subsidize the abortion coverage. Further, the surcharge is only to be disclosed when the policyholder first enrolls.

In short, the $1 surcharge does not even attempt to resemble an actual offset of the abortion coverage cost, is virtually undetectable by the policy holder, and serves the singular purpose of providing a flimsy defense for inserting the federal government into the business of providing coverage for elective abortions.

Additionally, on pages 364-365, the final rule makes it entirely plausible that States that have passed laws prohibiting abortion coverage will be forced to provide that coverage anyway. This would occur through the multi-state plans administered by the Federal Government. The final rule simply says that rules governing these plans will be issued at a later date, so it’s entirely feasible (I’d say likely) that these plans will be permitted to cover abortion, even when one of the States within the multi-State area prohibits it.

This is not a surprising development. In fact, despite the numerous and convoluted attempts to distract from the truth, it has long been clear to many of us in the pro-life community that abortion - and funding for abortion - is one of the central tenets of ObamaCare. Today’s final rule is just evidence of that fact.