Gingrich and GOP leadership produce 'grown up' budget

Human Events, Oct 30, 1998 by D'Agostino, Joseph A, Hopkins, Kara, Park, Scott

The American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation already plan to file a federal lawsuit challenging the law in Philadelphia.

Those who violate it could face $50,000 in fines and six months in jail.

The bill also forbids companies from collecting information from children 13 or younger through the Internet.

No Ban on Fetal Tissue Transplants

The budget bill contained a $2-billion increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) next year. Prolifers successfully included in the appropriation language forbidding funding for any research involving human embryos that could "harm" the unborn children or involving human cloning, an extension of a ban inserted in every Health and Human Services appropriation since 1996. But they did not ban fetal-tissue transplantation research, in which fully formed babies are aborted and literally made into human spare parts.

Domestic Abortion Funding

' Funding under Title X (family planning) for groups like Planned Parenthood increased from $203 million to $215 million. Though the money is supposed to go only to contraception and not abortion, pro-lifers have always argued that government money for one side of family planning groups' operations allows them to transfer money to another side, such as abortion "services."

At the same time, a provision sponsored by Rep. Ernest Istook (R.-Okla.) restricting government-funded clinics from providing minors with contraceptives was dropped. Istook's provision, which was passed by the House (see rollcall, page 27), would have required parental consent for minors to immediately receive contraceptives, but only parental notice if the children were willing to wait a few days.

Contraceptives For Bureaucrats

The budget bill also included a provision sponsored by Rep. Nita Lowey (D.-N.Y.) and Sen. Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) which mandates coverage of contraceptives and chemical abortifacients by federal employee benefits plans. The provision includes a vague exemption for health plans-such as those provided by Roman Catholic hospitals-and physicians who object to providing such drugs on the basis of "religious belief." But as Richard Doerflinger of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' pro-life office said, "Individual conscience protection extends to physicians (even Catholic physicians) only when they 'prescribe' contraceptives. Nurses have no protection at all, and physicians can still be forced to provide, inject, and insert contraceptive drugs and devices against their will. This is especially ominous in light of the mandate's inclusion of abortifacient drugs falsely labeled as `postcoital emergency contraception.'"

Chinese Coercive Abortion Defunded

As the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) plans to expand its operations in Communist China, notorious for its forced abortion program, the spending bill eliminated all $20 million in U.S. funding for the group. In addition, an amendment sponsored by Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R.-Kan.) was included to establish standards designed to forbid U.S. funding for any involuntary family-planning programs.