House Republicans fold like thrift store socks, give up on pro-life, conscience regulations in ObamaCare fight

House Republicans give up on pro-life, conscience regulations in ObamaCare fight | LifeSiteNews.com.

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 30, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – As President Obama and Senate Democrats stand their ground, House Republicans have dropped provisions barring the funding of abortion and delaying the HHS mandate for one year.

Early Sunday morning, the House approved the two measures as part of a bill to keep most federal programs funded and avoid a government shutdown. The bill included zero funding for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), conventionally known as ObamaCare.

As promised, Senate Democrats stripped the provisions out of the continuing resolution on a party line, 54-46 vote.

Regrouping, the House GOP abandoned the pro-life and religious liberty provisions from the bill.

Their new proposal instead delays ObamaCare’s individual mandate for one year and eliminates subsidies for Congressional staffers’ health insurance.

Family Research Council president Tony Perkins said he was “disappointed,” because the new bill “ignores the threat to religious freedom that ObamaCare poses and does nothing to address the abortion subsidies that will take effect.”

David Christensen, FRC’s director of Congressional affairs, agreed this afternoon that the Republican proposal “doesn’t fix the problem of abortion subsidies [and] doesn’t fix the problem of” personal conscience violations.

Under the terms of the Affordable Care Act’s HHS mandate, employers must provide all employees with insurance plans that include abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception with no co-pay, or pay a fine of $100 per employee per day.