Pro-life Congressmen warn DC: obey the law and defund abortion

by Kathleen Gilbert

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 29, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Hoping to avoid a repeat of history, a cadre of lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives have warned the mayor of the District of Columbia to obey the reinstated ban on taxpayer-funded abortions.

In an April 19 letter to D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray signed by 94 House members, the lawmakers point out that “history has shown that the District has not always complied with this policy when it has been in place in the past.”

After the ban on D.C.‘s publicly funded abortions, known as the Dornan amendment, came into effect in FY1996, it was discovered two years later that the District had continued illegally to offer taxpayer funds for the procedures.

“We trust you will act immediately to respect and faithfully implement the law by ensuring that no further taxpayer funds are expended for elective abortions,” the lawmakers wrote.

After being removed by the Obama administration, the Dornan amendment was resurrected in this year’s budget bill thanks to GOP leaders in the House, who drove a hard bargain to win the lifesaving amendment in eleventh-hour negotiations with the White House.

In order to ensure compliance the lawmakers requested that, this time around, the District provide “detailed information outlining what steps you are taking to ensure that no more public funds are used to pay for elective abortion in D.C.”

The letter also noted that the Congressional body’s repeated requests for information on public funding for the procedure have been ignored by D.C. officials, a fact the lawmakers called “disappointing.”

“While these questions have gone unanswered, your Director of the Department of Health Care Finance Wayne Turnage was ‘kind enough to offer a detailed answer’ to a Washington Post blogger,” they noted, pointing to an April 2011 article by Post writer Mike Debonis.

Turnage revealed to the Post that 117 unborn children were killed with taxpayer funds between August 1, 2010, when the ban was last lifted, until the present.