Joint IMMEDIATE Media Release from WVFL & FPCWV
(July 20, 2017 – Morgantown & Charleston, WV)
Senator Shelley Moore Capito has announced that she will reject the effort to repeal ObamaCare next week. The junior senator from West Virginia previously voted to repeal the failing ObamaCare legislation but did so expecting a certain veto from then President Obama. The controversial law secures millions of dollars in abortion funding for groups like Planned Parenthood.
It appears that Capito may be the deciding vote determining if the funding stays. Her reluctance to make the exact same pro-life vote, now that passage would mean an immediate signature by President Trump, calls her level of commitment to protecting the unborn into question.
West Virginians for Life President Wanda Franz, said, “West Virginians for Life and the Family Policy Council of West Virginia will stand together in condemning that failure if Senator Capito sticks to this course. She made promises as a senatorial candidate and our organizations endorsed her and then West Virginia voters gave their support to her and other Republicans in part because of their opposition to ObamaCare. Her failure to support repeal would be an abandonment of those voters.”
Senator Capito claims her NO vote would be to prevent thousands of citizens from losing health care. But it has become obvious that West Virginians who want to keep their insurance under ObamaCare will lose it regardless. More than 1300 U.S counties are down to a single company providing insurance on the Obama health exchange. As the program self-destructs, West Virginia’s counties are down to just two. So Capito’s compassionate excuse for her flip-flop seems under-informed at best and disingenuous at worst.
Franz emphasized, “The vote for repeal would provide essential benefits: 1) it eliminates the so-called “Cadillac-tax” on healthcare plans that is designed to suppress healthcare spending over time, thereby rationing life-saving treatment, 2) it prevents federal tax credits from being used for plans that pay for abortions, and 3) it eliminates roughly 90% of federal Planned Parenthood funding.”
Franz and Whitt are the respective presidents of West Virginians For Life and the Family Policy Council. They are the two lobbying groups in the state defending the rights of the unborn. Both presidents representing hundreds of thousands of pro-life West Virginians, urge Senator Shelley Moore Capito to reconsider and to vote for repeal of the existing law early next week.
Allen Whitt, President of the Family Policy Council, said, “Our organization made nearly 50,000 phone calls in her election effort and if Senator Capito is unwilling to protect the most vulnerable among us and fails to defund Planned Parenthood when the outcome for the whole nation is in her hands, then all options must be on the table when her senate primary race comes around.”