Reviewing a new NBC poll shortly after 3 p.m. EDT today, MSNBC's David Shuster today dismissed as "false" the fears of 50 percent of respondents that "tax dollars will help pay for abortions."

But Shuster's flat denial belies the fact that there is reasonable debate over what exactly Democratic health care proposals before Congress would mean when it comes to financing abortion via the so-called public option.

As U.S. News & World Report religion reporter Dan Gilgoff noted on August 4 (emphasis mine):

The question revolves largely around an amendment to the House healthcare bill that was adopted by the Energy and Commerce Committee last Thursday. The amendment prohibits federal funds from explicitly subsidizing abortion in the private healthcare plans to be offered through the health insurancehere). But it doesn't prevent "the public health insurance exchange (read it here) option from providing for or prohibiting coverage" of abortion.

Story Continues Below Ad ↓

That means the public healthcare option could cover abortions that the government is currently barred from funding by way of the Hyde amendment, a rider to the annual health and human services appropriations bill that keeps Medicaid from funding abortion except in rare circumstances. But Democrats say the entire healthcare bill is subject to the Hyde amendment, meaning that public funds are still barred from covering abortions, so long as the amendment continues to be reauthorized annually.

"For the last 30 years, this is the consistent common ground: We don't use public funds to provide abortion services," says an aide to Democratic California Rep. Lois Capps, who authored the abortion-related amendment adopted last week by the House. "Federal law—the Hyde amendment—prohibits it."

The aide, who spoke on background, said that abortion coverage in the public healthcare option would be financed by premiums paid by individuals. The Capps amendment makes clear that abortions covered by the private healthcare plans would be paid for that way, but it is silent on how abortions in the public option would be funded.

Conservative antiabortion groups have pounced on that silence to allege that the Democrats are sneakily laying the groundwork for taxpayer-funded abortion. They reject claims that the healthcare bill is subject to the Hyde amendment, which has been reauthorized annually for three decades.

"The Hyde amendment is not a governmentwide law," says Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee. "It affects Medicaid but has no bearing whatsoever on money that flows through the public healthcare plan. The Capps amendment authorizes government-funded abortion from Day 1."

With the Senate working up its own healthcare reform proposals, it's unclear whether the Capps amendment will be the last word on how President Obama's plan deals with abortion coverage. Obama has suggested that he wants to uphold the spirit of the Hyde amendment in government-controlled healthcare. "I'm pro-choice, but I think we also have the tradition in this town, historically, of not financing abortions as part of government-funded healthcare," he said recently.

For now, even Democratic groups are reading the Capps amendment's stipulations for abortion coverage differently. Chris Korzen, executive director of Catholics United—a progressive group allied with the White House and supportive of Obama's healthcare reform—said he interpreted the Capps amendment to bar federally financed abortion, but not because he believes the healthcare bill is subject to the Hyde amendment.

Rather, Korzen said, he read the amendment's prohibitions on government-backed abortion in the private healthcare plans as also applying to the public option.

The bottom line, the devil is in the details.

Shuster is wrong to mislead viewers by insisting flat-out that health care proposals will not result in American taxpayers financing abortions via government-sponsored health plans given the complexity of the legislation and how it would be interpreted administratively ad by the courts.

—Ken Shepherd is Managing Editor of NewsBusters