WASHINGTON (BP)--It will be a while before we know all that Senate majority leader Harry Reid is proposing in the name of health care reform in his "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," which exceeds 2,000 pages and was released this week.

Already it's clear that he intends to greatly expand the use of federal dollars to help pay for abortion in our nation. Section 1303 (a)(1)(D)(i) of his bill actually requires every health insurance exchange to have at least one plan that pays for abortion-on-demand for any reason.

DIRECT FUNDING IN THE PUBLIC OPTION

Sen. Reid's bill uses federal funds to help pay for abortion in two ways, directly and indirectly. Federal funds will pay directly for abortion through the so-called "Community Health Insurance Option," which is the Reid bill's name for the public option, Section 1323 (b). To help achieve this, the bill divides abortion into two categories.

The first category consists of abortions related to rape, incest or threats to the mother's life. According to Section 1303 (a)(1)(C)(i)(III), federal funds will help pay for abortion in these instances for all people, regardless of their income level. Currently, the Hyde Amendment restricts federal money for abortions in these instances to low-income people on Medicaid.

The second category consists of abortions that are typically referred to as elective abortions. These are abortions due to other factors, like economic, personal, emotional, etc. These account for the vast majority of all abortions performed in the United States. Most Americans rightly find these abortions unacceptable, and they do not want their tax dollars to be used to pay for them.

The Reid bill allows for the public plan to pay for these abortions as well, so long as the Health and Human Services secretary can certify that no federal dollars are used to pay for them, Section 1303 (a)(1)(C).

In order to skirt this limitation, the Reid bill intends to establish a fund that will collect money to pay for elective abortions that will not qualify as federal money. The bill actually sets up a system, Section 1303 (a)(2)(C), that assesses every enrollee in the public option at least $1 per month to pay for elective abortions.

It is clear that Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, intends to pay for elective abortion in the public plan if he can find a way to do it. However, even this sleight of hand does not de-federalize the dollars he collects. Regardless of how the U.S. Treasury collects the money, it is still federal money.