Town Hall Meetings Replete with Protests about Subsidized Abortions

Wash. Post: Abortion is New Front in Health Battle, by Fawn Johnson & Laura Meckler:

WASHINGTON -- Anti-abortion groups are gearing up for a battle in the fall over health-care legislation, another headache for Democrats who already face concerns about the measure's cost and reach.

Most versions of the Democratic health plan would create subsidies for lower-income people to buy private health insurance. If that insurance includes coverage for abortion, as many existing private plans do, it effectively means federal taxpayers are subsidizing abortion, critics of the legislation argue.

While it gets less attention than some other parts of the plan, abortion has often been raised by critics at town-hall meetings during the August congressional recess. . . .

Anti-abortion activists have attended town-hall meetings and plan to hold prayer vigils in front of lawmakers' district offices before the legislators return to Washington in September. At a town-hall meeting Tuesday night by Rep. Jim Moran (D., Va.), police ejected anti-abortion activist Randall Terry for disrupting the proceedings, to competing shouts of "We won't pay for murder!" and "Kick him out!" . . .