Colorado’s Wayne Allard sought to include unborn children under the protection of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-CHIP. Allard’s spokesman Steve Wymer says it would have legally recognized the unborn child. 

“This would classify the unborn child as a patient, or authorize the mother to be cared for even though she doesn’t have a child.”

While that would be a great goal in itself, there is a bigger picture. The amendment sought to codify the right to life for a pre-born child into federal law. Wymer says there are a number of legislative attempts to do that.

“We have to try to find a way to make sure that this amendment, and others like it, that we can try to help kind of push this in the direction that we’re working towards.”

Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council says this has been the pro-life tactic in Congress since the last election, when the Democrats took both chambers.

“What the Democrats did when they rewrote the S-CHIP bill was remove any references to unborn children and instead talk about the mother involved.”

Not only is this kind of incremental pro-life push helpful, it also puts legislators on record.

“The senators representing you don’t always reflect the views of the people out there and this is mainly a pro-life country and they would want unborn children to be involved in this bill.”

Wymer says Allard will try his amendment again.