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National Right to Life News Today for published version of this article.
- Question #1: Where does a performance rating of
just 69 out of 100 merit an award of over two and a half million dollars?
Answer:
Only in Washington, DC.
- Question #2: When does a tiny organization
without even a qualified financial officer receive a federal grant that will
nearly triple its operating budget?
Answer:
When the organization submits to the Obama administration's political ideology
and a more qualified grant applicant does not.
- Question #3: According to the Obama
administration, what one medical "service" trumps all others when
caring for human trafficking victims?
Answer:
Abortion.
A grueling December 1 hearing by the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee revealed the disturbing answers to these questions,
in the process infuriating Republican committee members and others concerned
with aiding victims of human trafficking.
By the end of an over three-hour long grilling of U.S. Dept.
of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials, one message had become clear
about the Obama administration's criteria for receiving the $4.5 million in
federal grants for trafficking victims services:
Pro-life groups need not apply.
Withering questioning and comments by majority party
committee members included expressions of disgust, dismay and even unusually
salty language by a clearly frustrated committee chair, California Republican
Darrell Issa. Yet HHS officials under fire stubbornly accepted no
responsibility for bias or wrongdoing--either for stipulating that "strong
preference" would be accorded to grant applicants willing to participate
in abortion and other controversial "services" or for awarding the
grants to applicants deemed by objective reviewers to be poorly qualified.
Political appointees "rigged" grant process to weed out pro-life
groups
Internal HHS documents obtained by the committee revealed
that two organizations awarded grants by HHS officials--Tapestri and the U.S.
Committee on Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI)--had submitted applications that
received significantly lower scores by independent review panelists than did
the application submitted by the pro-life U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
(USCCB). The Tapestri application earned a score of just 74 out of 100; USCRI's
application garnered only 69; while the USCCB application received a score of
89.
The radically pro-abortion Obama administration had set up the
weighted grant process by introducing new language to a grant program
introduced in the Bush administration to aid victims of human trafficking, or
modern-day slavery. The funding opportunity announcement for the
"competitive" grant stipulated:
"The Director of [the HHS Office of Refugee
Resettlement] will give strong preference to applicants that are willing to
offer all of the services and referrals delineated under the Project
Objectives. Applicants that are unwilling to provide the full range of the
services and referrals under the Project Objectives must indicate this in their
narrative ...."
The stipulations added that "…preference will be given
to grantees under this [funding opportunity announcement] that will offer all
victims referral to medical providers who can provide or refer for provision of
treatment for sexually transmitted infections, family planning services and the
full range of legally permissible gynecological and obstetric care..."
Translation: Participate in abortion or forget the grant.
For five years, the Migration and Refugee Services (MRS)
department of the bishops had provided inarguably exemplary services for human
trafficking victims, apparently without a single report of objection to the
fact that the bishops did not refer for or otherwise participate in abortions
because of faith-based moral convictions. Nearly half the victims served by MRS
were males for whom gynecological services were obviously irrelevant.
George H. Sheldon, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Administration
for Children and Families, testified that USCCB "provided strong
performance under contract they had" and "has been extremely
cooperative" in transitioning care to the newly funded groups. He also did
not dispute the scores, saying, "I think reviewers did a very good
job."
Yet Sheldon refused to admit any regret for his decision to
overrule the clear recommendations of the independent expert panelists and deny
the USCCB funding solely on the basis of its religious objection to abortion.
Sheldon's decision to deny funding on the basis of merit and the collusion of
top HHS officials in that decision clearly infuriated Rep. Chris Smith, the New
Jersey Republican who authored the law on human trafficking that had provided
for the grant funding.
"In what can only be described as an unconscionable abuse of
power," Smith seethed, "the Obama Administration has engaged in what
amounts to bid rigging; denying taxpayer funds to a demonstrably superior
organization—the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)—with an exemplary,
ten-year track record of performance that scored significantly higher in
independent HHS reviews than two of the three NGOs that got the grant."
HHS official overseeing grant worked for group awarded grant
Oklahoma Republican Rep. James Lankford wryly noted that the expert grant
application reviewers had gone to extraordinary lengths to highlight the
inadequacy of the application by USCRI, despite the fact that its former vice
president and chief financial officer, Eskinder Negash, had recently taken on a
position as director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement–the very office
overseeing the grant. Although Negash had recused himself from the actual grant
decision, the department’s supposed objectivity was called into question by the
fact that his former organization won a sizeable award–nearly $2.6 million–despite
its low score by reviewers and the tiny organization’s obvious lack of
institutional capacity and financial management competence.
Although Congress had come together over the years in rare
bipartisan efforts to combat human trafficking by passing Smith's bill, the
obvious bias recently demonstrated by HHS in the grant process, Smith warned,
"will severely undermine confidence of the public and of Congress."
Chairman Issa warned that if the grant discrimination were
allowed to stand, discriminatory HHS policies could easily expand to the point
where in all of its programs "HHS can have a strong preference against
doctors who are not willing to provide abortions."
One has to wonder why the Obama administration would insist on
playing the abortion trump card, given the potential political fallout (even
the normally sympathetic Washington Post
exposed the corrupted process) and the fact that the abortion clause in the
grant guidance was not even necessary for human trafficking victims to attain
abortions.
As Rep. Issa pointed out, as soon as an organization refers
victims to a medical professional or institution, federal medical privacy laws
take effect, and both patient and physician would be free to pursue an abortion
without the knowledge or approval of the referring organization.
Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle, New York Republican, protested that under
the new abortion referral requirement, "Now we are going to ask
12-year-olds to make life-changing decisions. You don't know the trauma of
abortion. This will only add to the trauma already experienced by the
victims."
Grant bias fits pattern of administration's animus toward pro-life,
faith-based groups
The decision to insist on submission to its abortion ideology as
a condition for federal grants illustrates the depth of the administration's
radical abortion policy and its increasingly obvious disdain for conscience
rights and religious freedom. That animus has been reflected in the
administration's gutting of the only federal regulation protecting conscience
rights in health care; by a recent HHS rule mandating the nationwide provision
of controversial, life-ending contraceptives; and by the administration's
intervention in a Supreme Court case (Hosanna-Tabor
Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC ) to lobby to limit the
hiring freedoms of faith-based organizations.
Michigan Republican Rep. Tim Walberg warned that the biased grant
process sends a dark message to faith-based organizations: "On the basis
of strongly held religious or moral belief, you will be discriminated
against."
Whether or not HHS officials technically broke federal law in the
biased grant process remains to be determined.
Rep. Kelly concluded, "There is a huge difference between
what's legal and what is right."
Meanwhile, what's right for the desperately needy and traumatized
victims of human trafficking has been tragically lost in a political
determination to advance abortion ideology.
