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If the Commonweal editors believe that this executive order
will prevent the public subsidization of abortion or protect taxpayers
from funding the killing of unborn children, they are deluding
themselves. As law professor Robert A. Destro has noted,
for decades the federal courts have held (consistently with the 1977
case Beal v. Doe) that the Medicaid statute (and any other
general law mandating “family planning” and certain other categories of
service) must be construed to require abortion services unless laws
passed by Congress explicitly rule this out. Executive orders
sometimes have teeth, but not when they conflict with statutory
mandates.
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