Sarah Palin keeps telling that lie about health care reform funding abortions

More evidence that we are living in a mendocracy: Sarah Palin continues to repeat that enduring anti-choice lie that health care reform funds abortions. ABC News reports:

During a speech in Dallas on Wednesday night Sarah Palin attacked President Obama for being the “most pro-abortion president to occupy the White House” and warned that health care reform would lead to more abortions in America.

“It is even worse than what we had thought. The ramifications of this legislation are horrendous,” Palin said at an event hosted by Heroic Media, a faith-based, non-profit group that is working to bring down the rate of abortions in the Dallas area.

The 2008 vice presidential nominee urged the newly elected Congress to repeal health care reform, which she called the “mother of all unfunded mandates.”

“The biggest advance of the abortion industry in America has been the passage of Obamacare,” Palin said.

This, of course, is not true. Health care reform was never going to result in “taxpayer-funded abortion,” and just to make extra, super-duper sure that anti-choicers were cool with it and pro-choicers were profoundly disappointed by him, President Obama signed an executive order explicitly prohibiting the use of federal funds for abortions except in cases of rape, incest and danger to the woman’s life.

But no matter. The truth doesn’t stop a Mama Grizzly. Just like the truth didn’t stop the Susan B. Anthony List, a supposedly non-partisan group devoted to supporting “pro-life women” in politics, from dedicating much of its resources to defeating anti-choice Democrats who voted for health care reform in the midterms. (Being sued for false advertising for running ads claiming U.S. Rep. Steve Driehaus voted for “taxpayer-funded” abortion didn’t stop them either.)

As The Nation reported last month, the SBA List seems more committed to advancing Republicans than the anti-choice cause. And Sarah Palin’s motivations are similarly politically expedient. She clearly doesn’t give a damn about actually decreasing the abortion rate (ensuring birth control is covered as preventive care under health care reform would be a promising way to achieve that particular goal).

But claiming health care reform funds abortion is a sure-fire way to give her conservative, anti-choice base one more reason to hate Obama. And it also ensures that pro-choicers are forced to spend all their time setting the record straight about how health care reform doesn’t fund abortion instead of articulating the many good reasons why it should.