Pro-Life, but against S-Chip expansion?

A group called "Catholics United" criticizes "ten members of Congress whose opposition to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) have compromised their pro-life voting records."  Here is the full release. “Building a true culture of life requires public policies that promote the welfare of the most vulnerable,” said Chris Korzen, executive director of Catholics United. “At the heart of the Christian faith is a deep and abiding concern for the need of others. Pro-life Christians who serve in Congress should honor this commitment by supporting health care for poor children.”

Here is Ryan Anderson's response, "A Hijacking in Progress."  Anderson writes:

I'm no health-care expert, but it seems to me that that there are legitimate arguments on both sides of the debate over this bill. Those who think a single-payer, federally funded health insurance program is ultimately the way to fix American health care will likely support the expansion of S-chip as a step in that direction. Those who think that this expansion will reduce competition in the health care market and create too many additional entitlements that the federal government can't fund (as millions of middle-class families who previously paid for private insurance for their kids opt in for this "free" one) have opposed it. This is what some of the congressmen that Catholics United is targeting have said--they support reauthorizing S-chip as it currently is, but the Democrats' plan for its expansion is a mistake. . . .

The pro-life jabs are particularly distasteful and destructive. They are nothing more than gross moral equivocation and the intentional hijacking of language. If every poverty-fighting bill under the sun becomes a "pro-life" bill, then the words lose all meaning. According to its website, Catholics United is a pro-life group dedicated to protecting the 1.3 million Americans killed every year by abortion. Yet it is leading the charge to eviscerate the clear meaning that the words "pro-life" have had in the American context for the past generation: opposition to legalized abortion coupled with support for mothers facing crisis pregnancies.

But no one is against health care for poor children. In this debate there is no pro-poor and anti-poor.  Everyone is pro-poor.  There simply are different ways of being pro-poor: one way emphasizes federal programs and nationalized care, and one favors private initiatives and community empowerment. Extending federally-subsidized state-run health insurance to children in families making eighty-thousand dollars a year is one way among many to meet the needs of children.  Drawing largely from Catholic Social Doctrine, the principle of subsidiarity, the autonomy of the family, and John Paul II's moral critique of the welfare state, I happen to think it's a mistaken way. But I won't call you a bad Catholic or anti-life if you disagree.