REPUBLICANS these days tend to unite around two things: opposing abortion and rejecting Obamacare. It is fitting, then, that among the first items on the House agenda in 2014 is H.R. 7, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. The bill attacks both targets in one tidy package by reinforcing existing laws against federal funding of abortion and undermining a central provision of the Affordable Care Act. H.R. 7, introduced by Chris Smith of New Jersey and co-sponsored by over 170 House members, passed in the House this afternoon, 227 to 188. But it is unlikely to go anywhere, as it faces insurmountable oppositionin the Senate and in the White House.

Why is Eric Cantor, a Republican from Virginia, “proud to announce” that “the House will vote once and for all to end taxpayer funding for abortions”? The so-called Hyde Amendment, the first major win for the pro-life movement in the aftermath of Roe v Wade, did exactly what Mr Cantor advocates back in 1976. Four years later, a legal challenge to the Hyde Amendment was rebuffed by the Supreme Courtin Harris v McRae. The bill the House is taking up today liberates Congress from re-enacting the Hyde Amendment every year as a rider on the appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services; it codifies in perpetuity the ban on the use of federal monies for abortion. More radically, it penalises small businesses for providing health plans to their employees that include coverage for abortion.

Mr Smith has an unambiguous endgame. Last week at the March for Life in Washington, DC, commemorating the 41st anniversary of Roe v Wade, Mr Smith announced to the crowd of several hundred thousand pro-life demonstrators that "by the grace of God" and "because of you … we are winning.” Addressing the “youth, especially,” he added, “never quit or grow weary or discouraged. Your generation will end abortion." The House bill—along with hundreds of new state-level regulations adopted over the past few years—is intended as another step toward that goal.

Yet the very name of the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act is a red herring, as the New York Times editorialised on Sunday. Taxpayer funding of abortion has been forbidden for almost four decades now. Advocates of H.R. 7 nevertheless claim that Obamacare circumvents the Hyde Amendment and quietly streams federal funds into the coffers of abortionists. Here is Sarah Torre’s report for the Heritage Foundation:

For the first time, the federal government will provide an “affordability tax credit” to millions of low-income and middle-income individuals and families to help subsidize the purchase of health plans on the exchanges. By allowing health insurers that sell plans on many state exchanges to cover abortion while remaining eligible for federal subsidies, Obamacare opens new avenues for federal funding of abortion coverage. These federal tax credits could facilitate the purchase of health plans that cover elective abortion for millions of Americans who did not have such coverage previously.

The challenge Mr Smith’s bill poses to Obamacare is premised on a badly contorted interpretation of what counts as the expenditure of taxpayer funds. Notice how “federal tax credits” for women to purchase health plans and for small businesses become, in Ms Torre's hands, “federal funding” for abortion. This even though a federal court ruling from 2011 clearly trashes the legal merits of this claim: "The express language of the [Affordable Care Act] does not provide for tax-payer funded abortion. That is a fact, and it is clear on its face."

To give a tax break to an organisation is not the same as supporting it with taxpayer funds. Using Mr Smith’s logic, millions of Americans are unwittingly “supporting” all manner of practices and beliefs in religious and non-profit organisations around the country because they enjoy wide tax exemptions. But an exemption from property and other taxes is not a violation of the taxpayers’ freedom of conscience or an abrogation of the first-amendment's establishment clause. If we accept Mr Smith’s claim, we must also conclude that all Americans are paying for communion wafers, subsidising bacchanalian Purim carnivals, footing the bill for Jehovah’s Witnesses’ teachings against blood transfusions and financing Hajj pilgrimages to Mecca.

But of course American taxpayers are not really doing any of these things. They are living in a polity in which tax benefits for religious organisations are part of the political landscape, just as tax breaks for companies providing health plans for their employees are now part of the health-care regime. H.R. 7 is an election-year base-rallying cry and a tactic in the GOP's quest to undermine the implementation of Obamacare. But the idea at its heart is transparently disingenuous.