Update: By a 240-194 margin the House voted in favor of the anti-choice Stupak Amendment. Shortly thereafter the House passed the health care bill by a vote of 220-215 with a single Republican joining 219 Democrats. For more, visit the RD blog.—ed.
As the House of Representatives health care reform bill edges closer to a vote, anti-choice Democrats continue their threats to hijack the bill over abortion funding. These members, and their supporters, are the very constituency Democrats have been urged to placate on abortion-related issues. That strategy, misguided to begin with, seems even more so as the “pro-life” Democrats are trying to bring down their own party’s signature legislative initiative.
As part of Democrats’ re-tooling in the post-“values voters” election of 2004, they tried to be more “friendly” to religion. A big part of that strategy included making anti-choice Democrats feel more “welcome” in the party by being less doctrinaire on choice, and acknowledging the claimed heartfelt religious belief at the core of these Democrats’ position.
But now some of these Democrats, who claim to be pro-life, are playing politics with health care reform, aligning themselves more closely with the anti-choice hard right and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) than their own party. They insist that efforts to ensure that no public funds will be used to cover abortion services are insufficient. This game-playing is not about public funding of abortion, already outlawed in the Hyde Amendment (which bars federal funding from being used to pay for abortions for low-income women under Medicaid and other programs). Indeed, the House bill already incorporates Hyde through its own amendment authored by pro-choice California Democrat, Rep. Lois Capps.
Instead, these Democrats, led by Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, are pushing for an amendment to restrict womens’ access to abortion. And that’s not theology, it’s politics.
Even so, says Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, those attempting to torpedo health care reform over the abortion issue do not represent mainstream religious views. “Pro-choice religious groups and leaders are very mainstream. They are supporting health care reform in the broadest framework,” she said in an interview with RD.
While the USCCB has taken a hard line on opposing health care reform (which it claims to support) if abortion isn’t sufficiently restricted, it does not represent the views of most Catholics. A recent poll commissioned by Catholics for Choice found that 68% of Catholics disapproved of the Bishops’ opposition to health care reform that includes abortion coverage; 56% believed the Bishops shouldn’t even be taking a position on the health care reform legislation. The views of the country’s 65 million Catholics, said Jon O’Brien, the group’s president, “are not represented by 350 members of the USCCB.”
Other pro-choice religious leaders are similarly dismayed. Rev. Debra Haffner, president of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing, reacting to efforts to restrict abortion coverage in health care reform, wrote on her blog, “It is profoundly unjust when the private moral choices of women... are subject to majority vote and political trading. There can be no common ground when votes are allowed to strip people of their existing rights.”
Planned Parenthood, said Richards, wants the Hyde Amendment repealed because low-income women should have equal access to abortion services. But, she added, “we’re not taking the position that health care reform is the place to relitigate that issue... unfortunately a handful of people would rather bring down health care reform in its entirety than provide the coverage women already have.”
Indeed, the pro-choice camp has compromised in order to make the bill more palatable to the anti-choice camp, which is not meeting them in the middle. “This is a hard time for us in the pro-choice community,” said O'Brien. “We’ve been straightforward and reasonable.” The House bill “is not a win for women. But it’s not a loss for the poor, marginalized, and dispossessed. We see it as a compromise.”
To further attempt to placate the anti-choice Democrats, Rep. Brad Ellsworth, Democrat of Indiana, has proposed an amendment that would make abortion funding restrictions more explicit than Capps. Pro-choice Democrats and Planned Parenthood are, as Richards put it, “not thrilled with” that language, but “my obligation as a leader of Planned Parenthood is to represent the interests of women and families who have no health care coverage at all.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters yesterday that the House leadership had not yet made a decision on whether to permit either Ellsworth’s or Stupak’s amendment. Anti-choice hardliners call it Ellsworth’s plan a “money laundering scheme,” and insist on the purity of Stupak’s amendment.
Tags: abortion, bart stupak, catholic bishops, catholic voters, catholics for choice, health care reform, healthcare reform, hyde amendment, planned parenthood, pro choice, pro life, pro-choice, pro-life, pro-life democrats, us bishops
"This is a hard time for us in the pro-choice community," said O'Brien. "We’ve been straightforward and reasonable." The House bill "is not a win for women. But it's not a loss for the poor, marginalized and dispossessed. We see it as a compromise."
Until these men, these anti-women men have to make the choice, until they get pregnant from a rape, from incest, until they have to look at the ultrasound of a foetus without a face, heart or kidneys, they need to remove their greedy little hands from my reproductive tract, and let well enough alone!
The biggest problem is not those persons who are morally opposed to abortion. I can respect them-- my sister is one-- and often they respect my pro-choice stance. The problem is those ones who would sacrifice the entirety of women-kind for one potential person.
Rather than support the woman's ability to choose, and therefore be able to provide for a child, they would prefer she carry the foetus to term, and then abandon her as soon as that infant draws breathe. No help for unplanned pregnancies lasts past labour and delivery.
I sincerely hope that this doesn't pass, and will continue to do as much as I can to rock the proverbial boat-- encouraging it's defeat.
I am a human, a person, an autonomous individual-- who just happens to have been born with ovaries... this does not make me a vessel for someone's politics, and I will not be used as such.
As an American living in Norway I have been very impressed with the Norwegian approach to handling political issues. Nightly debate programs give all sides their chance to clarify their positions. But in the U.S. it seems that loud voices, without real debates, are the major methods of persuasion today. Just look at the abortion issue. Nobody looks at the 'whys' of the belief--only at an unexamined conclusion.
The debate on abortion is merely opinion. Moral values are based on either self-centered, God-based or society-based non-provable basic assumptions. For the Catholic viewpoint let me excerpt from the free ebook series “And Gulliver Returns” (http://andgulliverreturns.info) The Abortion chapter in Book 4 elaborates the pros and cons of the 3 ethical assumptions. Let me attempt to summarize the changing Catholic position. From the 13th Century the views of St. Thomas Aquinas, that male embryos got their souls about 4 weeks after conception, females somewhat later, were the standard. His was a Christionized view of Aristotle’s ideas.
The crux of the modern idea, that the soul is infused at conception, might be traced to St. Paul (Romans 5:12) who started the ball rolling on ‘original sin.’ 500 years later St. Augustine popularized the idea. But the Blessed Virgin was born without original sin, her Immaculate Conception. Pope Pius IX declared this in 1854. Then in 1870 he decided that popes were infallible in church doctrine. So was his pronouncement retroactive?
Recent popes have generally followed Pius’s idea that the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception. This brings with it some theological problems. Since many fertilized ova never implant in the uterus what happens to these little souls?
If you are really interested in the question, see the aforementioned chapter. It is done in detail.
America must begin to think through all the aspects of the issues rather than just letting the lobbyists dictate the conclusions they want.
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