The question so many are asking today is: How did we end up with a House bill on health insurance reform that dramatically undercuts abortion rights?
After all, we have a pro-choice president who supports public funding of abortion, a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, a Democratic party platform that supports choice and public funding, support for overturning the Hyde Amendment in the major Jewish and Christian denominations, and national polls that tell us that most Americans—including Catholics—believe that health insurance should cover abortion service.
Fingers are immediately pointed at the Catholic bishops, and there is no doubt that the lobby that exerted the most effort and probably money to defeat the inclusion of insurance for abortion services in the reform was the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Their lobbyists have been on the Hill every day urging support for the Stupak Amendment and in the final hours they pulled out all the stops sending a bulletin to 19,000 parish churches across the US calling on those at Sunday mass to lobby in favor of excluding coverage for abortion services.
Every news article describes meetings between the bishops’ lobbyists and Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman. Yet, national polls tell us that only about 15% of Catholics agree with the bishops that abortion should be illegal, and Catholics, according to a CFC poll, are split on funding, 50% for and 50% against broad coverage for abortion based on the woman’s decision. Fifty/Fifty on funding is not a promising electoral margin and folks: political decisions are not made on the basis of national polls.
Elections are increasingly won on the basis of very small margins of victory and too many Democrats now run in highly polarized districts where a shift in 2% of the vote is the difference between a seat in Congress and defeat. When candidates and incumbents believe (as they do in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Colorado and the South) that the local bishop and parish priests can convince 2% of those Catholics in the pew to vote against them because they are pro-choice, the die is cast.
And when the Democratic party decided in 2004 to court anti-abortion, but otherwise progressive, candidates like Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, they set the stage for a Democratic majority that would be held hostage by a minority of anti-abortion Catholics, like Stupak and Blue Dog Democrat Travis Childers, who, if united, could determine the outcome of any vote and extract anti-abortion provisions to their heart’s content. The message the Party sent was that it is just as moral to be pro-choice as anti-abortion and we not only had to tolerate each other, we had to welcome those who were opposed to abortion with more than open arms. And the Party did. Howard Dean and Chuck Schumer then head of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee set about recruiting anti-choice Democrats like Bob Casey to run in tough districts. They got what they wanted—a majority.
But the adage be careful what you wish for applies. Emboldened after being marginal for so long, the new guys and the old guys teamed up with 19 of them—all representatives affiliated with Democrats for Life—wrote Pelosi in June to tell her that if abortion funding was included in health care reform they would vote against it. Eleven of the 19 are Roman Catholics; eight have been elected since 2004.
The President added his two cents pontificating in papal tones, strangely prideful, assuring us that “no federal dollars will be used for abortion.” He made it sound like this was a good thing instead of the moral deficit that it is.
It was a knock out, a one-two punch. The bishops hit women hard, right in the belly and the coup de grace was the slap in the face from the anti-choice Democrats. Violence against women should come as no surprise.
And so, early Sunday morning, women were treated to the spectacle of the Democratic pro-choice president and the Democratic congressional leaders all smiles at the historic passage of a House bill authorizing modest but important reforms in health insurance. No one had the decency to note that it was accomplished—as much social progress has been for centuries—by limiting women’s reproductive freedom. Now there’s a moral crusade gone awry.
Tags: anti-abortion, blue dogs, catholics, catholics for choice, charles schumer, democrats, hyde amendment, pro-life, pro-life democrats, stupak
Connecting opposition to federal abortion funding to violence against women is a long and awkward leap. How far from a sensible and aware knowledge of humanity and human nature have you come? and why? Does the relationship between mother and infant mean nothing to you any longer? As you press for unlimited access to abortion, why are you not pressing at least as hard for adoption services for those babies. You could spare their mothers the act of violence against their own children that every abortion must be. Perhaps it's a choice that a woman cannot avoid, or in some circumstances chooses for her own reasons; but at least help her to see the ramifications, and what it means to her own body and spirit. You are missing far too much of both bio- and ethics.
Until you have had to make the choice, personally, then I would respectfully ask that you refrain from judging the women who make the choice. These "ramifications" of which you speak are not the so-called "post abortion syndrome" nor the propaganda of depression and feelings of worthlessness...
Amazingly, sometimes these "ramifications" are a profound sense of relief that we can continue our lives and to provide for the children we already have...
But, if you haven't been there you would not, and could not, know.
What ramifications are you taking about.
How does giving another human being the chance
to live life, just like you were given the chance.
How does adoption interfere with you raising your
children.
I am just angry and deeply fed up with all of them.
The bishops show a profound disregard for the needs of women and an immense contempt for not only non-Catholics but also Catholics who know there bishops are wrong on reproductive rights. No one forces women to have abortions. However, many people with no vital interest in the private rights of other human being impinge on a basic human right.
If abortion is so great, as Kissling seems to be saying - here and in all her writings - then let the killer Democrats in Congress introduce a separate bill to fund abortion with tax dollars. Don't expand abortion through the overall health reform bill, which has a different purpose and public. One more thing: good luck with that. Not gonna happen, as long as there are even 2 percent of us with a sense of human decency.
Outlawing private insurance coverage for abortion is outrageouos.
This article isn't factual.
To say majority of Americans support abortion funding is false.
Why don't you list all the polls that support your statement.
You list one poll that says Catholics are split 50/50.
And yet before this you tell us Catholics in the majority support
abortion funding.
You just had three elections and two of them were won by pro-lifers. Look at Virginia. Your candidate made it a point to run
on the abortion issue and got soundly defeated.
Gee where was the so call majority in those elections.
In the Democratic party there was enough oppositions to make this
amendment necessary.
Why are you angry. If you are right, than all those Democrates who
forced this amendment will have to face their voters. And as you
say majority of Americans want abortion funding; they will pay.
But again how do explain recent elections. And the fact you don't
list all those polls that support your statements.
But we are lucky to have people like you. Superior intellect who
doesn't need facts or reality. And damn those Catholics. There
just robots to do what bishops tell them.
As a woman, mother, and physician who remembers pre Roe v Wade, I feel you guys absolutely have NO clue about contraception, pregnancy, abortion or women's lives and the sometimes difficult choices we have to make for our own good and the wellbeing of our families.
First, our insurance companies should pay for our birth control choices, just like they pay for Viagra! That's a fight we continue to have!
Second, you act as if pregnancy and especially delivery is not a risk at all to the mother. So why not just "land the plane" and give it up for adoption?!... There will always be a risk of mortality and certainly morbidity with delivery...much more so than a first trimester abortion.
You also act as if all women have control of our sexuality and can always choose when not to have sex...all relationships are not equal!
Look at Africa and even South America, with their high rate of maternal mortality, abortion-related maternal deaths, lack of access to contraception, etc. and you apparently want to see similar statistics here in the US.
On target, Thank you. The bishops are not women. They have not clue. They are not necessarily cruel men, but they have an abstration to worhip, and they have little concent for the needs of women.
would make a better case if they opposed our genocidal wars. They make almost no effort to question them. During the Vietnam Genocide, only one bishop made any substantial effort to make an argument against our murdering ways.
Pro-choice advocates need to go after every bishop with a close examination of the personal life and career of each bishop. Any sexual indiscretion found needs clear and complete investigation and propagation. These old men are not pure. They know it.
The same goes for anti-choice representatives and senators. They better be clean.
From my personal experience of both people from the religious right and from the priethood of the Catholic Church, those folks are fakes.
If this is too much for you, turn the focus on sexual justice. The Catholic Church opposes sexual justice. They utterly disgraces their denomination (use that word) in recent years with their scandals and cover up of their criminal priests.
Catholicism is wonderful. The Church needs reform.
Its worse than that. They have abandoned several encyclicals from Vatican II. One says very clearly that "discrimination of any kind is against God's design"(from the official English translation as encyclicals are written in Latin.)
The idea of "just discrimination" that sprung up in my lifetime is why people are leaving the church. According to Pope John XXIII there is no such thing as "just discrimination".
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