As I was watching C-Span all day yesterday, I heard a snippet about the role that the Conference of Catholic Bishops played in securing the Stupak Amendment, which prevents my money and yours from being spent on elective abortions.
From here:
Introduced on July 14, the House package was approved in sections by three House committees. Since August, Pelosi has huddled behind closed doors with various factions of her diverse caucus to merge the three parts into comprehensive legislation.
The sticking points were clear from the start. Conservatives opposed the bill’s price tag and limited efforts to cut costs. Moderates, who face the toughest 2010 reelection battles, were wary of big-government overtones in the public option. Democrats from wealthy districts opposed the tax on high earners, which originally would have affected taxpayers with annual incomes as low as $280,000.
One after another, the obstacles were overcome — except for the simmering dispute over abortion. In early October, Rep. Bart Stupak, an antiabortion Democrat from Michigan, met with Pelosi to express the strong objections of about 40 Democrats to a provision in the legislation that appeared to allow federal funding of abortion. Stupak said they would oppose the bill unless the language was changed. Pelosi was noncommittal.
Late Friday, the Stupak coalition was still holding strong, and had gained a powerful ally in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, whose leadership has close connections to Pelosi. Over the strong objections of Democrats who support abortion rights, the speaker relented to Stupak, awarding him the only Democratic amendment on the floor.
Also:
Here we point out to mainstream journalists an op-ed piece predicting that Stupak would be a force to be reckoned with. Here’s a look at the New York Times’ front-page story about the huge obstacle of abortion funding to passing a health care reform bill. Here we again point out to mainstream journalists Steven Waldman’s excellent and highly prophetic column about why the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops and their concern about abortion was so important. Here we’re criticizing the absence of pro-life liberals from coverage of the debate. Here’s an earlier post that makes the same point. And another. And another! In fact, this is a point we’ve been looking at for much of the year, with far too little coverage to praise.
Stupak was nearly a lone voice in securing the pro-life amendment, but when the Religious Right/Left (including Jim Wallis of the Sojourners) supported him, it passed, and the pro-choice Democrats had to swallow it. For my part, I am happy that the Catholic Bishops forced this issue and congratulate them. I was watching a Catholic News program last week, and the host was walking all over the Conference of Catholic Bishops for its support of Health Care Reform, but had they not supported this measure, then we could very well have seen federal dollars spent on elective abortions.
I bet H.D. Thoreau would have been pretty happy about this.
