The U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions turned down an amendment that would have prevented any government health insurance plan from paying for abortion services. It is unclear yet whether this is part of a legislative strategy but it is time for Catholic Democrats to lay down some markers.
First, Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania voted with the GOP senators in support of the measure. His bishop in Scranton was quick to denounce the senator for voting to confirm Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services and I hope he will be just as quick to commend Casey for this courageous vote. I see nothing on the diocesan website this morning. As I have noted before, if the bishops want to create a culture of life, they must recognize the need to have pro-life politicians in both parties.
Now, the others who voted for the measure may truly want a federal option to cover abortion services, but some may also see this committee vote as a bargaining chip. After all, it is unclear if the more conservative Senate Finance Committee will even back a federal option in the health care reform legislation. Legislators are permitted to vote in ways that appear wrong in pursuit of an overall legislative strategy, so no one should be getting into a lather yet.
We should, however, be letting our congressional representatives and senators know that providing federal funds for abortion is a deal-breaker. Even Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said yesterday that the Hyde Amendment banning federal dollars being used for abortions is “settled law” and should not be overturned in an interview on MSNBC. It is unclear, however, if some complicated legislative language will be found to try and get around the Hyde Amendment. Legislators should know that subverting the Hyde Amendment will cost them considerable Catholic support.
My sources in the Obama administration tell me that the White House understands that overturning the Hyde Amendment could kill health care reform and that they do not want to have this fight despite pressure from pro-choice organizations to hijack health care reform to achieve this long sought goal of theirs. Catholics should stiffen the administration’s resolve on this. To be clear: I have never voted for a Republican in my life. My mother told me my right hand would wither and fall to the ground if I did. But, if the President or my representatives in Congress support federal funding for abortion in any way, shape or form, I will never vote for them again and I might risk my right hand in the next election by voting for their opponent.
So, call your Senators and Representatives. Call the White House. Many of us pro-life Democrats have given the President the benefit of the doubt on the abortion issue because of his repeated commitment to trying to lower the abortion rate, a commitment he reiterated to Pope Benedict XVI last week. All the good will he has earned among Catholic swing voters, and all the arguments on his behalf progressive Catholics have mounted, all could be swept away if abortion is part of a federal option in health care. Politics is the art of compromise, but on this point, there can be none.
Abortion & Health Care Reform
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Senator Durbin has a well-earned reputation for duplicity and his comment that the Hyde Amendment is ''settled law'' is a good example - the Hyde Amendment is not a permanent law at all, but merely a year-by-year patch to the annual HHS funding bill. Moreover, the Kennedy and House Democratic health-care bills set up pools of money that would not be subject to the Hyde Amendment even in the short run. That is why Senator Hatch offered a ''permanent Hyde Amendment'' to the Kennedy bill yesterday - an amendment voted down by every Democrat on the HELP Committee, except Sen. Casey.
By identical votes, the HELP Committee also rejected amendments to prevent the bill from mandating coverage and access to abortion, and to protect state pro-life laws from being overridden. A bill to protect health-care providers from being forced to participate in providing abortions (the Coburn Amendent) was also voted down. The committee Democrats instead adopted a phony, ultra-narrow ''conscience'' provision offered in the name of Sen. Kennedy.
The pro-abortion groups, such as NARAL and Planned Panrehtood, understand very well that these bills would mandate universal coverage and universal local ''access'' to abortion, with federal funding, and they are lobbying aggressively to keep it that way. We have posted numerous statements from these groups on our website at [url=http://www.nrlc.org]www.nrlc.org[/url]. For example, the president of Planned Parenthood (the nation's largest abortion provider) recently said that the reform legislation was a ''platform'' to expand abortion ''access'' to ''all women''.
As currently written, these bills would result in the biggest expansion of abortion access since Roe v. Wade. This legislation poses mortal peril to the unborn and it is on a fast track.
Douglas Johnson
Legislative Director
National Right to Life Committee
[url=mailto:legfederal@aol.com]legfederal@aol.com[/url]
The real answer to avoid paying for abortion is to pay a family wage at $500 per child per month (which is easily funded if tax benefits for home ownership are dropped - both mortgage interest and property taxes). Of course, if you pay such a credit, the vast majority of those funds will likely go to housing costs - so the housing sector needs to be assured that it won't lose any ground overall - but will likely be spending more of its money on affordable housing than under current law. Now, how any Catholic politician can avoid endorsing such a proposal is beyond me. Frankly, if Mr. Johnson really wants to decrease abortions, he will commit his organization to such a reform. If he does not, then it is clear he is a GOP hack.
That incest pregnancy girl in your class is about 1% of all abortions and her kind of abortion are not the abortions that pro-life Dems are trying to limit.
Chris, my proposal works just fine, since it is the second and third trimester abortions that produce the most outrage - although you are correct that Mr. Johnson would never buy such a bargain - since without the dead fetus pictures taken in the later trimesters and the spectre of late term abortion sbortions his fundraising would go down precipitously. He would also certainly never compromise on the economics (even though it would cut the first trimester abortions drastically), since doing so would cause a rift in the Republican base - indeed they would call him a socialist if he even broached the subject.
Catholics are obliged to deal with the economics, however. Most of us did so by voting for Obama. The deal that I proposed will likely be adopted anyway - either by Obama or a later progressive. The only question is, how will the pro-life movement react to it.
So, when the Catholic Church teaches that voting for a known pro-abortion politician, as was common knowledge about Pres Obama when he was a Senator, is a grave matter, I can only wonder what part of that teaching do the, as you call them, progressive Catholics, not understand. A culture of life involves the respect for a person from conception to natural death and also the years in between. Expanding big government, reckless spending of hardworking taxpayers money and then taxing the people that will create jobs is not a culture that respects life it is a culture that controls life and that is unacceptable according to the teaching of the Catholic Church.
I disagree with you that we need prolife politicians on both sides, we need Catholics who really believe what their Church teaches. That is the change this country needs. Join us, the truth will set you free!
That is a tragic case! I will pray for her.
Being evidenced-based (like President Obama), I was wondering if there is any data that this poor child will be better off after aborting her child than she would be if she carries the child to term? Certainly the child will be better off and at least she won't carry the burden of having aborted her child. She has enough emotional burden to deal with without having killed her offspring.
How can a Catholic vote Democratic? Easy. In 5 of 6 cases, there is a chance that abortion is less likely due to what the Democrat would do in office, since that is the frequency of the time that economic factors lead to abortion.
Now, a hypothetical for Douglas Johnson. How would you react to the following proposal by Barack Obama:
- legislatively recognizing the unborn at either the 30th week or the 24th week, with an exception for the life of the mother, gross fetal deformity (but not including simple birth defects like Spina Bifida or Downs Syndrome but including defects which will kill the infant anyway shortly after birth) and the health of the mother on a bodily injury standard (not counting the simple risk normally associated with childbirth as such an injury) and no exceptions for simple neurosis or the baby blues.
- increasing the Child Tax credit to $6000 per child and making it fully refundable, while ending the Mortgage Interest, Points and Property Tax Deductions (knowing full well that two thirds of the child deduction will likely be used for housing) - and possibly a $7000 credit if rental assistance and food stamp programs are ended so that TANF recipients, who must pursue literacy to at least 10th grade levels, and after that either tech school or junior college to get benefits, with a carve out for Catholic Schools to offer the literacy programs.
Would you take both items of the deal and work to have your membership support it with the Republican members? If not, why not - as it could prevent up to 3 of 4 abortions (if not all of them, as the lack of demand will close most abortion mills)?
If the answer is yes, would you take such a deal to Obama yourself?
My question to everyone else is, how many on either the left or right extreme would think this is a devil's bargain - and who would be considered the Devil? Or is the Devil's bargain the one between the Committee and the GOP who would resist any change to the status quo, as it would damage the Republican coalition (or for that matter the Devil's bargain between the Democratic Party and Planned Parenthood and NARAL, who would likely also object).
Catholics who voted for the President won't sit still for either of the latter two Devil's bargains - but may insist on the proposals I outlined. Opinions?
89% of all abortions in occur in the first trimester.
(see: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html )
That's from the Guttmacher Institute.... no friend to unborn children.
Your hypothetical for Mr. Johnson does not work.
Thanks for your great words. I was one of eleven Irish Catholic siblings who were also taught by our mother that we ought not ever go Republican. When I did make the change in midlife - because as a liberal I had always resisted an Orwellian big government, cradle to grave monitoring of my acts, myspeech and my freedoms and I saw how much the liberals started becoming defenders of big government because they were employed by government (teachers). Anyway, my mom started introducing me to her friends as the Black Sheep of the family. Sigh.
It's one of my greatest memories to have had the privilige of taking her in to vote for her first Republican president - Bush 43 - because the Catholic bishops and priests started politicing a bit more in 2004 on the abortion issue. She too voted on conviction and principle against 84 years of the way she was trained to buy the Democrat brand.
Thanks again for your principled position. Keep the faith.
I am a little shocked that you have never voted for a Republican. However, I am heartened that you are drawing a line on federal funding for abortion. I do believe this abortion business would have been settled long ago if politically liberal but fatifhul Catholics had entered the lists long ago.
Not a bad post...
Best,
Austin Ruse/President/Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute
I too gave the Democrats and ultimatum. I have since gotten over the whole Democrat/Republican Party thing. I now have voted for candidates in both parties. It was difficult at first but trust me, you can get over those sentimental feelings. You must get over it. The killing of the unborn is too important of an issue to allow your emotions to get the better of you.
Also, I think your parents will be proud of you for being true to your principles.
AND, didn't it bother you when the president reversed the Mexico City policy, thus sending millions of dollars to overseas abortion providers. AND started funding the UNFPA, documented to have supported coercive abortion in China.
I spent several years working in the Third World - those babies count, right?
Catholic Republican antiabortion activists need to do the same thing in the Republican party - push the party to have better peace and justice positions and become truly prolife. They have perhaps even more bargaining power in the Republican party that we do in the Democratic party I think. Catholic Republican antiabortion activists have been getting a free ride on this and deserve criticism for not trying to push the Republican party to be truly prolife too. They also have a moral responsiibility to do so. Unjust wars, tens of thousands of children dying from preventable death and disease, the genocide in Darfur, massacres in Chad, etc. are all "abortion equivalents" as far as I'm concerned, not to mention all the needless suffering caused by injustice here and abroad. And today the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons, which can't be used because they are genocidal, is even more absurd than it was in the 1980s when the Bishops' Peace Pastoral was written. If they ever had a moral justification, which i doubt, they certainly don't now. Where is the moral concern and outrage of Catholic antiabortion Republicans on these life issues?
To be antiabortion is not enough to be prolife. To be prochoice is not to be prolife, and we Catholic peace and justice activists need to make that even clearer. As far as I'm concerned, Cathoic peace and justice Democrats and Catholic antiabortion Republicans have both sold out to some degree, willing to sacrifice the morally necessary broader agenda for the sake of specific issues.
For me the ultimate solution probably will be to change the electoral system so that we can have a proportional representation system where a truly prolife party has a good chance of getting people elected. The Republicans and the Democrats may be hopelessly messed up. Check out [url=http://www.Fairvote.com]www.Fairvote.com[/url] for more on the movement for electoral system change.
As a civilization, we make allowances for taking the life of another in self-defense or in war. I offer the thought that for many girl-children and women – especially the poorest among us – therapeutic abortion is self-defense. I prefer to see my tax dollars go to the health care of these victims of male aggression than to an outrageous, ill-conceived war waged by a president who made pro-life a battle cry and then proceeded to kill not just soldiers but the innocent civilians as well and leave the mess for others to clean up.
Health care that includes therapeutic abortion ensures that my 14-year-old student (and other victims of incest and rape) are treated with the compassion they deserve. Far too often, the predominant stereotypic profile of the woman who seeks an abortion is that of the “good-time girl” who doesn’t want to “pay the price” of sexual activity. That might be true in some instances, but from my perspective, the law ensures that my 14-year-old student will not be considered a criminal for having a therapeutic abortion. I would like to see my tax dollars help her and not the Pentagon.
Advance any argument against tax-funded abortion that you may choose. All I need do is remember the eyes of that innocent girl-child in my class to know that for her, at least, abortion was her physical and psychological salvation.