Deal-Breaker, Thy Name Is Abortion
Praise be to Jesus, Allah, or any prophet of your choice, for Congressman Bart Stupak. The Michigan Democrat brought every voter's favorite deal-breaker back into the spotlight. I, for one, had been missing the rhetoric. You remember the Religious Right’s exasperation over Notre Dame’s commencement invitation to President Baby Killer six months ago. For weeks I have been pining for someone to bring Sonia Sotomayor back and ask her: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you like abortion?”
But somebody, maybe it was the bartender on Cheers, once said "ask and ye shall receive." And out of nowhere comes Rep. Stupak's anti-choice amendment to the Affordable Health Care for America Act. It's here to hijack health care and, depending who you talk to, either save that public option by allowing the pro-life crew to vote yay on health care reform and still sleep at night, or kill it because the pro-choice crowd won’t stand for this 21st century Hyde Amendment further reducing the number of women with a choice.
The Hyde Amendment, a 1976 pro-life response to Roe v Wade, forbids the use of federal money for abortion services. The only direct and logical result of this, of course, is restricting abortion to the Americans who can afford it. Examples of those affected by the Hyde Amendment include US military personnel and their families, Peace Corps volunteers and many Native Americans. The Stupak Amendment targets those same demographics.
It may be hard to imagine people who take pride in the United States being the last member of the industrialized world remaining indifferent to health care coverage for those on the bottom rungs of our economic ladder, but, here we are. Obamacare was actually and finally leading us along the initial steps in the universal direction. As it turns out, though, there's at least one devil in the details. Mr. Stupak's successful amendment to H.R. 3962 prohibits any insurance plan of the divisive public option from offering coverage for abortion.
Abortion may seem to have no logical place in a conversation to decide who can have health care coverage, but it is a big deal, perhaps the big deal. But abortion is no crime in this country. Even the Republican National Committee had abortion coverage included in its own health care plan, until the Stupak controversy exposed the hypocrisy. For years an official plank in the party platform had clearly stated "Abortion is really, very, extremely unethical, immoral and just plain awful." Or something like that.
The US may be the world's last superpower. It's military, popular culture, and even financial institutions may still be No. 1. But no matter our role on the world stage, there have always been certain unavoidable facts of national life in these United States to shame or baffle us.
A 3rd baseman earned a salary of $33 million this past season. A recent blockbuster movie here in the country that invented the automobile, the airplane and the Internet, is a romantic fantasy constructed upon a love triangle between a teenage girl and (I am not making this up) a vampire and a werewolf. And when tens of millions of citizens in the richest country on earth wake up feeling sick, there is nothing they can do about it. Congress can change that last one.
As long as Americans die because they don't have a doctor, we are not No. 1. Meanwhile, it is unconscionable for the health care debate to be contaminated by an entirely unrelated matter. Deal-breaker, thy name is Stupak.
