A few weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed its healthcare bill by a vote of 220-215. As Jeffrey Toobin reports, a significant factor contributing to the Democrats' success was their "big tent" approach to abortion. At the last minute, Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak proposed removing all government subsidies for abortion from the bill, and the amendment passed by a vote of 240-194.The article goes on to explain how President Obama is clearly struggling in terms of expressing his pro-choice interests while also appeasing his opponents. By conceding the lack of federal subsidies, the bill was able to pass in the House. However, the question, as Toobin so aptly puts it, is whether the President has crossed a fine line between compromise and surrender.
Obama is a massive failure so far.
ReplyDeleteI sadly agree w/ 11:20
ReplyDeleteWell, that settles it. I always agree with the keen political insights of Anonymous (and Anonymous, too).
ReplyDelete12:12--) my point was simple: Obama simply hasn't delivered in any dept. Hes taken the public mandate and fumbled it like he's an Eric-mangini coached wide receiver. So talk about what u want on my insight, but it was simple and true
ReplyDeleteI can't see how Obama/pro-choice Dems are going to win on this. If Pelosi couldn't keep the Stupak amendment out of the House bill, where the Dems have a strong majority and a strong liberal coalition, keeping something like that out of a Senate bill seems impossible. While the Stupak amendment may do much more than just prohibit public money for abortions, it will be easy for Republicans to paint anyone who opposes it as wanting to use public money for abortions. The Dems will go from being just plain vanilla socialists to baby-killing socialists. Ideally, Obama would use his position as leader of the Democratic Party to explain why opposing the Stupak amendment does not equal supporting public funding of abortions. But given that he's barely able to sell healthcare reform and beat back Republican scaremongering about "government takeover of healthcare," I don't think he can or will devote any energy to this abortion debate. I think the best pro-choice Dems can hope for is some sort of time limit on the Stupak amendment i.e., it comes up for renewal in a few years, and maybe then, Congress can have a rational debate about it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I wonder how a law that would make abortions harder to get by effectively discouraging private insurance companies from covering them plays into the undue burden standard.Granted, no one seems to know what that standard means anyway. But any thoughts on how the Supreme Court would handle it?
Honestly, I'm not sure. To echo what you said, after Gonzales, it's unclear what the parameters of the undue burden standard are. Also, in Casey, the court upheld the 24 hour waiting period although many women's rights organizations argued that such a restriction disproportionatley affected poor women who could not take more than one day off from work. Although with Stupak's type of ban, it is primarly middle class women who will be affected, it seems that the Court is not persuaded by the significance of financial barriers to abortion.
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