The Cathoholic

Catholic and Pro-life Leaders: Health Bill Postmortem

Here's my article on reactions to the bill's passage by Catholic and pro-life leaders.

They give high marks to the USCCB and vent frustration regarding the Catholic Health Association's endorsement.

Kathleen Parker: 'the guy who Stupaked health-care reform"

Parker lays it out in the Washington Post:

"Poor Bart Stupak. The man tried to be a hero for the unborn, and then, when all the power of the moment was in his frail human hands, he dropped the baby. He genuflected when he should have dug in his heels and gave it up for a meaningless executive order.

Now, in the wake of his decision to vote for a health-care bill that expands public funding for abortion, he is vilified and will forever be remembered as the guy who Stupaked health-care reform and the pro-life movement."

ObamaCare: Stupak on Board--For Good?

Just read the news: pro-life Democrats, including Rep. Bart Stupak, have backed the health bill, noting that they have been promised a Presidential Executive Order blocking federal funding of abortions. The  story in the Times reports that President Obama has promised that "community health centers, which will get billions in new federal financing under the health care bill, cannot perform the procedure [abortions]."

The Times noted that many pro-life groups don't believe the president will keep his word. Last year President Obama invited a group of Catholic journalists to the White House to discuss his health care reform priorities. There, according to numerous reports, he promised the bill would maintain the status quo on federal funding of abortions and offer robust conscience protections. However, once the Senate bill was passed without the broad, explicit ban on federal funding of the procedure found in the Stupak amendment,  the Democratic Party leadership insisted that Stupak's amendment overreached and was unnecessary. The White House and the Secretary for Health and Human Services asserted that the Senate bill secured the status quo established by the  Hyde amendment. No member of the Democratic party leadership would even address concerns that ObamaCare's community health services initiative  opened up a new revenue stream for abortion funding not covered by Hyde. According to the Times article, transparency was only required when Stupak insisted on an out-right pledge from the president. Why would pledge be necessary if there wasn't an issue?

From the start, the President also had pledged to pass a health bill that didn't increase the federal deficit. In recent weeks, critics and advocates of the bill have traded data on this issue; the back and forth has made it hard for voters to assess the truth. But today in The Times opinion pages, Douglas Holtz-Eakin,the director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2003 to 2005, decried efforts to misrepresent the bottom-line impact of the health bill.  According to Eakin, the bill will massively increase the deficit.

The question now is: Do Stupak and his pro-life cohorts still possess any leverage that will allow them to compel President Obama to fulfill his latest pledge? Capital Hill insiders say there is still a chance this 11th-hour pact could fall apart.

UPDATE: Here's the language of the Executive Order.