The Power of The Abortion Issue
While the Democrats did wind up passing health care in the house, as Adam notes below, it required a few weird last-minute concessions. Strangely, the deal-breakers were not the questions of budgetary solvency or fiscal restraint that make up the bulk of conservative objections to the health care plan, but rather the poison pills that allowed the Dems to avert a filibuster were social conservative ones. The most controversial?
Abortion opponents won a huge last-minute concession late Friday night after Democratic leaders agreed to grant them a vote on an amendment that would effectively bar insurers that participate in the exchanges from offering coverage for abortions.
Members of the Rules Committee approved a vote on the amendment early Saturday morning after hours of negotiations in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Capitol office, so the full House will get a chance to vote on it when the broader health care bill comes to the floor.
Leaders reluctantly made the decision after working for days to broker a truce that would garner a blessing from the Conference of Catholic Bishops. But the church, according to members and aides, wouldn’t accept a compromise crafted by Indiana Rep. Brad Ellsworth that would have established a body to make sure private insurance companies don’t use federal funds to pay for abortions.
The amendment was offered by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich) after a previous amendment (the aforementioned Ellsworth one) was deemed unacceptable to the anti-abortion folks. So a handful of crazies essentially demanded the concession or they were going to raise holy hell, and a bunch of pro-choice Demcorats, for the sake of not getting lost down yet another rabbit hole, said “fine, whatever” and voted aye. Now we don’t have to listen to a month of shoe-banging about Obamacare funding abortions, and Democrats are spared the headache of that particular talking point / fight, but the bad news is, of course, that this is bad law. Ezra Klein:
Because of the limits placed on the exchanges, most of the participants will have some form of premium credit or affordable subsidy. That means most will be ineligible for abortion coverage. The idea that people are going to go out and purchase separate “abortion plans” is both cruel and laughable. If this amendment passes, it will mean that virtually all women with insurance through the exchange who find themselves in the unwanted and unexpected position of needing to terminate a pregnancy will not have coverage for the procedure. Abortion coverage will not be outlawed in this country. It will simply be tiered, reserved for those rich enough to afford insurance themselves or lucky enough to receive from their employers.
That’s about the size of it.
The amendment may well get excised in later stages of the legislative process (and indeed that seems to be the belief of a lot of the architects of it), but it also may not, at which point abortion becomes a luxury good.
And THAT was the deal-breaker for enough Republicans to matter.
This reflects the fact that the essence of the right wing these days is religious fundamentalism. All economic/money issues are peripheral — mere window-dressing. Enforcing bronze-age religious taboos is what they really care about.
And, yes, I believe that our side will be able to get rid of these restrictions later, even if not in the immediate legislative process. It’s better to pass a flawed bill that can be fixed later than to insist on everything we want at the outset and possibly achieve nothing.
Comment by Infidel753 — 11/8/2009 @ 3:37 pm
I don’t think that’s true. 215 people voted against the bill; of those, I’m sure 90% would say they did so for fiscal reasons. As I’ve said before, that would be more compelling to me if they weren’t in essence defending the status quo, which still strikes me as the worst of all worlds, and if there wasn’t a decently compelling case on cost for the plan, but I’ve got no reason to question their motives.
I think it’s like a lot of the legislative process lately. A dozen or so people hold an entire area of reform hostage because they’re the “swing” votes. Nobody is going to the Boehner’s of the world to try to get their votes because there’s absolutely nothing they could do to get them. There is no presumption of good faith, and there is absolutely no argument or even truth that would sway them. They won’t vote for anything backed by the Democrats for the sole fact that it’s backed by the Democrats. So in the wrangling world, they’re non-entities. That’s 98% of the Republican caucus, right there.
But then there’s the dozen or however many it was that said “listen, we’re going to filibuster this thing, but if you include this amendment, we’ll just vote no.” And given that it’s a nearly 99%-99% issue, there’s almost no choice but to placate them.
And I have to say I think I try real, real hard to have respect for pro-lifers. I don’t agree, but in an academic way I try not to blame them, because if you start out with the premises they do, which is really a premise that can never be refuted, one that really comes down to just a fundamental difference of opinion in the most profound sense of it, their behavior makes sense, indeed is sometimes the only logical extension of it.
But stuff like this…I don’t know, it just seems like it’s ceased to be a practical issue of human suffering and has become a total fetishization.
Comment by Brad — 11/8/2009 @ 7:17 pm
The proponents of this amendment wish to prevent the federal financing of abortion. Indeed, the amendment appears to do so, to a considerable degree.
I am pro-choice, more or less, and I nonetheless agree 100% with the proponents of this amendment that abortions should not be federally financed.
Is it really your position that the opponents of abortion are not merely required to countenance its legality as a medical procedure, but to actually finance it through their tax dollars? And that reluctance to do so represents “total fetishization” by a “handful of crazies”?
Comment by Rojas — 11/8/2009 @ 10:02 pm
The death penalty is state sanctioned murder, but I still pay my state taxes because, whether I find it morally wrong or not, it’s legal in the commonwealth.
We all pay federal taxes to support a war that many of us oppose.
I certainly sympahize with anti-abortionists because it goes against the grain to force people to pay for something they see as evil, but abortion is legal. If the purpose of this health care reform is to cover the previously uninsured, why wouldn’t they have affordable access unless the state is making a values call on individuals that it has no right to make?
And separate abortion plans? Who is going to buy those? No one plans on having an abortion just like no one plans on getting cancer or the clap. In terms of the state – a legal medical procedure should be a legal medical procedure and not dictated by religious convictions, however strong they might be.
Comment by Liz — 11/8/2009 @ 10:36 pm
Liz gets it right.
I’d add, by the way, that I’m not saying abortion SHOULD be covered by public insurance (which is what the public option is), but that it should be in the same realm as every other medical procedure—i.e. whether or not it’s covered is determined by the insurer, doctor, and patient on a case-by-case basis or on the basis of limitations determined by science and necessity (versus based on politics and philosophy/morality). In other words, I’m not advocating an abortion-funding mandate, I’m simply advocating against an ANTI-abortion funding mandate.
Which, when you think about it, is a pretty good backdoor case against government-run health insurance. Here you have a group of people taking a medical choice out of the hands of doctors and into the hands of a small number of politicians who are making the decision on a purely political basis. The irony being, of course, that in this case it’s Republicans who are explicitly demanding we do that.
In any case, it’s easy to say “I’m against government funding of abortions”, but you’re also, presumably, against government funding breast implants, or root canals, or MRIs, or any other medical procedure. That makes you against the public option generally, which is a separate issue. The issue here is within the framework of the public option whether abortion constitutes a medical procedure in which the say of legislators ought to trump the say of doctors and/or the market (the market in the sense of the presumably non-civil servants who administer the public option and act as any other actuarial insurers do).
I guess I have no idea if private insurance currently covers abortions (probably it does, but I don’t know the limitations of that). But essentially what this says is that people with private insurance can have abortions covered (presuming their insurer covers it), but the people who fall into the safety net of the public options can not. And those people are, by definition, the poorest, those who cannot afford private health insurance, and who also are the least able to afford an unwanted child and the most likely to run up against the need for an abortion on those groups (rather than health of the mother sort of stuff).
Comment by Brad — 11/8/2009 @ 10:48 pm
I’m sorry, you two, but this makes no sense to me at all.
The decision of what medical procedures to provide public coverage for is entirely distinct from the decision as to which medical procedures are legal. It has to be. Were this not the case, the government would be obliged to sponsor, as part of a public option, coverage of the entire spectrum of moonbat alternative medicine that Adam referenced in his post earlier this week.
Abortion should NOT be under the same public financing framework as other medical procedures for the very good reason that a strong moral and scientific case can be made that it is murder. That rather differentiates it from, say, an appendectomy.
Liz argues against the possibility of private sector health insurance for abortions on the ground that nobody plans on getting pregnant. Begging your pardon, but isn’t that the exact nature of insurance? To guard against unplanned consequences? The argument against a fully private system, as I understand it, is that it creates inferior quality of catastrophic medical care for the uninsured–higher death rates and so forth. What is the relevance of this argument to abortion specifically? Is it your contention that the uninsured suffer from inferior quality emergency dialation/extraction procedures or something? If not, what exactly is the case against making people who opt for public insurance pay for their own abortions, rather than relying on an insurance character?
Yes, Brad, you ARE arguing for an abortion funding mandate. That is PRECISELY the question at stake in the case of this particular amendment, which you selected out of all the available political issues to post about today. It is also the explicit, express argument you make in your final paragraph in comment five. Absent the amendment, the public option would involve the financing of abortions with public money. With the amendment, it does not. This is ONLY “bad law” if you accept Klein’s implicit argument that public provision of abortions is a good thing.
Using forcibly-seized taxpayer dollars to finance a procedure like abortion is as anti-libertarian an argument as I can think of offhand. Liz makes the argument that foreign wars and the death penalty involve the same moral conundrum. To which I respond: exactly. That is one of the reasons why this blog has consistently opposed the death penalty, and why the more libertarian-leaning members of this blog have opposed those foreign wars as well.
There is no earthly reason why abortion needs to be included within the framework of the public option. None whatsoever. This amendment seperates them, as a courtesy to those who find the process of killing fetuses repugnant. And somehow this causes my fellow posters to describe the objectors as “a handful of crazies” with “bronze-age religious taboos”. I’m really sort of appalled.
Comment by Rojas — 11/8/2009 @ 11:27 pm
Let me add this as well:
Somewhere between thirty and forty percent of the American public views abortion as murder, period. Closer to seventy percent believes in some form of legal restriction upon the use of abortion as a medical practice. I am unsure of the polling regarding public financing of abortion for the poor, but I think I am safe in assuming that the numbers are not good for the supporters.
If people like yourselves decide to start swinging at those individuals who object to the public option as a backdoor method for taxpayer-financed abortions–and dismissing their objections as those of “a handful of crazies” is impossible to see as anything other than a swing at those people–you are going to knock public option fence-sitters off of the fence in a big hurry.
If the difference between the status quo and the public option is the difference between making support for abortion OPTIONAL and making support for abortion COMPULSORY, then I damn well know which side I’m on.
Comment by Rojas — 11/8/2009 @ 11:33 pm
First off, I have no problem with abortion being excluded from normal coverage, just like dentistry is excluded in the socialist paradise that is Canada.
But,
a) I’m not a woman, so my connection to the issue can afford to be abstract and dispassionate.
b) there should always be some form of insurance available to consumers that allows people to gain coverage for abortion procedures. Further, though maybe the normal health care program shouldn’t cover elective abortion, it should cover medically required abortion. Abortion that is not based on mother’s intent, but on medical requirements should not even be termed as abortion under coverage agreements, it should be termed as a medical procedure that falls under the normative coverage which is purposed to preserve the underwritten life.
c) I would be careful of legislative escalation working the other way, if I were you, so that it starts with abortion and extends to birth control and then further extends to all matters of reproductive health. We can say there are sincere motives behind some of the pro-life movement, but those who would restrict access to the things which allow us to make sensible reproductive choices are moralists who see sex as an act that requires consequences to keep it in check. Society must punish the guilty, even if the guilty are the victims of rape. They have gone that far in the past.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2005-04-04-birth-control-access_x.htm
Comment by thimbles — 11/9/2009 @ 4:08 am
But no LEGAL one. Just flip those two paragraphs of yours around. It is illegitimate to say that abortion is murder in the context of a society in which abortion being legal is the law of the land. It is a legal medical procedure in the United States of America—if you think it’s murder, take it up elsewhere. Friggin’ insurance reform is not the place to do it. But as a legal medical procedure in the United States of America, it ought to be given the same medical consideration as any other (a test that the moonbat procedures you mention would fail, as, probably, would totally elective abortions).
Insurance in the broadest sense, yes. But in the case of abortion, you would have to buy a single-procedure rider, essentially a plan SOLELY for abortion. It would kind of be like if your insurance covered all the regular stuff but required you to buy a specific rider should you ever need craniotomy. Would you?
You have this exactly backwards, Rojas.
Status quo:
Public option: The public option health insurance system would operate roughly the same. The determination of whether abortions are covered or not depends on the context in which the procedure is requested and the policies, in the broadest sense, of the governing board (determining which types of elective procedures they’ll cover, etc.).
Stupak amendment: No public insurance coverage of ANY kind of abortions whatsoever. That includes, by the way, cases of rape, incest,
or life endangerment—it is just a blanket moratorium. (Edit: Correct myself: life endangerment is an exception in the Stupak amendment).So, the choice is support or opposition for abortion being OPTIONAL and contextual, or making opposition to abortion COMPULSORY. Whether the decision is made further down the food chain and closer to those being served, or whether it’s being made by six Republican congressmen in the House of Representatives. And whether abortion, in practice, becomes covered for those that can afford private health insurance and out-of-pocket for those who cannot, or not. Simple as that.
Comment by Brad — 11/9/2009 @ 10:28 am
William Salaten goes there, picking up the angle I mentioned above in a great article.
Great stuff. It’d be a better knock if those advocating for or defending this specific provision, the same ones that were aghast at the possibility of government making health care decisions right up until the point where it occurred to them to do it for abortion, were a bit more self aware of the irony. But either way, what a perfect illustration of what’s wrong with government health insurance (this coming from me, who more-or-less supports the plan).
Comment by Brad — 11/9/2009 @ 12:53 pm
It’s not a “handful of crazies” that voted for the amendment, it was over half the House (there was a rumour that the GOP would vote ‘present’ to screw the conservative Democrats and maybe get some to vote against it, but Boehner killed that talk dead and whipped the vote). Also, the Conference of Catholic Bishops were the key approvers.
But yeah, when a vote is close, groups that stick together win concessions. This is hardly news, it’s not a peculiarly American problem and how else could it work? Either your representatives votes count and aren’t owned by the party, or they’re not. The problem with the House is that party rule is too strong, not that it’s too weak.
Comment by Adam — 11/9/2009 @ 4:05 pm
The “handful of crazies” reference was to the dozen or so for whom this was the single make-or-break issue, who presumably would have voted against the health care bill without it, but voted for it with it. The “handful of crazies” language was obviously too strong, as people are getting rancorous about it, but my point was that it was in essence about a dozen people who have radically affected abortion policy in America through an 11th hour amendment the impact of which nobody is really sure of. As you say, this happens a lot—I just thought this was a very good example of it.
I should add that it was mostly pro-life Democrats, not Republicans, who are responsible for this amendment, contra my first post/impression.
Incidentally, this amendment is a little more expansive than I thought. I thought it would just be for the public option, but it includes anybody that does business with the exchange, which could conceivably be every private insurance company in America (in essence, any company receiving any subsidy from this plan can no longer cover abortion—how expansive that works out to be in practice I’m not sure, but the abortion groups are saying it may well include everybody).
Comment by Brad — 11/9/2009 @ 4:45 pm
Which would presumably resolve your concerns about equity?
Comment by Rojas — 11/9/2009 @ 6:57 pm
Well, yes, I guess that’s true.
“Abortions for nobody! (crowd boos) Abortions for everybody! (crowd boos again) OK, Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others! (wild applause)”
Comment by Brad — 11/9/2009 @ 7:18 pm
With regard to Liz’s point #5, surely as taxpayers we should lobby to get changes to the law on issues we care about, particularly when our dollars are involved? That’s all the anti-abortion people have done, in effect.
When this issue first came up a few months ago I was pretty sure that the Democrats would accept restrictions on abortions under the Bill’s terms. The Stupack Amendment is stronger than I thought they might have to stomach, but on the other hand, I am amazed that it took right up until the time for something to be thrashed out; as a result, Pelosi wasn’t in the strongest position for negotiation. I don’t think that calling it an “11th hour amendment” is very fair, because although the text was arrived at late, the problem’s been there for months; if Pelosi didn’t get it sorted until the last moment, then that was a decision she made (perhaps to exert pressure on the members of her caucus who were really pissed off by the Stupack Amendment).
Comment by Adam — 11/9/2009 @ 9:54 pm
Also, from what I understand, it’s not companies getting any Federal money that can’t cover abortion, it’s plans (but companies can offer more than one plan, obviously).
Comment by Adam — 11/9/2009 @ 9:55 pm
I think she meant it in the colloquial sense. Someone on another board got into it with me on this point too, and I had to remind them that it’s certainly in the legislature’s right to do this—I’ve never said it’s unconstitutional (this is a similar straw man to the “you’re trying to censor me because you’re saying what I’m saying is bad!”). It’s legitimate. It’s just bad law.
And I think calling it the “11th hour” is very fair, in that it is an amendment that was written and voted on in, literally, the 11th hour (11′oclock on Sunday), or close enough anyway. The health care bill has been rolling along for 9 months now. Aside from a very small minority harping about Obamacare funding abortions, who for once didn’t really ever get into the mainstream of the debate, it was not a big issue, though it may have become one (but I doubt it—the whole socialist fascism thing was sucking up all the Rage).
And one more thing sort of tangential to that argument on the other board and some of what Rojas is saying. This health care bill doesn’t neatly fit into the normal paradigm I think we get seduced into when talking about government, wherein the paradigm is either something is legal or something is not, banned or approved of. The government is now in the business of providing insurance for medical care (well, it has been substantially for a long time now, but even more so once this beast passes). As such, I think it requires a different sort of thinking, a more administrative than a political one, which is the heart of my objection. Politically, I understand Rojas’ point. Nobody wants to “federally fund” abortion, and of course if, in the paradigm we’re used to, a bill made it’s way to Congress saying “we will provide money to subsidize people’s abortions”, I’d be right alongside the objectors. But this is a different paradigm. When the government is the pointman for a substantial segment of the country’s health insurance, it has a responsibility to stop acting like, well, a Congress, and start acting like a health insurance agency (ideally, a good one), wherein it isn’t making decisions based on grinding far-removed political axes or the never-ending fight between social conservatism and hippy liberalism, but rather a sober judgment of what’s needed for a person’s medical care, which has to include everything that might reasonably fall under the purview. I say again, that may or may not mean that they cover an abortion—like with regular insurance, that would depend on a lot of things, including how elective they’re willing to go on procedures, the opinions of physicians and social workers, the medical and psychological issues of the mother, etc. etc. It’s not that I feel that abortions should just receive blanket coverage. I just think it’s wildly irresponsible and borderline immoral to take that decision totally out of the realm of the medical and put it instead in the hands of a dozen blue dog Congressmen from red states who decide it, once and for all, a few hours before the bill passes so it can make cloture.
This is, in short, a profoundly conservative point I’m making. Hence the irony.
Man. Reading that back over, I think I’m busily talking myself out of supporting this health care plan.
Comment by Brad — 11/9/2009 @ 10:35 pm
The aforementioned other argument I’m having.
My last comment there:
Comment by Brad — 11/9/2009 @ 10:54 pm
Not two weeks ago, in this very forum, you were arguing that the idea of having the government regulate industry, without being influenced by those it was regulating, was a pipe dream. You contended, quite persuasively, that it was necessary to recognize that the mechanics of government in a democracy were inalterable; that we could not wish ourselves into a world in which the regulated would not seek to influence the process for their own ends; that we had to work with reality as it existed and plan from there.
Now, here you are, two weeks later, arguing for “a new sort of thinking” on health care administration in which the politicians who are governed by political concerns at every other moment of their lives will, magically and instantly, become something different when they make health care decisions.
This is true of the particular argument you are referencing, which is the one that undermines every other part of your rationale.
On the rest of this argument, you are 1. arguing for the suspension of political reality in order to create a “new paradigm,” 2. arguing for the radical expansion of government, and 3. arguing for the transfer of medical authority into the hands of people whom, in your own analysis, will exercise that power in unpredictable ways for indiscernible reasons, approving and disapproving of procedures in ways you repeatedly indicate that you can’t even guess at. You may, if I understand you correctly, also be 4. implicitly arguing for a direct attempt by government to reengineer the moral norms of a substantial section of the population, re: abortion.
This is the diametric opposite of conservative in every respect. It is also deeply, profoundly, and obviously anti-libertarian.
Comment by Rojas — 11/10/2009 @ 12:14 am
Heh. No. You’re getting it backwards. Your characterization is correct, and indeed I appended on my last post that I was more or less arguing myself against this health care reform in general (i.e. back to my previous arguments about regulation that I had with Thimbles). But the point I was making here specifically has a wrinkle of nuance.
Here is the premise:
The government will soon be running a health insurance program.
Now, assuming that premise, would you prefer:
1. The government run health care as a mob of legislators playing political football with people’s medical choices based on the hot button issues of the day?
Or,
2. The government, at least that section of it running the public option programs, try to divorce itself of that mindset?
To put that even more simply, would you rather the government ran a health insurance program responsibly and erring on the side of freedom of choice (in the general, not abortion, sense) and localized decision-making to the extent possible, or would you rather we just dispense with the pipe dream, throw up our hands and say “ooh, those nutty guys in Congress,” and let them do whatever the hell they want with it.
If the former, I can’t see how you would be comfortable with this amendment.
If the latter, then you’re sacrificing an awful lot for the right to say I told you so.
Both are predicated on a liberal framework. But the latter compounds the error (from a conservative perspective).
Comment by Brad — 11/10/2009 @ 12:27 am
Tiny sidebar:
Presently in the American system of health insurance, insurers make the determination of whether or not to cover abortions on a number of factors, including how much those policies “give” for electives, state laws regarding abortion, and medical, psychological, and social work issues as determined by the doctor in consultation with the patient. Roughly 2/3s of insurers have some form of coverage for abortions. Medicaid is restricted by the Hyde amendment, but a lot of states have a number of end-runs around that.
Now, government has determined that it will provide insurance to roughly 15% of the population, or whatever it turns out to be. It will also deal a certain amount of regulation and exchanges with the majority of the remaining 85%.
I am not advocating for any “moral engineering”. I am advocating that the government, in administering health insurance, treat abortion the same way health insurers do. Namely, as a medical, not a political issue.
YOU, and the advocates of this amendment, are proposing the opposite. Namely, a prohibition on abortion coverage for, BY DEFINITION, those patients who have no other choice but to take government insurance. Once you’ve reached the bottom rung of the health insurance ladder, abortion becomes decided for you by virtue of your poorness.
The only people advocating engineering here are the proponents of this amendment.
Now, as to my own consistency, you’re right, which is again why I appended that thought to the end of my post above, namely that I’m winding myself back into opposition to health care reform of this type. My arguments here, you’re right, are certainly on that track. But they are, again, not mutually exclusive. I say above:
Do I think it likely that government will treat it in this way? I do not. As you say, my hunch is they will “exercise that power in unpredictable ways for indiscernible reasons, approving and disapproving of procedures in ways you repeatedly indicate that you can’t even guess at.”
Would I prefer that they didn’t? Yes, very much. Hence the post.
Shorter: You can be against the amendment and against the bill.
I’m certainly the former, still fence sitting on the latter (presently, due to this argument, leaning against, at least today). What keeps me on the fence is the thought that 90% of these people who wind up in the public option, under the current system, wouldn’t have insurance at all, making this all, in some respect, a bit of a moot point (in that they’d have to pay out of pocket for abortion in both systems, but in the status quo they’d also have to pay out of pocket for, say, an appendectomy), but there will still be many for whom that’s not true, and we don’t yet know the effect this will have on the rest of us (those under private insurers, and however they choose or are obligated to respond to this).
Comment by Brad — 11/10/2009 @ 12:37 am
Heh. Good point in that Donklephant thread.
As I said at the very beginning of the health care debate, I could get behind that.
Comment by Brad — 11/10/2009 @ 12:43 am
Fun game. My turn.
My premise is that you are being lowered into the caldera of an active volcano. Assuming that premise, would you perefer to: slowly burn to death, or be rescued at the last minute by a flying unicorn?
Seems to me that a conservative would opt for the unicorn.
Comment by Rojas — 11/10/2009 @ 12:46 am
So your problem is not with the amendment, it’s with the bill.
Which is fine, but seems weird to me. Because the bill has the CAPACITY for the kind of bureaucratic loss of freedom that the amendment has the REALITY of. Or put another way: you’re against the idea of nationalized health care making bureaucratic decisions for patients in the abstract. Just no in the specific.
But I guess abortion doesn’t count as a freedom in the conservative game.
Comment by Brad — 11/10/2009 @ 8:45 am
On Morning Joe this morning, they were pointing out that a majority in the House oppose abortion (the Democrat Representative they were interviewing agreed). Thus it should be no surprise when a body that passes bills by majority should only pass one that has anti-abortion stuff in it. Not just unsurprising, but how the system is actually supposed to work.
Comment by Adam — 11/10/2009 @ 9:02 am
I always hate to jump in when you guys have been arguing very ably without my help.
Of course this is the way the system works, I don’t think anyone’s arguing that. It’s just really frustrating to see from 1 – the purely acedemic point of view that shows, for all their talk, congress apparently will be sticking both hands into people’s medical issues and 2 – issuing moral judgements on a legal procedure, and the people who would avail themselves of said procedure, in a bill.
I don’t think that the people who insisted on this amendment are crazy, I think they’re bore sighted to one issue and trying to make abortion as inaccessible as possible.
And I agree with Brad that the people against the bill because of they don’t want the government in their healthcare that are celebrating this amendment are hypocrits and most of them can’t see it.
Comment by Liz — 11/10/2009 @ 10:14 am
Liz, surely most of those people want the bill killed and if they can’t get it killed, they want to make sure that it doesn’t make abortion easier to get? It’s hardly inconsistent with a distrust of bigger government to design restrictions into such big government as passes.
Rep Degette is on Dylan Ratigan now pretending that this was all a sudden surprise and that they thought they had a satisfactory compromise established already. She is blinking a lot, but I don’t know if she does that all the time or only when she’s lying (not necessarily different things for our politicians anyhow, of course).
Comment by Adam — 11/10/2009 @ 10:22 am
But Adam, the only way it would make abortion easier to get is in the sense that it would expand insurance coverage in general to more people. The normal insurance rules (like Brad was listing in 9) apply. It isn’t like it’s forcing insurance companies to cover elective abortions on demand.
I was watching that too, and who knows if she’s telling the truth or not. I wasn’t paying much attention to the abortion part of the healthcare debate.
Comment by Liz — 11/10/2009 @ 10:58 am
If you were opposed to abortion, you wouldn’t want anything done by government that would make abortion easier to get in any way. For people that think that an abortion is the killing of a human being in the full important sense, they aren’t going to vote for anything that they think would result in more of those killings.
In any case, although abortion might be portrayed as a side-track, there’s no evidence, really, that healthcare reform as proposed is going to do anything to solve the main problem of increasing medical costs. The whole bill is a sidetrack. They’re just further tying the US Budget to the problem; it’s like seeing a sinking ship and tying your own boat to it.
Comment by Adam — 11/10/2009 @ 11:12 am
I sympathize with the pro-life stance and understand where they’re coming from even though I think they are wrong in letting it into this bill.
And I agree on the uncertainty, and perhaps even futility of this bill.
Comment by Liz — 11/10/2009 @ 3:01 pm
Maybe Adam is confused on this point.
The language in the original health care bill included the language of the Hyde Amendment—which prohibits the federal government to directly fund abortions. This is what currently operates in Medicaid et al. This was in the original bill, sans amendment, specifically to diffuse this very issue, which it pretty much did right up until Saturday.
Democrats had thought that was enough, but then as it came down to the wire they realized the vote was going to be really close, and suddenly a few pro-life Democrats (and a pro-life Republican) went up to them and said “here is what it would take for me to vote aye,”, and it was the Stupak amendment, which prohibits the federal government from funding abortions, but also prohibits them from doing any business with any insurance program that covers abortion. Which is, in practice, a rather radical leap forward, and a surprise to the entire caucus and everybody watching this issue.
Sure, everybody knew the usual suspects, namely the single-issue abortion crusaders, would be howling, but they do that on every single issue that even remotely touches abortion, and have been safely discounted so far, and, these are not people who are winnable votes anyway on something like liberal health care, by and large. They could have and probably would have been able to pass it without these people (indeed, did—note again the single Republican vote for the bill). The surprise were the pro-life Democrats for whom the regular and ruling federal prohibition on abortion funding, which has been in all government health care interactions since 1976 without much complaint, was as of this weekend, not enough.
Comment by Brad — 11/10/2009 @ 5:03 pm
I know about the Hyde Amendment — I’m not discussing that, it’s in place already — but I was discussing this elsewhere (the off-topic part of an rpg forum, actually) some weeks ago — when the abortion issue first came up — and I knew it’d be a problem then. It was reported as a problem then, as well, for that matter. Anyone that thought that the abortion issue wasn’t going to blow up wasn’t paying attention or was somehow fooling themselves as to the expertise of the abortion warriors. I mean, seriously, this was going to go through easily? I can’t believe that Pelosi did even if some elements of the Democratic Party had convinced themselves it would, because the anti-abortion folks were at work and Pelosi knew it was going to be tight for votes in any case. There had to be some strong language in it against abortion, not just “we won’t directly fund abortion” because everyone knows that when money goes into a pot, it doesn’t matter how it looks, anything that directly or indirectly draws from that pot is supported by it. Now, the investment from government in the exchanges is financially very small, but it’s a strong use of government power nevertheless; who thought that the Catholic Church, at least, weren’t going to exert pressure on this issue? I mean, really?
Convenient to claim it was all such a terrible surprise, though, surely?
Comment by Adam — 11/10/2009 @ 5:30 pm
Or put it another way: let’s make a list of Federal legislative advances in the availability or accessibility of abortion.
This issue is milk and honey for Republicans. If you ever think you’ve outmanoeuvred them on something to which they can attach abortion issues, think again, because they can often call on Democrat support. Abortion and calls to Patriotism are their faithful weapons, much as Democrats do well with issues like the plight of the poor and, recently, environment.
Comment by Adam — 11/10/2009 @ 5:42 pm
Nate Silver says that the abortion warriors outperformed themselves and actually got Democrats generally in favour of abortion rights on board on Stupak.
Abortion is apparently Democrat kryptonite.
Comment by Adam — 11/10/2009 @ 5:46 pm
I was going to get to that, actually. On the night of the vote at least a dozen “aye” votes explicitly said they thought the amendment was bunk but they had to get the bill out that night. Most of the ones who went right on the record about it, in fact, said just that.
You are right that everybody expected the regular abortion folks to get worked up, but as I tried to explain earlier, in otherwise party-line votes, if all else is equal, that’s usually not a huge problem. Because, again, the most hardcore anti-abortion activists are usually (but not always) the most hardcore right-wing activists generally. That’s what I meant in my original post by saying that 95% of both caucuses can safely be ignored. And even pro-life Democrats, on issues very important to the party, will usually fall in line so long as they have something to take back to their constituents ala the Hyde language in the bill (this is how someone like Harry Reid is rated pro-life despite voting in favor of all major Democratic legislation; most of the Democratic pro-life caucus falls into this category).
I don’t know this for sure, but my hunch is that most of those members had expressed to Pelosi et al that they could be counted on, and balked at the last minute for whatever reason, probably because they got whiff or direct warning from Republicans, once the vote got close, that this was what they wanted to harp on in the Senate (whether they actually would have, or actually gotten mileage out of it, had the pro-life Democratic caucus held out. The narrative here is not the strength of the pro-life caucus, but rather the old one of the spinelessness of the Democratic one.
One thing that needs to be made clear to you again, however:
Oh yeah? So the majority in the House favor criminalizing abortion? Is that what you’re saying?
This is such an easy issue for people to lapse into lazy thinking on. Automatically distrust anybody who says “X amount of Americans are pro-life/choice”, because there is a MOUNTAIN of polling and social science data about the ambiguity of American opinion on the abortion question. Barely a third of Americans favor federal criminalization of abortion. Slightly more but still a distinct minority want Roe vs. Wade overturned. The majority think abortion should be decided between a woman and her doctor, yet a majority also wish getting an abortion to be made more difficult (although pluralities oppose nearly every specific measure to do so). For a laugh, go here and come back and tell me what % of Americans are pro-life and pro-choice.
It would be better to represent it as strong pro-life, strong pro-choice, moderate-pro-life, moderate-pro choice, and the majority of Congressmen are perhaps moderate pro-lifers (though the biggest category in Congress might be “indecipherably pro-choice/life”.
In other words, what Scarborough is saying there is both true and totally meaningless.
My own guess would be that, had this amendment come up as a stand-alone bill, with a regular allotted time for debate, it would have been defeated. But come 11 o’clock on Saturday, when it caught everybody off guard and appeared like they might all go home without having passed the bill, they just more or less said “fuck it” and hoped it would get quietly excised or toned down later in the legislative process.
Ironically, it was not the pro-lifers who made a huge issue out of this the Morning After, but the pro-choicers. But either way, you are certainly right that the GOP got what they want—pushing buttons to try to sink the bill.
Comment by Brad — 11/10/2009 @ 6:33 pm
The anti-abortion majority they were talking of is a legislative majority. Criminalising abortion would be unconstitutional, so I don’t think that “anti-abortion” — a term used regularly on MSNBC today, FYI, although abortion rights activists sometimes prefer “anti-choice” — when referring to the House means “in favour of criminalising abortion” so much as ensuring that any legislation is either neutral on the subject or else impedes abortion access or availability in a legal fashion. I am not sure how you got from what I said to what you said — the quote wasn’t from Scarborough, but from a Democratic Representative that supports abortion rights, incidentally — but what you are replying to is not what I thought or meant and, indeed, I can’t see it in what I wrote.
On the “surprise” issue, Chris Matthews was just expressing some serious scepticism on the claims that this was some sort of surprise.
The amendment passed by a mile. It was known before the vote that the amendment or something like it was needed, so I don’t see that the “we have to get it out this evening” thing makes any sense, although what they say will of course be as considered as how they vote, because they are running for election at least 50% of the time.
The dirty tricks implications from the opponents of Stupak are the whines of the fat kid that got picked last, except I doubt they really believe them (but they have people to placate). It also sets the stage for a showdown when and if the bill comes back from conference, which is the real action and where they have a better chance.
Comment by Adam — 11/10/2009 @ 7:12 pm
The House could certainly propose a constitutional amendment, or they could generally favor justices that favor appealing Roe v. Wade. They recoil in horror, as a body en masse, from doing either. If you believed abortion is murder, which is another rough definition for pro-life, I can’t see how you could define that without including at least those two measures.
As far as your definition, it’s still just as fungible.
“ensuring that any legislation is either neutral on the subject or else impedes abortion access or availability in a legal fashion.”
Impedes how much? Through which mechanisms? You will find VASTLY different vote counts for every singular answer to either of those questions. The Hyde amendment certainly meets your definition. So why wasn’t that enough?
Of course, this is all a bit moot anyway, because…
There are two ways to read the situation.
1. All the aye votes in the amendment were voting for it because they honestly believed in it as a matter of principle, or
2. The amendment passed because those that fit category #1, combined with those that do not but otherwise decided to vote aya for the sake of political and procedural considerations, granted its passage.
Now, if your contention was that this was a matter of the body voting their principles, that’d certainly be a first. If not, that begs the question of what political considerations were in play. Which is answered, already.
As you say, and as I said, this amendment wouldn’t have passed in a vacuum, as a stand-alone (feel free to disagree with me on that point if you like). Meaning a lot of pro-choice people voted for it, or people for whom the abortion question was not the deciding factor in their vote. I’m not saying they were hood-winked (you are certainly right, they have no one to blame but themselves), I’m saying it was a last minute cave due to the time-intensive pressures of the situation and a flash fear that they would get sucked into the tar baby of the abortion issue if they didn’t just get it off their fucking desks immediately (although, as we both agree, fat chance now, that). Most observers of this process, and hell a fair chunk of the people who voted for the damn thing, side with my assertion. You disagree?
Anyway, this is a bit of a tangent.
Comment by Brad — 11/10/2009 @ 7:25 pm
I don’t attach much relevance to what House members want in terms of Justices, as they don’t get to confirm them; in this case, I’m talking about things that are within their remit as Representatives. Groups like NARAL and Focus on the Family pick sides on votes at all related to abortion and it’s not unreasonable that we’d measure Representatives on which they side they come down and their associated reasoning.
As for the amendment, as with all votes, it was done for a variety of reasons. However, my understanding is that Pelosi needed something that the Conference of Catholic Bishops agreed with and which, in general, a large number of her hold-outs, without whom she didn’t have the votes, wanted in the bill before they’d commit to voting for it.
If the Exchanges had gone through, or will go through in the final Bill, with abortion a legal offering from those plans, then it will be a government-established organisation that increases availability and accessibility of abortion. Now, it’s probably not a huge deal either way — although most private insurance plans offer abortion as a covered procedure, it seems that most abortion are done out-of-plan (heard that somewhere else, but haven’t tracked it down myself) — but it’s not that hard to understand why a bunch of Representatives don’t want to be associated with that, because it wouldn’t be a maintenance of status quo because of the increased availability of health insurance. They could take the position that the Hyde Amendment position needed changing to reflect that.
Comment by Adam — 11/10/2009 @ 7:43 pm
As for this being a tangent, the whole bill is a tangent relative to the real issue of medical costs.
Comment by Adam — 11/10/2009 @ 7:45 pm
Well, fair enough. Then we’re in a position where the Congress is trying to engineer people’s decisions because the decisions they might make otherwise offends them.
If so, cool. Let’s just be honest about it.
Comment by Brad — 11/10/2009 @ 7:45 pm
They would say that if offends decency or nature or God or American Values or morality itself, or something like that, but it’s not far off what’s going on, in my opinion (they’re offended, but they’d claim that the reason they’re offended is also the reason the amendment is justified).
Comment by Adam — 11/10/2009 @ 8:11 pm
Which is more or less the definition of law.
Comment by Rojas — 11/10/2009 @ 9:02 pm
Is it? I suppose so, in most ways that count. Would you describe the conservative or libertarian position, most broadly, as anti-law then?
If that’s the case, question: is the Stupak amendment more, or less law?
Or, to put that in the terms you originally offered in calling me favorable to social engineering, is the addition of the Stupak amendment more social engineering, less social engineering, or neutral?
Comment by Brad — 11/10/2009 @ 9:12 pm
It might be that the ability to get the abortion rider is something that could be worked on. I would imagine that, given the relatively low cost of abortions (compared to childbirth in particular), that insurance companies have a financial incentive to offer them; they can’t offer them in the plan that’s sold through an exchange, but is it possible that they can sell riders as very cheap supplements to their own plans in the knowledge that it’ll probably save them money? I know that people aren’t going to want to have to ask for one and it’s not at all the same as having it available in a standard plan, but is there some sort of compromise available there?
The irony, of course, is that if there is a financial benefit to the insurance companies to include it in their plans, the government will actually be making them do something else that’s bad for profitability, although I imagine it pales compared to the constraints on pre-existing conditions (for which they are compensated at least to some extent by the mandate that people take out insurance).
Comment by Adam — 11/11/2009 @ 1:11 am
Comment by Brad — 11/16/2009 @ 2:01 pm
Saw that earlier, linked at the Corner. It would apply to pretty much every government programme, however, and it still hasn’t dimmed Democratic Party enthusiasm for creating and expanding them. Social Security and Minimum Wage would be models for how they’d like things to end up, I guess; things that became too popular to easily kill.
Comment by Adam — 11/16/2009 @ 2:11 pm