Ending a major conflict over abortion

Union Leader ^ | 9/28/10 | Charles Donovan

[rhema]

House Republicans' new "Pledge to America" has met with mixed reaction. However, most Americans -- even those in Congress -- should be able to agree on at least one item in the 21-page agenda: the proposal to address federal subsidies for elective abortion once and for all.

Poll after poll shows 70 percent or more of voters oppose taxpayer funding of abortion. A dispute in Congress over it dominated the closing stages of debate on Obamacare. Democrats might well have passed their legislative overhaul of health care months sooner had it not been for their party's internal battles over abortion.

For nearly six months, Rep. Bart Stupak, a Democrat from Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and Rep. Joe Pitts, a Pennsylvania Republican, tied up the massive measure by insisting on language incorporating the Hyde Amendment. That traditional amendment blocks federal reimbursement for elective abortions as well as federal contributions to any "trust fund" that pays indirectly for such abortions.

Although Republicans generally were glad for any issue impeding Obamacare, some in the GOP coalition regarded the Stupak-Pitts compact as a marriage of convenience that Democrats would end at crunch time -- final passage of the bill. The divorce occurred March 21, when Stupak announced he had made a deal with President Barack Obama and was dropping support for his own amendment.

The outcome was messy, to say the least. Obama issued an executive order purporting to fill the holes left by abandonment of Stupak's amendment.

Weeks later, though, a few states issued guidelines for temporary, high-risk insurance pools that would have allowed coverage of elective abortions. The administration scrambled to stretch the President's executive order to deny such abortion coverage, then announced the stretch shouldn't be considered a "precedent" for other programs.

No one was happy. Social conservatives saw their signature Hyde Amendment slipping away piece by piece. Economic conservatives who didn't trust social conservatives on the Democratic side saw the abortion-funding issue continue to "cut both ways" and muddy the waters on bill after bill. Social and economic liberals saw the Obama administration reneging on Democrats' longstanding platform commitment to providing for abortion regardless of "ability to pay."

Into this maelstrom swims House Republicans' Pledge to America, with its promise to pass a permanent Hyde Amendment to ensure taxpayers don't pay for elective abortions. The pledge also commits its signers to adopting full "conscience protections" for medical personnel and insurers who don't wish to offer or refer clients for abortions -- another issue on which Obamacare made federal policy more disjointed.

True, the GOP proposal won't please NARAL Pro-Choice America or the managers at Planned Parenthood, which have corralled a third of the abortion industry. But for nearly everyone else in the policy arena, the plank on the Hyde Amendment is an idea whose time has long since come.

Public opinion on the matter has been stable for decades. That's the major reason why Congress and two-thirds of the states have refused to fund elective abortions for many years. But achieving this result in Washington requires annual passage of spending bills that contain abortion-funding limits as "riders" -- law in the year they're enacted, but subject to constant renewal.

Right now, abortion funding also must be addressed in each new law, Obamacare for instance, that creates another program or funding stream that might encompass elective abortion. Given the endless bureaucracy-building capacity of the government, to-subsidize-or-not-to-subsidize is a perennial topic. The question can dominate legislation whose prime focus lies elsewhere. Case in point: the most recent defense authorization bill.

Last time the Republicans had a majority in Congress, they failed to fix this problem. This November, voters may give them a chance to correct their mistake. The Pledge to America contains a promise to do so. For all but the flintiest of the feminist interest groups, this promise is welcome news. Its fulfillment would be a good thing for both parties, and for the nation.

[Marty62]

This “debate’ needs to end. For pro-Life it has always for the most part been about saving the unborn.
The Dums and the evil Witches of the Abortion Coven have always been about making the killing of the innocents a matter of Government Policy. Funded by the Government (taxpayers)
The one thing they NEVER counted on was a MAJOR revolt of said taxpayers demanding we will NOT pay for your DEATH agenda, whether it is OBAMACARE or ABORTION.

[null and void]

Let those who pay have a say.

Income tax forms should include the ability to designate where your own tax dollars may NOT go.

Someone who regards something as personally repugnant can opt out of funding it.

For some, no funding for abortions, for others defund the EPA or the military or the UN or?...

The tax cash stream is wide enough that we can well afford this.

[xzins]

Congress should have an up or down vote on an abortion bill that ends any federal involvement in it to include removal of any court review. Get the Fed totally out of the abortion business altogether.

[EternalVigilance]

Every Congressman, every Senator, every judge, every chief executive, has sworn to secure the blessings of liberty to posterity, to protect the life of every single innocent person.

THAT is what they must do.

And every one that won’t must be removed from office.

[RobbyS]

Liberal Democrats—and there are few Democratic officials who are not Liberals—are in love with centralization. Centralization is a kind of tyranny, because it merges the Nation with Government and tends to by-pass the representatives of the people and to disregard public opinion. The gain is in efficiency, although much of this is lost because the endless division of labor makes it hard to hold anyone accountable. The peculiar circumstances of any particular case tend to be ignored as clerks tend to reduce everything to fit a checklist.

[MrB]

You have the pro-life positional basis correct,
but you’re a bit off on the basis of the other side.

That basis is to remove the final biological hurdle that keeps women from being “equal” to men - that they get pregnant and men do not. This, to a “feminist”, is an egregious affront to “equality”.

[kosciusko51]

This would not work, considering the accounting nightmare that it would incur to the government, not to mention the accounting shenanigans that would be done to show the money was spent according to the taxpayers' wishes.

We are a Republic; therefore, we elect people that supposedly vote the will of the people. The problem is that what people want and who they vote for do not align. If 70% don't want taxpayer-funded abortion, then there should be 70% of our representatives and senators that should be against it. The fact that there is not is that those 70% are voting for their congress-critters for reasons other than paying for abortions.

[RobbyS]

The statute would have to be written to remove an right of Federal any official to write regulations allowing elective abortion in connection with any federal program.

[Tribune7]

That would have the same affect as saying Social Security is "lockboxed" for retirement funding.

SS surplus money is used to buy Treasury Bonds the money from which is spent on whatever the little hearts of our elected officials want it to be.

[xzins]

Yep, the statute would say: “Zero Fed direct or indirect involvement in abortion in any way. Court review removed.”

[null and void]

This would not work, considering the accounting nightmare that it would incur to the government,

Zatso?

Tell me, pray tell, why they have absolutely no problem tracking alla dem extra dollahs people designate to go to keeping the existing power structure in place?

It's right there on yer 1040: "Do you want $3 of your federal tax to go to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund?"

[null and void]

We are a Republic; therefore, we elect people that supposedly vote the will of the people.,

Yeah, right.

Here in California we have an initiative process.

We DIRECTLY vote on issues when our elected representatives fail to follow the will of the people.

The courts have no problem nor the slightest hesitation in overturning laws passed by overwhelming majorities of voters.

[trisham]

bump!

[kosciusko51]

That is ONE line item. The problem is that they will use accounting tricks to keep funding their projects, and shift those dollars from LEGITIMATE functions, like defense.

[null and void]

No problem. MAKE them break the law. That gives us legal recourse.

[kosciusko51]

Yeah, I'm familiar with the initiative process, after spending over 15 years living in CA.

The problem again is that the people vote for people who oppose their own belief, and as a result, you get judges who are appointed that oppose the will of the people, and use their position to overturn the will of the people.

Furthermore, the initiative process allows for a weak legislature, as they can defer any "hot button" issue to the electorate. So they can give lip-service to the "will of the people", but then also claim they must follow the "rule of law" as defined by the court.

[null and void]

It does make one marvel a the very thought that there could possibly be the slightest trace of anti-incumbent sentiment amongst the electorate, though...

[kosciusko51]

And who do you get as the forensic accounts to track that the money was misspent? And where do you get the jury that would convict the government when there would be conflicting forensic accounting information? It would be the same group of people WHO VOTED FOR THE REPRESENTATIVES SCREWING US IN THE FIRST PLACE.

[null and void]

No man’s life, liberty or property is safe as long as court is in session.

Including that of our “betters”