Senate Abortion Amendment Defeated

Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) offered an amendment to the Senate health care bill that would have placed restrictions on abortion similar to those in the Stupak amendment to the House bill.

The Nelson amendment has been defeated. While six Democrats voted with Nelson, the two Republican Senators from Maine voted against. For reaction to Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl's stance on abortion and health care, please see this post at Freedom Eden (h/t Cindy Kilkenny)

What happens now that it appears the House and Senate versions of health reform differ? Open Congress has an interesting summary. Their analysis is based on differing versions of the public option, but the abortion provision could have the same affect on the process:

The conventional method is to bring both bills to an ad hoc “conference committee” made up of members of both the Senate and the House to iron out the differences into a final version that the committee can agree to. The committee bill, known as a “report,” then goes back to both the Senate and the House for a final vote. No amendments can be considered to conference reports, but senators can filibuster it and require 60 votes for it to pass.

For supporters of the healthcare effort, the conference method has drawbacks, not the least of which is the time the process takes.

That has Democrats considering a Plan B for reconciling the bills. "There is increased chatter on Capitol Hill about a possible “ping-ponging” of the Senate health care bill: that chamber would pass its health care bill, send it to the House and the House would be asked to pass it with no changes and send it directly to the president," reports Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post. Ping-ponging bills from the Senate to the House is not that uncommon. The 111th Congress has already used this method several times to pass some substantial bill, including legislation allowing the FDA to regulate tobacco (H.R. 1256), reforming the credit card industry (H.R. 627), the GIVE Act (H.R. 1388) and expanding S-CHIP (H.R. 2).

Again for supporters, there is a worry that accepting a Senate bill which is much less than what the more progressive members of the House want could have its own very serious negative consequences.

Now that the Senate has not included the Stupak abortion language, "ping-ponging" the Senate bill to the House has an additional hurdle. Namely, those forty or so Democrats who had allied themselves with Stupak and vowed to not vote for the original House bill until they had a chance to vote on the abortion amendment. Perhaps this group would consider the fact that they did go on record restricting abortion in the original House bill as sufficient, but I certainly wouldn't. Making a stand on an issue as important as abortion and losing is one thing. Making a stand and winning, but then capitulating to a Democratic majority Senate on such an important question seems unthinkable.

In case you think this abortion question is being overblown and all the Senate is doing is simply following current law, think again. From the NY Times:

The language that remains in the Senate bill would allow private plans to cover abortions. It would require at least one government-approved plan in each state to cover abortions and at least one government-approved plan in each state not to cover abortions.

Federal dollars could not be used to pay for abortions, so the Senate bill would require insurance plans to segregate privately paid premiums to use that money for abortions. Opponents of abortion rights have described the segregation of funds as a meaningless accounting trick.

Under existing federal law, generally referred to as the Hyde amendment, government money cannot be used to pay for abortions, except with rare exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the mother. [E.A]

So we would go from the federal standard being one of paying for abortions only in rare cases to one where the government would mandate abortion coverage in every state. This would represent a substantial departure from the current environment. One which would be incredibly bad for the country and unspeakably bad for the unborn.

Abortion Ammendment to be Considered

Washington Post:

House Democratic leaders agreed Friday night to settle an impasse over abortion by letting the entire House vote on a proposed solution, a risky decision that could determine the fate of their trillion-dollar overhaul of the nation's health care system.

Under the agreement, anti-abortion Democrats will be permitted to offer an amendment on the House floor to the health-care overhaul bill. The amendment would prohibit a new government-run insurance plan created by the health-care bill from offering to cover abortion services, congressional sources said. It would also block people who received federal subsidies for the purchase of health insurance from buying policies that offered coverage for abortions.

The report goes on to state that the ammendment is likely to pass with Republican support combined to the forty anti-abortion Democrats lead by Stupak (D-Mich) and that passage of such language would allow the Catholic Bishops to support the health care bill.

Representative Baldwin Votes to Fund Abortions

Wisconsin's Representative Tammy Baldwin is a member of the House Energy and Commerce committee, one of the committees considering health care legislation. In committee, Representative Bart Stupak of Michigan, who is a Democrat, offered an amendment to prohibit federal funding of abortions as part of health care reform. The amendment was defeated by a vote of 27-31. Ms. Baldwin voted against the amendment and to allow for federal funding of abortions. Here is the amendment:
Given her history and the area that she represents, her vote should come as a surprise to no one.

More interesting to me is that a Democrat who represents the Michigan's Upper Peninsula (Stupak) is willing and able to attach his name to an amendment explicitly prohibiting federal funding of abortions. Those of us here in Northeastern Wisconsin like to pick on our friends from up north, but the fact of the matter is that in many ways the UP and NEW are very similar.

It would seem for our own Congressman Kagen the choice couldn't be more stark on this issue. Remember this difference is between Democrats, not Democrats and Republican.

It remains to be seen if Kagen will side with Baldwin and allow for taxpayer funded abortions or if he will have the courage to side with Stupak and the very many of his constituents who find such a prospect abhorrent.