en.wikisource.org
Children already had been given health insurance in all states with a bipartisan vote. So children were never going to be abandoned if hcr failed.
As for the Catholic postion, though, it seems like you framed your comments as 'either/or'. In reality, a person or a church can care about both....care about preserving the life of the unborn and also care about the health of children after they are born. Well, three things. A person/church can care about molestation issues.
Personally speaking, I'm waiting for the full story on this issue. For now, though, it always seemed to me that the issue could have been easily settled. The proposal could have simply stated that any policy purchased with taxpayer subsidies cannot contain an abortion benefit....period. People buying health insurance with taxpayer subsidies have to pay for an abortion out-of-pocket or by purchasing a separate policy of some kind.
This would not be a big deal. Most people already are paying for the procedure out-of-pocket, when it's an elective procedure. It's cheap. Very few insurance companies currently offer it as an elective procedure (emergency surgical abortions are another matter). And women tend not to file a claim for it when it is offered. They don't want their employers to know, they don't want it part of their medical history, which could become public knowledge at some point.
Progressives don't like the Hyde Amendment and do want publicly funded abortions, so my guess, without knowing more, is that refusing to keep the original Stupak language is an attempt to nudge things toward eventual public funding of abortion, whether it has popular support or not. |
