Michelman and Kissling whine about Stupak amendment

Former NARAL president Kate Michelman and former Catholics for Choice leader Frances Kissling have an editorial today in the New York Times where they bitterly complain about how women won’t be able to get federally-subsidized abortions and how the Democratic party isn’t completely beholden to abortion activists. It’s almost a lament for the power they thought the 2008 election would bring them. They’re downtrodden.

Many House members who support abortion rights decided reluctantly to accept this ban, which is embodied in the Stupak-Pitts amendment. They say the tradeoff was necessary to advance the right to guaranteed health care. They say they will fight another day for a woman’s right to choose.

Perhaps. But they can’t ignore the underlying shift that has taken place in recent years. The Democratic majority has abandoned its platform and subordinated women’s health to short-term political success. In doing so, these so-called friends of women’s rights have arguably done more to undermine reproductive rights than some of abortion’s staunchest foes. That Senate Democrats are poised to allow similar anti-abortion language in their bill simply underscores the degree of the damage that has been done.

They also throw down the gauntlet on Democrats who won’t work to scrub out the Stupak amendment.

If Democrats do not commit themselves to defeating the amendment, then they will face an uncompromising effort by Democratic women to defeat them, regardless of the cost to the party’s precious majority.

It’s almost like Michelman and Kissling somehow still don’t understand that the Democrats will never in the foreseeable future have a majority in the House unless their majority includes a fair number of prolife Dems. It’s like they’ve read to many of their own biased polls to abandon the insane idea that their positions (favoring abortion on demand and tax-funded abortions) are positions held by the majority of Americans.