Life Links 1/7/10

The New York Times profiles Congressman Bart Stupak and his difficulties with being a prolife Democrat.

Scott Schloegel, his chief of staff, said wearily, “I can’t tell you how many New Yorkers have called me up and yelled at me about this Stupak guy.”

Those tricky Catholic for Choicers. After reading this press release, you’d think voters in the 4 districts they surveyed favor abortion services being part of the government’s subsidized health care plan. Except if you read the results of the survey, you find some differing results:

For example when asked, “Do you think someone who receives financial help from the government to pay for their health insurance should or should not be allowed to choose a plan that covers each of the following?” the majority of respondents in 3 of the 4 districts (65% in one) they selected respond “Should not” to “Abortion Services.”

Catholics for Choice then asked those who responded “Should not” if they’d “support allowing health insurance plans that receive government subsidies to cover abortion if that coverage was paid for with private funds, not government funds?” The majority of “Should not” respondents still say “Should not” but when combined with the minority of people who favored abortion services being covered by government subsidized insurance, Catholics for Choice claims “voters do not agree with proposed healthcare reform legislation on the issue of insurance coverage for abortion.”

Of course, survey respondents weren’t told that in the accounting scheme (Capps Amendment) favored by pro-choice groups the “private funds” actually become public funds since they go to the federal government and are paid out by the federal government or that every person in the plan would also have to pay at least $1 for abortion coverage. But why mention those little details when your only goal is to convince people abortion coverage is more popular than it really is.


Senator Ben Nelson still can't understand his abandonment of the Stupak amendment and why prolifers oppose his amendment to health care reform.

He said he is puzzled by criticism he has taken about language banning federally funded abortions.

“I cannot understand the level of anger and frustration aimed at me because this language that I put together does ban (federally funded abortions). It absolutely bans it,” he said.

Nelson said the Senate bill stipulates that if an insurer writes a plan with abortion coverage, they must write a similar plan without abortion coverage. People who choose to have an abortion coverage rider on their policy will have to pay that portion of the premium out of their own pockets.

Bob Enyart has always come across as a shady character to me but this seems really bad. I don’t understand how the President and Vice-President of Americans for Life couldn’t prevent the organization they’re supposedly in charge of from creating a new web site they oppose or why Enyart would persist in keeping their names up when they want them removed.


Apparently, telling women in crisis pregnancies that you love them and care for them and that abortion isn’t a fix for their problems is "verbal harassment."