Behind the Scenes at the Abortion Compromise

Steve Benen's always good for a partisan laugh, and he doesn't disappoint in his post, "THE EFFECTS OF THE ABORTION 'COMPROMISE'" (via Memeorandum):

As of late yesterday, House Democratic leaders were still short of the 218 votes needed to pass health care reform. Odd as it may seem, after six months of debate, hearings, meetings, and negotiations, the biggest hurdle was the wording on a measure dealing with the fungibility of public funds as it relates to abortion services.

Pro-choice Democrats said the bill already restricted direct public funding of abortion. Democrats who oppose abortion rights said it wasn't enough, and without a prohibition on indirect funding, they would kill the entire health care reform initiative.

I'd say Benen left a couple of things out, like the near-year-long campaign against ObamaCare by grassroots conservatives; and then, of course, there's tanking public support for the Democratic healthcare monstrosity. From Dana Loesch, "Why Rush Through a Bill Nobody Supports?":

But don't miss the comments at the Booman Tribune, a Marxist-Leninist hangout. See, "Price for Health Care, Women Under Bus" (it's like going swimming in sewage channel):

So women are now supposed to carry all the burden of bearing and rearing children, while paying more for insurance and receiving less, getting lower pay, and then eating cat food in retirement because we didn't earn enough money during our "working" years.

*****
What we have here is a literal circle-jerk of sworn celibate cross-dressers dicktating gender-specific medical policy. Sorry, but we dealt with this particular form of stupid nationally in '73. Stupak, et. al. need to drag their sorry asses by their hairy knuckles back to whatever damn cave they've emerged from.

*****

I watched the Stupak gang last night in front of the Rules Committee, and despite the protestations of Hastings and McGovern, you knew this was going to happen. Somehow, the fact that they are under the same restrictions on abortion with their own Federal Health Care Plans is supposed to make them seem like sympathetic characters in this debate; who understand how difficult it is for poor people with regard to the difficult question of abortion. "They can buy supplemental plans just like us if the want to get an abortion", they say. Cut me a freaking break!
Every day, as this thing gets whittled down more and more, I really do have to wonder about its overall worth. The "we have to pass something" group takes greater control of this debate every day.

I know it is not politically feasible to get some things right up front. But if the end result of all this paring and "compromise" is a tremendously marginalized bill that creates a whole new set of problems and roadblocks for the people who truly need health care, how much value, in the end, does it really have?

It is just supremely frustrating that all of the "give back" has to be from one side, the side that is trying to help real people with real needs.

It is just aggravating to watch. The people in Washington just really don't give a shit about the most marginalized people in this debate.

*****

When you aren't bold enough as leaders this is what happens.

Roosevelt was right about fear, and it has been the fear of Democrats which has led us to this crappy bill.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward. Franklin D. Roosevelt

*****

Boo, You really didn't know that the Catholic Church has pretensions to rule the world and acts everywhere as a shadow political organization. I'm not trying to be funny. This is so! It always has been. Mussolini reinstated the Catholic Church's status as an independent entity in the Vatican after the Italian revolution had compoletely incorporated the Vatican into Italian territory in about 1870. After the war, the U.S. (you know, the separation-religion-and-state empire of god on earth) opted to accept Mussolini's decision and supported the Italian post-war government's continuation of the Vatican as autonomous. Maybe the V.S. even insisted on it. Well, guys, here we are today. This decision against abortion funding is barbaric. Medieval. It chokes me.