{"id":9081,"date":"2009-11-07T12:20:31","date_gmt":"2009-11-07T19:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9081"},"modified":"2009-11-07T12:20:31","modified_gmt":"2009-11-07T19:20:31","slug":"stupak-amendment-makes-a-good-day-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=9081","title":{"rendered":"Stupak Amendment Makes a Good Day Bad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today should be a good day. It should be a day when Democrats and decent people celebrate the passage of health care reform out of the House of Representatives. But unfortunately, the usual suspects have decided that health care can’t be reformed if said reform leads to women having control of their uteri. So Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., will be pushing — and likely passing — an amendment that would actually manage to reduce the already tenuous access<\/a> Americans currently have to abortion.<\/p>\n

The amendment likely has the votes, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi has evidently decided not to stand in the way of a vote, in order to avoid any further delay in getting the bill voted off the floor. And I can understand that, and even support it as strategy; the bill passing the House today is not the final bill. It will have to be reconciled with the Senate’s bill (if one ever passes) in a conference committee, and the bill that comes out of conference could favor the language of either, both, or neither, depending. Pelosi will appoint the House conferees; presumably Bart Stupak will not be one of them.<\/p>\n

So yeah, some bad language is okay at this stage of the game because it’s still a work in progress. But I tend to agree with Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.<\/a>, about the endgame here:<\/p>\n

The Illinois Democrat said she’ll vote for passage today regardless of whether Stupak’s amendment is included, but would oppose a final bill if the amendment makes it through conference committe.<\/p>\n

“If that language were in the final final bill, I certainly couldn’t support it,” Schakowsky said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That, I think, is the important thing for Democrats to understand, because if that language is in the final bill, I can’t support it, either.<\/p>\n

The Stupak Amendment is a bitter pill to swallow, but as of today, it’s a purely symbolic one. Yes, it sucks that a majority of members in the House believe that a person’s right to choose can be chucked aside at will. But the vote today won’t ultimately chuck that right aside. It’s the vote on the final bill that comes out of conference that matters.<\/p>\n

If the Stupak language survives the conference committee, it is incumbent on those of us who support reproductive rights to pull our support, and actively campaign for defeat of the bill. For today, I’ll grit my teeth and make note of which Democrats to lean on when the vote for final passage comes. But that’s for today. Tomorrow starts the fight to make sure that the bill that ultimately is passed is a bill that supporters of reproductive rights can support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today should be a good day. It should be a day when Democrats and decent people celebrate the passage of health care reform out of the House of Representatives. But unfortunately, the usual suspects have decided that health care can’t … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion-reproductive-rights","category-health-care-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}