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OPINIONS
John Patrick Grace: Health care reform should be deficit neutral and 'abortion neutral'
The healthcare reform bill that passed the U.S. House 220-215 Saturday night, and bills moving through the U.S. Senate are, at this writing, "deficit neutral," according to analyses furnished by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). That's quite an accomplishment and ought to reassure American taxpayers nervous about any spike in our national debt to China and other overseas creditors.
What we also need, President Obama and Democrats in Congress have been dramatically advised, is a healthcare bill that is "abortion neutral."
Thanks to U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., and some 40 other "Blue Dog" Democrats in the House, that may be precisely what we will get. Stupak's amendment ruling out use of federal healthcare dollars for abortions passed by a vote of 240-194 on Saturday just prior to voting on the entire bill.
In my op-ed column on Aug. 18 of this year, I wrote: "Blue Dog Democrats and a strong majority of Republican senators and representatives will withhold their support from any bill that mandates that taxpayer dollars cover abortions in the United States." That is exactly what has been happening this month.
Credit White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel for this development. It was apparently Emmanuel's contribution to Democratic strategizing over the past two election cycles (2006 and 2008) that led to the lopsided Democrat majority in the House and perhaps also to the Democrats' achieving a 60-seat filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.
Though Emmanuel himself is, ostensibly, pro-abortion rights, he is said to be responsible for the strategy of matching Democratic candidate profiles with the social and political tendencies of their electorates, district for district. In other words, where a district leans social conservative -- opposing abortion and gay marriage and favoring gun rights -- select conservative Democrats to run who fit that profile.
The result has been control by Democrats of both houses of Congress but also, as has now become evident, the anti-abortion mandate put forth not by Republicans but by the Blue Dogs.
Not many years ago it would have been inconceivable that a block of Democrats this strong would dare to rise up and defy their party's traditional "abortion-rights" stance. But there were clues that this was changing even during the party's national convention in August 2008 in Denver that nominated Barack Obama for president.
Two forthright pro-life speakers were allowed to address the convention, Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and our own West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin. In previous conventions, the platform committee had barred pro-lifers from claiming any such spot in the program.
The National Abortion Rights League, Planned Parenthood and other fervent abortion-rights supporters of the Democratic Party are of course furious over the Blue Dog stance. How could this possibly happen, they want to know.
Well....duh! as the teens say. The pendulum on abortion has been swinging to the pro-life side and not even the energetic push for healthcare reform -- which is really "health-insurance reform" -- can stop it.
The result in the House was an explicit confirmation of the Hyde Amendment, which says no federal funds are to be used to finance abortions in this country, woven right into that body's version of healthcare reform.
So far I've not seen any pro-life commentary that would expect the healthcare bill to become an instrument for reducing the toll of abortions in the U.S. On the other hand, what pro-life Democrats can reasonably expect is that final legislation will be at least "abortion neutral," that is, not be an instrument for hiking the rate of abortion.
Shouldn't that seem fair to all sides?
John Patrick Grace formerly covered religion and healthcare for The Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record. He is now a book editor and publisher based in Huntington.
