Health Care’s Abortion Problem

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Doug Johnson, the legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, sent a fascinating email to Politico’s Chris Frates on Thursday. In it, Johnson makes the case that Democrats cannot use the filibuster-proof reconciliation process to change the abortion language in the Senate’s health care bill. (As I reported last month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office agrees with this assessment.) Johnson also says that even if they could use reconciliation to change the abortion language, Democrats would have trouble coming to a workable compromise between the House and the Senate bills. Here’s the most important bit:

[I]f enacted, the abortion-related provisions of the Senate bill would constitute the biggest expansions of abortion ever presented to either house of Congress, for an actual floor vote, since Roe v. Wade. The Senate bill would result in direct federal funding of abortion (for example, through federally funded community Health Centers, under language added by the Reid “manager’s amendment”), federal subsidies for private abortion insurance (including plans administered by the federal government), and federal pro-abortion mandates. NRLC summarized the six or seven major abortion-related problems with the Senate-passed bill in a three-page letter to U.S. House members that is posted here: http://www.nrlc.org/AHC/HouseLetteronAbortionProvisions.html

NRLC and our 50 state affiliates have spent the last six weeks educating House members about these issues. A substantial number of pro-life Democrats in the House, including some Members not mentioned on the various published lists, have made it clear that they are not going to vote for the Senate-passed bill, with or without a “sidecar” reconciliation bill, because of the abortion problems (and, in some cases, because of other problems).

Johnson is directly challenging what Nancy Pelosi and other top House Democrats have been saying—that abortion isn’t a substantial obstacle to passing the Senate bill through the House. When Pelosi met with liberal columnists late last month, she pointedly did not include abortion on a long list of potential bill-killers. Johnson is saying, “you’re wrong—we’ve made sure this issue will kill the bill.” They can’t both be right—either Pelosi will find enough pro-life Democrats who will prioritize the health care bill over abortion politics, or she won’t.

Most of the staffers I’ve talked to about this don’t think NLRC and Rep. Bart Stupak (the sponsor of the House bill’s anti-abortion provision) have a big block of Democrats ready to switch their votes and oppose the bill. But the margin for original passage was small, and unless Pelosi can find some no-votes who will switch to yes, just a couple yes-to-nos would be enough to sink health care reform.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate