Why thank you, my day has been nice so far.

No, I want to maintain the status quo regarding federal funding, which is that women are free to have an abortion, but federal funds cannot go toward it. Liberals are painting the picture that the amendment moves us in a pro-life direction, when in fact the amendment simply reconciles the current health care proposal with the current ban on federal funding of abortions. It is the liberals who want to move us in a pro-choice direction by allowing federal subsidies to go toward abortion.

The rest of your comment is irrelevant to this discussion. I'm not arguing about whether women have a right to an abortion or not. Just because something is a right does not imply that it must be subsidized by the federal government.

There is no constitutional protection for a mass of cells that MIGHT become a baby citizen.

And this is the ultimate irony of the Democratic platform. For a party that historically has championed the cause of the marginalized, the underpaid worker, the poor, the aged, and the vulnerable, we turn around and pretend as if the most vulnerable among us simply don't exist. Forget the whole gay rights question that we chase our tail on too many times on TMV and – disagreements to the contrary – will likely end up being resolved on a state-by-state basis. On abortion, on this one issue of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” if the Dems would apply these sacred words to the “least” among us, if we were to have a sincere change of heart, then we would solidify our moral leadership in America for generations to come. If you haven't read Dr. E's essay on Fort Hood's 14th victim, take the time to do so. It's good stuff.

Ok, once again, let's talk constitutional rights. Our citizens are protected, and who is a citizen is precisely defined. They are entitled to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” A citizen was BORN here or NATURALIZED. There is no constitutional protection for a mass of cells that MIGHT become a baby citizen. There are over 100 reasons a pregnancy might not proceed to a live birth, so that is not a citizen but a POTENTIAL citizen. Currently, there is no requirement, in any law federal, state or local, in which one citizen is required to make a medical decision to protect the life of a current citizen, let alone a potential one. For example, a parent cannot be required to give a kidney or even blood for her own child. Should that change? For that matter, why not force ANY citizen to give a kidney or blood to save another's life?

A woman IS a citizen, and her rights are protected. If a mass of cells in her uterus that MIGHT become a citizen is to have ITS rights elevated above the ACTUAL, living citizen, that is a slippery slope indeed. There is no circumstance under our constitution in which you can be forced to undergo or not to undergo a medical procedure to benefit another person. If the fetus (or morula if it's not a fetus yet) has greater rights than the living citizen, then a pregnant woman could also be forced to stop all medical treatment (chemotherapy, blood thinners, blood pressure medication, etc.) that could threaten the viability of the fetus. Take a look sometime at the drugs that are contraindicated in pregnancy. It's almost ALL prescription and many OTC drugs. So now a woman must risk her life and health to benefit another citizen, oops, a noncitizen POTENTIAL life.

Now consider that pregnancy itself is statistically way more risky than abortion, to the woman. Regardless of how you feel about abortion, you are suggesting that a woman who becomes pregnant must be required by law to take the riskier path, medically speaking. She no longer has the right to make her own decisions about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

By what right, and on what legal basis do you suggest that any person's constitutional rights should be subordinated to the rights of another, especially a mass of cells that very well might not become a live birth?

Think about it. You who rail about a “federal takeover of health care” now suggest that the feds take from women their fundamental right to make medical decisions based on their own and their physicians' best judgment. Talk about nanny state!

In any case, I'm not sure what is the point you are trying to make. Are you
saying that tax-payer money already funds abortion because of these tax
breaks? If that's your view, then those tax breaks break the law as well.
Or are you saying that the subsidies don't break the law because the tax
breaks don't either? I think it's clear that if the government subsidizes
something, by definition is is helping to fund it. So, even if you make a
good point about tax breaks, I don't think it disproves the point that the
amendment is necessary to avoid federal funding of abortions.

leonidas -

Sorry, even I cannot see the Catholic Church closing all their hospitals over this. Never going to happen.

I can see it happening.

Remember this:

http://www.slate.com/id/2205326

I can't see the government being able to keep the legislation should the Catholic hospitals close and overnight eliminate such a sizable portion of the healthcare infrastructure. The Catholic Church can wait out the currently elected government, but the government cannot outwait the Catholic Church.

I don't trust myself to answer anything you've written above. And I can see it would not make any difference, anyway.

We'll have to agree to disagree.

The government gives my church a tax. Does the government subsidize my
church? That would be unconsitutional.

The government taxes me less on the lower half of my income than it does on
the higher half. Does the government subsidize me?

1) Health insurance is mostly about planning for unexpected events. There are lots of things that could be covered by a health insurance plan that I have never even heard of before. Let’s do a though experiment. I want to buy health insurance, and you want to sell me a plan. You tell me you have 2 plans you could sell me. One which covers treatment for XYZ disease I’ve never heard of, and costs $5 a month more, and one that does not cover that disease. Would I automatically take the cheaper one just because I’ve never heard of XYZ disease and therefore never expect to get it? No, I’d likely either just take the more expensive one to make sure I’m safe, or do some research to figure out if I really need that coverage.

2) The amount of “planning” involved is minimal. The insurance company has an incentive to make sure you are informed of the supplemental insurance (and all the reasons why you might want to get it), and will make it as easy as possible to add it on to the base plan (ie. “Check here if you’d like the supplemental abortion coverage”)

3) I don’t accept your argument that most people never expect to ever need an abortion. It is common knowledge that birth control is not 100% effective, and it is also common knowledge that complications can develop during pregnancy. Therefore, with a few seconds of thought (prompted by the checkbox on the insurance application form), it should be obvious to almost any woman that abortion coverage might be useful for them (unless of course they believe they would never want to abort even if there were non-life threatening complications, which is their choice). Your real-life scenario is interesting, but it doesn't change the fact that people understand that complications can develop during pregnancy.

We’ve been around this circle many times and it’s clear I’m not going to convince you, so let me take a different angle.

The current status quo is that no federal dollars can be used for abortion. If you don’t like that status quo, of course you’re not going to like the amendment, but most people (including many pro-choice people) accept that status quo. Liberals are trying to say that the amendment goes beyond the status quo, so let’s explore that.

Let’s try to create an amendment that will maintain the status quo of no federal funding for abortions but not restrict that coverage in private markets, given the system that the health care bill creates. What would that amendment look like? If the government subsidizes a plan that covers abortion, then obviously that is federal funding for abortion, so obviously that’s not acceptable. So at a minimum we need to prohibit plans that cover abortion from receiving federal subsidies. Do you agree with that? So then how can we make sure that people who want abortion coverage can still get it? We can do two things (and the Stupak amendment does both):

1) Allow insurance companies to provide alternative plans that cover abortion, but those plans can’t receive federal funds, so they can only be purchased by people that don’t qualify for the subsidy.
2) Allow insurance companies to provide “rider” insurance coverage that covers abortions that can be purchased separately, whether or not the consumer qualifies for federal subsidies for their base plan.

What else can we do to allow people to get abortion coverage that want it, while still not providing federal funds for abortion?

If you can’t answer that question but still don’t like the amendment, then I would suggest maybe we shouldn’t be creating a mixed public/private system in the first place if there’s no way to make it consistent with an existing law that the majority of Americans support.

That said, I completely support removing or reversing this incentive to get insurance through your employer rather than directly. It's a terrible distortion that, among other things, keeps the private insurers in power.

No, that's patently false. Everyone who has employer-provided insurance has “public funds” supporting their “private insurance.” In fact, as I noted in another thread, if you include everyone on government funded plans (40%) and everyone on employer-provided plans (27% I think), you're very close to 70% of people TODAY who receive “public funds” as a part of their health insurance. If those like me with individual plans finally get to pay in pre-tax dollars, then 100% OF AMERICANS WILL HAVE PUBLIC FUNDING of their insurance. The federal government right now pays $2,000 a year of your insurance through reduction of government revenue and increasing the deficit and debt.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by TMV: House Democrats Say They Will Not Vote for Final Bill if Stupak Amendment Is In It: House Democrats are laying down t… http://bit.ly/iHJRC...

What Stupak obviously did was, clearly and precisely, to moderate the extremism of House lib Dems.

They would be generous, and not necessarily want the people closing down the facilities to be jailed or fined — but they would probably want the facilities seized and forcibly made public non-profit facilities (and without compensating the owners for loss of income or lost present and future profits, i.e., they would unconstitutionally expropriate these people, just to teach them a Chavez-and-Stalin-style lesson).

Risk-free, responsibility-free, judgment-free, values-free. Everything given to you for “free,” too.

Earlier, when it was relevent, I posted a link to the Capps amendment — I wonder if anyone here read the text, though.