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Bart Stupak Factually Wrong on HCR Bill and Abortion
This is not news in and of itself. Stupak claims the Senate bill directly subsidizes abortions. It does not. What is worth noting now is that MSNBC’s First Read blog has done a thorough fact-check and debunked Stupak’s claims:
Last November, the House of Representatives narrowly passed its health-care bill, 220-215, only after it included an amendment by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) barring any federal funding in the legislation from being used for abortion coverage (except in cases of rape, incest, or if the mother’s life is in danger). A month later, Senate Democrats secured their 60th — and decisive — vote after agreeing to Sen. Ben Nelson’s (D-NE) similar (though less restrictive) changes on abortion.
And now, with the House poised to vote later this month on the already-passed Senate health-care bill, Stupak is claiming that he and 11 other House Democrats who voted for the legislation in November will vote against the Senate bill, unless it adopts the House’s abortion language.
[...]
Stupak’s rationale: The Senate bill — despite Nelson’s changes — directly subsidizes abortion.“In the Senate bill,” Stupak told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews last week, “it says you must offer insurance policies that will be paid for by the federal government that covers abortion. You must do so.”
The Michigan congressman later said this to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos: “The bill that they’re using as the vehicle is the Senate bill, and if you go to page 2,069 through page 2,078, you will find in there the federal government would directly subsidize abortions, plus every enrollee in the Office of Personnel Management enrolled plan, every enrollee has to pay a minimum of $1 per month towards reproductive rights, which includes abortion.”
Except when you go to page 2,069 through page 2,078, it says nothing of the kind. (Or, as Rachel Maddow put it on her show earlier this week (paraphrasing), when you go to the section of the bill that Stupak cites as proof that the Senate bill directly subsidizes abortion, you find the proof…. that Stupak is lying.)
For starters, let’s look at the pages that Stupak cited to Stephanopoulos. From pages 2,071-2,072: “If a qualified health plan provides coverage of services described in paragraph (1)(B)(i)” — i.e., abortion — “the issuer of the plan shall not use any amount attributable to [health reform's government-funding mechanisms] for purposes of paying for such services.
As Slate’s Timothy Noah, who fact-checked Stupak last week, writes, “That seems pretty straightforward. No government funding for abortions.”
What’s more, the Senate bill explicitly ensures that Americans who receive federal subsidies under the reform plan must pay separately for abortion coverage. Here’s pages 2,074-2,075: “In the case of a plan to which sub paragraph (A) applies, the issuer of the plan shall collect from each enrollee in the plan (without regard to the enrollee’s age, sex, or family status) a separate payment” that “may not estimate such a cost at less than $1 per enrollee, per month.”
Furthermore, Ben Nelson (D-NE) even added language allowing individual states to opt out of providing abortion coverage at all — and those states that do must have separate plans that don’t include abortion coverage.
58 Responses to “Bart Stupak Factually Wrong on HCR Bill and Abortion”
“Being a 2nd Amendment guy, I guess you celebrate the senseless murder of children and innocent adults via gun violence. I suggest you descend from your pulpit and drop the rocks. “
I will always stand against senseless murder – be it a defenseless unborn child, an innocent drive-by victim, or whomever.
But here's what the 2nd Amendment does for me. MY family will not be one of those murdered, because I will blow the head off of anyone who attempts it. That, my brother, is self defense.
We cannot prevent murder by disregarding the Constitutional right to bear arms. If more people were armed, the murder rate would go down, and the self defense elimination of the scum of society may rise. I don't mind. It beats teaching them a new criminal skill in prison and supporting them with my tax dollars.
“JD, I'm 100% prolife but I don't think it's right to denigrate people who have a different belief about it.”
You're right, CS. That's the one issue that gets the emotional juices flowing. Nearly EVERY article Kathy writes is about abortion or homosexual issus of some sort. It's almost as if she were on the ACLU payroll.
I do my best to respect the ideals of others. I simply call them out on obvious hypocracies in their chain of thought.
And you know what? I've got no problem paying for depoprevera or tubal ligations of people who cannot control themselves sexually, don't want to take responsibility for there actions, or just don't care. People who do not want children should not have sex. Period.
Kathy knows it gets under my skin.
No thanks are necessary Kathy. I think it is so important for people on both sides to try o see the other perspective even if seeing it doesn't cause us to change our minds.
To CStanley: “Your kindness and empathy in saying what you said about my beliefs on abortion, despite your very strong disagreement on the issue, is admirable. “
I guess I have a goal to shoot for, Kat. I'll be the first to say I'm not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Abortion is such a “to-the-core” issue. It's the only issue that cuts me so deeply. If I could just somehow understand how you consider an unborn baby “non-life”, perhaps I could understand your perspective better. Perhaps also, if you could understand why I consider an unborn child as “life”, you too could understand my perspective better. I know many liberals, conservatives, and moderates who all have differing opinions on abortion, so it's not a completely partisan issue.
At one time, killing your slaves was not considered murder – it was considered dealing with “property”. Likewise, it's hard for me to wrap my mind around abortion as anything other than murder even when it's wrapped in the shrowd of “privacy”.
I always try to understand the other side's opinions on things. I've shown quite a bit of growth here on TMV in many topics. Many here can attest to that. But unless I can see how abortion is not murder – a capital offense in any other realm – I cannot even begin to have empathy.
“the question of health reform was still born from the moment that single payer was left out of the discussion”
Hemm — single-payer in no way is needed in order to secure reform. True reform at its essence consists of new regulations on the insurance industry to prevent the worst abuses and make things easier for those suffering the most, those with individual plans and those in the high risk pool. Additional reforms could be made by having states or the entire nation go to “community rating” and form one pool per state, or one large nation-wide pool. Mandatory participation and payment for insurance would ensure lowest per capita costs, as well (as with forming large pools) laying the framework for changing to government health care in the future.
There never was any question what was essential, and anything additional or different spooked us in the mainstream, especially after several months of misconduct and gross overreach by the Dems. Single-payer sounds like a great initial bargaining point, but in reality was extreme and would make the mainstream recoil. Hence it wasn't sought; the public option was (and possibly is) the more palatable, less controversial alternative. (Co-ops were an even less controversial or provocative alternative to people.)
The Dems have sought too much (wrongly — without knowing at the start how to pay for what they wanted, if they could even have been said at the start that they knew what they wanted), after a year of seeking too much on all kinds of issues, and they need to tread extra carefully when it comes to anything bolder now.
There is no need for anything more than essential reform (which is the mainstream's idea of reform), though the public option and even a Medicare buy-in (extension to other, new, non-elderly beneficiaries) are potentially still alive, if they can be carefully sought. (Will the Dems get the details right this time?)
Abortion is such a “to-the-core” issue. It's the only issue that cuts me so deeply.
It's not the only issue that cuts me so deeply, but it's one of a very few — war and human rights being the two others.
If I could just somehow understand how you consider an unborn baby “non-life”, perhaps I could understand your perspective better.
I don't consider an unborn baby “non-life.” Obviously, a fetus is life; it's living. But it's not a person. A woman is a person. The fetus lives inside a woman's uterus. That means that any decision about how to handle an unwanted or unviable pregnancy involves two lives in one body. That is the biological, anatomical, unavoidable, unchangeable reality of the matter. It is not possible to equally value both lives in the context of abortion. It's just not. Having an abortion ends the life of the fetus. Continuing the pregnancy does not always end the life of a woman, but it often either seriously endangers her life, or it seriously endangers her long-term health. No matter what the circumstances under which she became pregnant, the potential risks to life or health are the same. Since no one other than the woman involved and her doctor know what those risks are, or understand the larger consequences and meaning of those risks in the complete context of that woman's entire medical history, no one else is qualified to make judgments about whether or not an abortion is advisable. That, too, is just a fact. It's not rationally arguable. Therefore, the choice to end or continue the pregnancy must be the woman's alone, in consultation with her doctor and anyone else she decides to involve.
I simply don't understand how one can get around this reality, or deny it, and argue that abortion is murder and should be illegal, without implicitly denying this reality — without implicitly privileging the life of a fetus over the life of a woman. If you want to say that the fetus is just as much a human person as the woman, you can, but you have NOT addressed, much less resolved, that basic problem. In fact, you've made it even more problematic. Because now if you still say that abortion is murder and should be illegal, you are implicitly also saying that of these two human persons, equal in standing, one is more equal and deserving of life and health than the other. It doesn't matter how long or loudly you deny the truth of this. It's still the truth. When you define abortion only in terms of the fetus's life and advocate enshrining that definition in law, then you are saying that a fetus's life is more valuable than a woman's (and I mean “life” here in the broadest sense — health and physical and mental wellness in addition to mortality).
At one time, killing your slaves was not considered murder – it was considered dealing with “property”.
Well, yes, that is true. But the flip side of that coin is that slaves did not have any legal control over their own bodies, either. Yes, if a white man killed a slave, it was not murder. But it was theft of property, depending on the exact circumstances. Whites could be and were prosecuted for the crime of destroying other men's property if the slave belonged to someone else and there was nothing that the white authorities would consider justifiable provocation (like assaulting a white man, for example). Under the same legal principle (that slaves were property) slaves themselves could be punished, often severely — sometimes even killed — for taking actions that suggested they owned their own bodies. For example, running away. Runaway slaves were thieves — they were stealing their masters' property. Literally, they were stealing themselves. And female slaves who were pregnant and either self-aborted or killed their babies at birth (which happened in at least one case that is unknown now but was very high-profile at the time) could be and were guilty of destroying their master's property. They were not guilty of murder. They were guilty of destroying their master's property.
So, you see, that “white men could kill slaves and it wasn't considered murder” argument cuts both ways, and one should be cautious about using it to equate women choosing abortions to white men killing slaves.
“I don't consider an unborn baby “non-life.” Obviously, a fetus is life; it's living. But it's not a person. A woman is a person. The fetus lives inside a woman's uterus. “
That's the part the appears to be a contradiction to me, Kat. It's why I cannot understand the other side on this.
On one hand, you say that a fetus is “life”, yet eliminating it is somehow not murder.
On the other hand, you say that the justification is that the fetus is not a person, and therefore it's ok to eliminate that life.
This makes absolutely no sense. Ending life (unless for sustenance/food) is senseless killing. I'm sure you don't approve of killing animals for kicks, dog/cock fights, etc; since they, too, are not “persons” and (using the same logic) could thus be killed at will, as long as it is “owned” by the killer.
And your point on slaves is the same I made. We agree on that. The point I made was that they “justified” killing slaves through PROPERTY rights (unjustly you would agree), and Abortion activists justify killing babies (ending a fetus/non-person's life) through PRIVACY.
That's the part the appears to be a contradiction to me, Kat. It's why I cannot understand the other side on this.
I think you've hit the nail on the head, JD. Pregnancy IS a contradiction in the context of abortion — by definition. You (by your own admission) cannot understand that. Sometimes moral issues do have to be resolved in the midst of paradox and contradiction. That's the nature of many moral choices, and it's also the essence of being human. You find it hard to accept that. So be it. I've done the best I can.
On one hand, you say that a fetus is “life”, yet eliminating it is somehow not murder.
That is correct, JD. “Life” and “person” are not the same thing. If “life” and “person” were a Venn diagram, they would overlap, but they would not be identical.
On the other hand, you say that the justification is that the fetus is not a person, and therefore it's ok to eliminate that life.
No, I did not say that. I said that full-term pregnancy, by definition, contains risks to a woman's life. By advocating that abortion be made illegal, you are advocating that a woman be forced to risk her life, when she does not want to assume that risk, so that another life can continue to exist. There is no other area of life in which that is considered permissible in law. There is always risk in pregnancy that complications may develop — complications that have the potential to seriously and permanently harm a woman, up to and including death. Everyone knows this, but when a pregnancy is chosen and wanted, women are willing to assume this risk. When abortion is made illegal or excessively difficult to obtain, that choice is taken away from the woman and given to total strangers — to the state. If you can't see why that is wrong, so be it. I've done the best I can.
And your point on slaves is the same I made.
No, my point on slaves is not the same that you made. Slaves did not have the right to make their own choices for their own bodies. An enslaved woman did not have the right to choose to end a pregnancy. If she did so, she committed a crime. That does not support your position at all.
I did not deny your point; I amplified on it. You do not see the amplification. It doesn't exist for you. So be it. I've done the best I can.
The essence of understanding the other side's position is being able to describe it accurately (as Christine did, for me), and then being able to acknowledge the meaningfulness of that opposite position without demonizing the other side. I am not always able to do that, and I freely admit that. But I do know that understanding the other side's position involves, to some undefinable degree, being able to express the other side's position as the other side feels it, and not as you on your side interpret it. You can't do that, at least so far. So be it. I've done the best I can.