So, it turns out that the price of passing health care reform in the House is selling women down the river. There will be a vote on the Stupak Amendment after all. And, no doubt, that amendment will pass. Private insurers will have to drop abortion coverage from plans that have it (which is most of them) in order to participate in the exchanges. The Public Option will not provide abortion coverage. People will get access to affordable health care, but they’ll have to pay out of pocket for an abortion. If people want to move to a plan on the exchange, they’ll lose the coverage that they currently have.
There is no guarantee that this language will survive the Conference Committee and become law, but it won’t be easy to pass the Conference Report if it doesn’t have the language. Once people vote for something once, they tend to get irritated if you just ignore that and remove it.
I didn’t realize that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was a political party with elected officials in Congress. Now I know.
