Democrats ready to make further abortion concessions

The only acceptable concession for people of good will (Christians and non-Christians alike) is an express prohibition. We cannot rely on any person's word that the bill will not cover abortions. This needs to be expressly stated in clear and concise language. President Obama has stated this verbally but anyone who takes his word for this may be interested in purchasing some property on the moon.

Well this might be good. i would much rather have an imprudent law passed which does not--or extremely rarely--fund abortion, than an imprudent law that does. Indeed, if this is the compromise we must make to starve this Evil, I would accept it. Now, if they could find a way to provide health care to the poor without violating the principle of subsidiarity, I would be thrilled.

Generally speaking, Democrats had argued that the health care legislation would make no change to existing federal laws regarding how tax dollars could be used to pay for abortions.

Well, that's the big distortion, isn't it? They're right; existing federal laws would remain unchanged. Unfortunately, the Hyde Amendment applies only to Medicaid, and not to any new public insurance provided under this bill.

The "default" position of funding is that it will pay for abortions. Legislation like the Hyde Amendment is needed to prevent said funding.

So yes, the current existing federal laws (which by default fund abortion) will remain unchanged. So the next time you hear someone say, "but there's no mention of abortion funding in the bill," they're right. There doesn't need to be for it to happen.

A sad day for those who supported the Democratic party, with its promise to support free abortions, uneqivocally.

Lets hope that these concessions are real and do not inlcude "fine print" like the concessions will expire or must be renewed etc. etc.

This is an unqualified win for the efforts of pro-lifers, no matter what your stripe! The Church and pro-life groups in general can have serious effects on legislation when we work together and organize to support life. Thank God it is working!

Now that's blind faith!

The sad fact of the matter is that insurers already get a federal tax subsidy to provide abortion, although insurance does not fund most abortions (nor do state funds). Many people pay cash and I don't think there is one form of payment that is in the majority. No one's individual tax dollars are involved enough in any abortion to make it a matter of personal conscience for any taxpayer (unlike, say, our multiple wars).

Not covering abortion is a worthy goal, but we should not over reach or lie about the fact that we are doing it - or about the fact that much of this debate is as much about tribalism and clout as it is about the protecting unborn. Let us not forget that passing some form of health care reform will make life more affordable for people on the edge and will likely prevent more abortions than allowing federal funding subsidies so that people can buy insurance that includes abortion will cause.

Can you imagine what this world would be like, if Catholics put as much effort and energy into making the quality of life better for those who are already born as they do for fetuses?

i feel that this is not health care reform at all. it will make everything worse.
it seems that every law can be interpreted differently.

JimNY, first of all, the better term is unborn children. Pro-lifers do work hard to improve the quality of life for those born and those not yet born. I assume you are in NY by your name. Did you know that the Catholic Church is the largest provider of social services in New York City after the government. Seems like you are not aware of what is going in your own neck of the world; much less anywhere else.

"Abortion opponents, including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops . . ."

This quote made sense in its original context in Tom Fox's post, but it's sad that we can't substitute "the Church" for the bishops' conference. After all, the USCCB's position ia not politcally based (that's little comfort to the Democrats, to be sure), but based on the perennial teaching that abortion is, as Vatican II affirmed, a serious offense against human life. All Catholics, and not just the USCCB, should be concerned about this.

All of these machinations will not reduce the overall number of abortions by one. Not one. The expense will be covered in some other way.

However, they do imperil the social justice issue of availabiliy of treatments for cancer, heart disease, birth defects, developmental disabilities, and dozens of other life-threatening illnesses. Not to mention (hello?) pre-natal care, and childbirth expenses.

And, by the way, of one of the factors (medical care costs) which go into a woman's decision to bring a child into the world, or to abort it.

The whole "abortion funding" issue is just a red-herring introduced by Republican bishops in an effort to derail health care reform.

It's sad to see progressive Catholics get sucked into the lie.

Now comes a winter to try souls, likely to reach all of us, demanding that again, we as a country address the definition of life.

We have stepped up to bat before, to the effort to define life. Americans have had to do so when we argued over Scott vs. Sanford [the Dred Scott decision, 1857] and, after great loss of life, overturned the holdings in that decision by enacting the Civil War Amendments. Americans did so again when we fought totalitarian genociditic regimes in the early 1940s, and afterwards signed on to the Four Freedoms and the United Nations Charter.

Defining life is a lofty and ultimate challenge to any individuals and to any nation. But life, instead and for most of us, is more easily what we know as the sum of our routines of work, joys and troubles, along with our families, neighbors, friends, co-workers, customers and others. Therefore, despite "the Civil War" and our responses to Nazism, we are rarely, if ever, challenged to define life. Even wonderful events and great tragedies are often allowed to come and go without compelling many to reflect upon the definition of our lives. In fact, the more comfortable and convenient our lives are, the less likely we are to question anything about life itself.

Perhaps this is normal, but it can also be very unhealthy. I allude above to a few pages of the Civil War era, and to the struggle against Nazism, as rare occasions when Americans had to face and define life. But there was more to these struggles. Who can omit the 250 years of slavery preceeding it, from any view of our Civil War, and how does one fit the nearly 150 years of racial bigotry after 1865 into the study? Dread Scott, the Civil War and the Civil War Amendments taught lessons in life that we have had to relearn and underscore repeatedly.

We fought the tyrannies of Japan and Central Europe in the 1940s, and have struggled against other tyrannies (Soviet, Asian, etc.) for many decades since.
Indeed, many millions of Jews and other racial and ethnic peoples have died at the hands of these tyrannies. Yet we face these lessons again and again for ourselves, even today. (Who are the latest minorities here, now?)

Though we are horrified every time we learn of new atrocities, we inwardly wonder whether we are somehow growing callous. Are Americans today expected to emote more over the deaths of several millions slain by Chinese Communists or by Stalin, than over the thousands of Black Americans slain by lynch mobs and the KKK? Is any one else's life any more or any less valuable to us, as we sit quietly and think, when we see that other life as one in a large group of, say, six million? as one lived in a far away country? as one spent in a century not ours? "Ask not for whom the bell tolls."

History in the 19th and 20th centuries has seen Americans struggle to refine life politically, by legislating various important freedoms and rights for all races, faiths, colors, able-bodied and disabled persons, genders and so on, and to a great extent these refinements of our political lives have served in the effort to reach a definition of life.

Now we are running headlong towards a rare American event, a federal definition of a critical aspect of life's beginnings. We are taught that before 1861, the federal government never directly funded slavery. We are learning, as I write this comment, that the latest health reform bill favored for House passage will include mandatory funding of abortion in the public option, and that in any state that might choose to have no public option(s), there will have to be at least one private option offering coverage of abortions. Whether the monies for abortions flow through the federal government (in, by a tax by any name, and out, by means of a payment by any name), or flow more directly by a mandatory payment from a subscriber to a payer or a provider, the federal government will by such a system do what it never did even with slavery, in an era when slaves were not considered persons. And that is, the federal government will directly support deaths of unborn Americans.

This goes against the struggles of Americans at Gettysburg and hundreds of other American battlefields in the Civil War, and it cannot be what our soldiers thought of before they died on the beaches of Normandy. Those who suffered the unending bonds of slavery and the post-Civil War pains of Jim Crow, lynchings and urban segregation, and those who endured as long as they could in the Nazi concentration camps, all these did so for the purpose of life, which they came closer than any of us to truly and fully defining.

Go up the steps or ramps into the Lincoln Memorial (or to a website) and quietly read what he said about life, framed to the issues at that time not too long ago. Do you hear him whispering that the federal government should support abortions in any way?

Vincent of Valley Forge