The abortion “compromise”

9 thoughts on The abortion “compromise”

1. I’m not sure if there will ever be a way through legislation alone to force states, counties, municipalities, blocks, or individual people to provide abortion services. This has become such an emotionally charged issue that rough compromises like these are going to be the best we can expect.

   The MSM is reporting that both sides are unhappy with the concessions made, which is the definition of a compromise. Sometimes I think it would be better to delight in compromise than steam over Stupak.

2. Leaving it up to the household doesn’t go far enough. It should be left up to the individual.

3. Like President Obama, in a better time, said–
   Trust women.

4. The republican side of the compromise, translated: “Okay, fine, we’ll let poor people’s lives improve so long as women are kept firmly in second place to men.”

5. The very same people who claim to be for ‘less government’ are actually big government conservatives. They want to put more government into women’s lives.

   And this is the very result of the Culture of Misogyny that we have here in the United States.

   The Manager’s amendment and its big cousin, the Stupak amendment, are big time dealbreakers for me. If women are going to lose their right to abortion in even one area of the country, then killing the entire health care bill is the right thing to do. Women’s rights trumps health care reform for me.

   1. Yeah, I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion here, but I actually support passing the bill. This compromise stinks, but it won’t do the kind of long-term wide-spread damage that the Stupak amendment would have done. And the Senate bill killed the public option, which is really terrible, but not un-doable — health care can be tinkered with and improved in years to come. I don’t think we’re going to get another shot at this, and health care in the U.S. is too abysmal to not do something about. I really believe that if they don’t pass this bill, health care reform is dead in the water for another decade. That’s unacceptable to me. So yeah, the bill is not perfect — many aspects of it are legitimately bad — but I don’t think it puts us in a worse place than we’re at now (quite the opposite, in fact — it makes a lot of things a lot better). So I support passing it.

      Of course, I don’t support passing it without pointing out that the Democratic strategists dropped the ball on this one, and Democrats are the worst negotiators on the fucking planet. And I think we need to target the people who screwed this one up for primary defeats (I’m looking at Stupak, Lieberman, etc). But pass the bill.

6. “I think states should leave the abortion question up to the counties”

   That’s not a bad idea actually, we can hold counties, sometimes in overwhelming numbers. State legislatures are as bad as the federal government, ugly compromises are stuck all the time to get sufficient votes.

   Screw the right wingers and their parts of the country. Why should all of us settle for mediocre reproductive healthcare…or sex ed to appease good-for-nothing flag waving bible thumpers.

   Nobody has an infinite amount of money, every dollar we allocate to organizations such as NARAL(the political/legal arm of the pro-choice movement) so they can do battle with the bumpkins of somewhere else for the right to do something is a dollar we do not have to provide for the actual services in our own communities.

   Women, and enlightened men, can vote with their feet.

7. I fundamentally disagree, Jill…this bill should be killed on sight for its blatant giveaway to the insurance and pharmaceutical companies with no effective cost controls, for it’s mandate to require the uninsured under threat of fine or even jail to purchase crappy private insurance that won’t even come close to filling the gap in health care, and for its regressive use of excise and other taxes on middle- and working-class folk to pad the already way too stuffed pockets of Big Pharma/Big Insura.

   And that is even notwithstanding the assault on women’s reproductive choice.

   And even worse, considering the strength of conservative Democrats and the collusion of the Republicans, I fully expect that there will be an attempt to reinsert the original Stupak language through “negotiation” (I don’t think there will be a Conference Committee on this bill, because Obama/Emanuel will move to grease the skids to get their pre-Xmas signing ceremony and attempt to ram the Senate version through via an up-or-down vote); if the “pro-life” House Dems were able to punk Pelosi once, what makes you think that they won’t do it again??

   And then there is the inevitable poltitcal fallout when the public discovers that they have been fooled into a program that simply funnels billions of $$$ from the pockets of working- and middle-class folks into the back pockets of private companies without any hint of balancing “reform” or even limit on corporate chicanery; it will damage the Democratic and especially “progressive” brand for at least two generations, and give a political nuke to the Teabaggers and the Right to drive the final stake in the very idea of a “social welfare state” and government provision for those not wealthy. I can easily imagine Blue Dog/ConservaDems (who are mostly anti-choice) and right-wing Repubs campaigning and winning in 2010 and 2012 against the “subsidies” for the poor uninsured (read, Black/Latin@/”illegals” as “welfare” for the undeserving at the expense of “productive” citizens..and then collude with Big Biz to eliminate the subsidies in the name of “entitlement reform” and deficit reduction.

   In short, this bill is a cruel parody of “progressive health care reform”, and should be opposed on general principles of basic fundamental social justice…beyond the specific antichoice riders included within.

   And it goes without saying that Obama, Reid, Emanuel, and the rest of the Dem “leadership” who allowed the likes of Stupak, Lieberman and Nelson to run the process should be run out or DC on a rail.

   Kill this bill, and hold out for single payer/universal nationalized health care that actually protects women’s rights.

   Anthony

8. health care can be tinkered with and improved in years to come.

   You’re making a pretty dangerous assumption there. In “years to come” the Democrats are looking at a potentially grim 2010 and an unknown 2012. Can you imagine what will happen if “tinkering and improving” gets left to Contract With America v. 2.0? Right now, and for around the next year and a half, the Democrats have a clear and certain majority in both Houses of Congress to go along with the White House. Now is the time to shit or get off the pot, so to speak. Unfortunately, its starting to look like the Democrats have again displayed their uncanny ability to grasp failure from the jaws of victory and be consistently outmaneuvered by Republicans and special interests. Hope only takes you so far, eventually you have to actually accomplish something. Otherwise you end up like Carter turning over the keys to Reagan.

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