A Pledge to America … to Limit Abortions

The GOP has released its 2010 election manifesto, entitled “A Pledge to America” — a new governing agenda built on the Priorities of Our Nation, the Principles We Stand for & America’s Founding Values. Buzzwords: Priorities. Principles. Values. House Minority Leader John Boehner defended the GOP’s pledge in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, saying it’s “certainly more substantive than what was in the Contract with America 16 years ago.”  

The pledge includes the following passages regarding abortion:  

“We will permanently end taxpayer funding of abortion and codify the Hyde Amendment.”  

“We will establish a government-wide prohibition on taxpayer funding of abortion and subsidies for insurance coverage that includes abortion, this includes enacting into law what is known as the Hyde Amendment.”  

“We will also enact into law conscience protections for health care providers, including doctors, nurses, and hospitals.Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to using tax dollars to pay for abortion, and the executive order issued by President Obama in conjunction with congressional passage of the health care law is inadequate to ensure taxpayer funds are not used in this manner.”  

There you have it.

Base Values and the Midterms

WITH LABOR DAY BEHIND US and the 2010 campaigns entering their last phase I thought it’d be interesting to turn the clock back to the middle of May and a debate about the importance of ideological purity and base values in the Summer issue of U.S. News & World Report.

Robert Schlesinger, editing the piece “Two Takes”, introduced the issue in the following terms:

In the run-up to the November elections, Republicans and Democrats alike are dealing with internal fights about the path to victory. At issue is ideological purity. Some strategists argue that emphasizing core values will lead to wins, while others say that the parties need new thinking to keep them relevant. Should parties emphasize base values?

Arguing that “clear principles win elections”: Chris Chocola (former Indiana Republican Rep., president of the Club for Growth—a limited-government, free-enterprise political advocacy group).

Arguing that “pure parties are loosing parties”: Edward Gresser (president of the Democratic Leadership Council—which promotes centrist, pragmatic policy solutions).

I’ll start with Mr. Chocola.

According to Chocola, “the political choice between ideological purity and ‘big tent’ coalition building is inherently false. Success requires both. … A political party can’t build a big tent without it being anchored to clear ideological principles.” Arguing that “Republicans and Democrats represent and advocate for two very different worldviews” at their best, Chocola writes that for a party to succeed, it “must persuade voters to reject the other party’s worldview and support its own. But this is only possible if the party actually has a worldview.”

Chocola then draws the following picture of Republicans’ worldview:

For Republicans, that worldview was summed up by Ronald Reagan more than 20 years ago. We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only “litmus test” of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty.

This litmus test wasn’t a call to purity or extremism—just the opposite. Reagan was endorsing the broadest and most inclusive definition of a Republican imaginable. If a Republican didn’t believe in these basic things, why would he call himself a Republican anyway?

With this rosy and including image in mind, Chocola draws a different picture of Democrats’ worldview:

Democrats have a corresponding set of bedrock principles, too, like abortion rights and income redistribution.

He then adds the following:

If Republicans suddenly advocated massive tax hikes on small businesses, or Democrats suddenly called for overturning Roe v. Wade, they would not be seen as inclusive, but unprincipled. If they can cave on that, what won’t they cave on? As Reagan noted, there are other issues on which ‘we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement.’ Barack Obama could say the same of the Democrats. Governing requires compromise, but elevating compromise itself to a principle is like building a house on sand.

What should Republicans do?

Republican politicians in particular must insist on certain principles—especially economic freedom and limited government.

To win again, the GOP cannot merely present itself as a copy of the Democrats. Republicans must draw clear distinctions between the Democrats’ principles and their own. That’s what they have been doing for more than a year now, and that’s why Republicans are more energized than they have been since 1994.

“Coicidentally”: In 1994, just like in 2010, a Democratic president is in the middle of his first term. With that in mind, back to Chocola’s concluding remarks:

For the first time in years, the GOP is returning to its roots and giving voters a reason to vote Republican again. And it is learning an old political lesson: Fight for your principles, and you get a majority, too; fight just for the majority, and you get neither.

Before I move on to Mr. Gresser’s piece, I feel a strong need to address Chocola’s framing of the abortion issue.

While talking about Reagan, conservatism and litmus tests, Chocola manages to frame Democrats as the only party with bedrock principles on the abortion issue—as if the GOP’s opposition to abortion isn’t one of their key principles. Reagan authored a book on the issue. Reagan started a trend of increased emphasis on the issue among Republican presidential hopefuls. In fact, while on the issue of “litmus tests”: every single Republican presidential nominee has supported the party platforms’ line on abortion since its introduction in 1976. Furthermore, in the same period, 8 of 16 Republican presidential candidates drifted in the direction of the party platform’s stance on abortion upon running for the presidency.

According to Mr. Chocola, President Reagan “was endorsing the broadest and most inclusive definition of a Republican imaginable.” That might be true, but only if you adhere to Chocola’s chery picked sense of reality.

Moving along.

As I mentioned in the introduction, Edward Gresser, the president of the Democratic Leadership Council, argued back in May that “pure parties are losing parties.”

Referencing Chris Chocola’s address at CPAC back in February, Gresser writes that Chocola “mixed a suggestion of bright prospects for Republicans this fall with an attack on the GOP of last fall and blamed the party’s 2006 and 2008 defeats not on the record of conservatives in government at the time but on a supposed drift away from conservatism. His solution was a purified party.”

It sounds awfully familiar. Back in 1982, Democrats were unhappy with an energetic president but gaining polling in a period of high unemployment. Lots of Democrats believed then, as many Republicans seem to now, that if we preached the true faith more often, repeated it more loudly, and denounced the president more angrily, we’d restore our fortunes. But the Democratic problem wasn’t lack of ideological purity. It was too much ideology and too few new ideas.

In 2010, Gresser argues that ideological purity “isn’t the solution to the GOP’s problems”, and that the root of their problems is “in the record conservatives built in power.” According to Gresser, “a less purified party, more open to internal dissent, would have done better” in 2006 and 2008.

Republicans shoud be frankly admitting the problem and starting a rethink. Instead, they’re shutting down debate and repeating mistakes we made a generation ago. Bad move. Republican’s don’t need ideological purity. They need self-criticism and new thinking. It’s a bit painful, but they’ll be better off. Believe me. We’ve been there.

This debate seemed pertinent back in May. And although it may seem outdated as we enter the middle of September, it can be argued that the drumming of base values is in fact an important ingredient in Democrats’ and Republicans’ pitch to voters these days:

Republicans want to extend the “Bush tax cuts.” And Democrats have turned populist, defending tax increases for the rich (a return to the level prior to the “Bush tax cuts”).

When the economy turns sour, politicians start making lemonade. And they’re not experimenting with the recipe.

Campaign Poetry: “I need four hours”

“When Dr. Jack Willke was elected president of National Right to Life in June 1980, his organization was small but influential. … When Reagan chose the pro-abortion George H. W. Bush as his running-mate, concern mounted in the pro-life ranks. Willke decided to do something about it. He went to the Pontchartrain Hotel in Detroit, where the Republican convention was being held, and knocked on the door of Bush’s hotel room. … Willke told the vice-presidential nominee, ‘We would like you to clarify your position on abortion.’ Bush chuckled and started to answer, but Willke held up his hand and interrupted: ‘I don’t want to hear your position now.’ He asked if he could set up a time to brief him on the issue. Bush agreed to a thirty-minute meeting to be arranged when he returned to Washington.

‘I need four hours,’ Willke responded.

‘What?’ Bush said with surprise.

Willke explained, ‘Please understand that we are not going to be able to support this ticket if you are directly opposed to Reagan.’

Bush sat quietly for a moment, thinking. ‘Okay,’ he said, and invited Willke to meet him a few weeks later at the Bush family home in Kennebunkport.

In September 1980, Willke arrived in Kennebunkport with his PAC director Sandy Faucher, and set up his slide projector adjacent to a room where Barbara Bush was knitting. He went through his slides for three hours, showing Bush the stages of fetal development and the medical details of the abortion procedure. Willke responded to questions from Bush and one question from his wife (‘What if she’s raped?’).

They took a break for lunch with Bush and his staff, where they discussed other political matters. When lunch was over, Willke reminded Bush about the question in Detroit that he wouldn’t let him answer. ‘Now is the time for you to answer that question. Where are you on abortion and, particularly, on the Human Life Amendment?’

Willke remembers that Bush sat back in his chair and replied, ‘Well, I was not there before, but I am now. I will support an amendment to the Constitution to overturn Roe v. Wade. But it will have to be a state’s rights amendment. I can’t support a federal amendment.’ Willke reported the news of Bush’s change of position in his NRTL newsletter and the Reagan-Bush ticket got the full support of the pro-life movement.”

Deal W. Hudson – Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States (p. 243-244).

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) won’t seek reelection

Congressman Bart Stupak (D-MI) announced today that he won’t seek reelection, stating

It’s time for me to move on.

Stupak’s reelection campaign was bound to be tough due to his prominent role in the final passage of the health care reform bill. With this as a backdrop, Stupak steps aside in the hopes that another Democrat can win his seat.

Interested in Stupak’s role in the passage of the health care bill? Read our review of the abortion controversy in the health care debate here, and let us know what you think.

A Review of the Abortion Controversy in the Health Care Debate

Few issues are as contentious as the abortion issue. Since 1976, the Democratic Party Platform has been pro-choice, while the Republican Party Platform has been pro-life. The polling on abortion has been remarkably stable over the last 30 years (General Social Survey 1972/1977-2008 A, B, C) and a majority of the American public tilts toward the Democratic Party’s positioning on the issue. However, and this point is important, abortion opponents have been more outspoken – and dare one say better organized – than the pro-choice movement since the legalization of abortion with Roe v. Wade in 1973. The Republican Party can advocate a strict pro-life stance on abortion, even though a majority of Americans are opposed to such a position, because people with passionate pro-life views are generally more politically active than people with passionate pro-choice views (Strickler & Danigelis 2002: 200). In short, the GOP has more to gain on opposing abortion, than they have on supporting its legality.

This political backdrop ensures the metronomic regularity in which the abortion issue enters the political debate. The Democratic pro-choice and Republican pro-life pattern hinted at above is true on the level of the party platforms, but if you enter either of the big tents, you’ll find pro-life Democrats and pro-choice Republicans. You’ll bump into Representative Bart Stupak of Michigan in the Democratic tent, and Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins in the Republican tent.

During the prolonged health care debate, Representative Bart Stupak has skillfully extended his 15 minutes of fame into more than four months. Stupak became a household name in the political world when he led a group of conservative House Democrats in demanding a strict provision against public funding for abortions in the House’s health care bill. In order to meet the threshold needed to pass the bill in the House back in November, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had to include what became known as the Stupak-Pitts Amendment. The amendment was almost identical to the one advocated by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in the closing days of the debate. The purpose of the amendment was, in Stupak’s own words:

It applies current law (the Hyde Amendment), which bars federal funding for abortion except in the case of rape, incest or life of the mother, to the health care reform bill. The Hyde Amendment has been the law of the land on federal funding of abortion since 1977 and applies to all other federally-funded health care programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, the VA and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). My amendment is not new federal abortion policy but continues current law. My amendment has no impact on those individuals with private insurance who do not receive affordability credits and in no way prohibits any individual from purchasing a supplemental abortion coverage policy. Health insurance companies can still offer policies that cover abortion; insurance companies just can’t sell those policies to individuals using affordability credits to pay for the policy.

In the Senate, however, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and abortion opponent Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) ended up with a similar, but differently voiced provision. This meant that the abortion provisions in the two bills would have to be sorted out in order for health care reform to become the law of the land. The Democrats faced a steeper climb to reform when Scott Brown won a surprising victory in the special election for Senator Kennedy’s vacant seat in the Senate (which Brown skillfully framed as “the people’s seat”). As a consequence, the Democrats lost their super majority of 60 votes, and they could no longer override Republican filibusters. Thus, the House would have to pass the Senate bill as it was written, because if the House changed anything in the Senate bill, it would need to go back to the Senate, where it would die on the floor due to Republican filibusters.

The brouhaha that followed, and which culminated on Sunday March 21, thrilled pundits and opponents of the bill, and added a few grey hairs to President Obama’s scalp. In the end, Representative Stupak reached a deal with the President, who agreed to sign an executive order in line with Stupak’s concerns. Following the agreement with the White House, Stupak held a highly anticipated news conference, in which he stated that he would support the bill on the grounds that:

The picture above is of PolitiFact’s (Truth-O-Meter) ruling on Stupak’s comment during the press conference. The St-Petersburg Times’ PolitiFact won the 2009 Pulitzer prize, and it is the most prominent among the fact checking sites, along with FactCheck.org. The ruling in question was based on the following considerations:

First of all, due to the Hyde Amendment – which must be renewed every year – ”abortion services are not provided in health care plans offered to federal employees and for active and retired military.” Because the health care reform bill portrays an exchange including private companies, abortion opponents began asking: ”Should private companies be allowed to offer abortion coverage (as most already do)? And what if the people buying policies are getting government subsidies to buy insurance?”

The Senate’s response:

The … language on abortion … would allow companies in the exchange to offer abortion services, even to people who get federal subsidies. But Nelson inserted measures to ensure abortion services would be paid through patient premiums, not federal subsidies. In order to accomplish that, the Senate bill requires that anyone who selects a plan that covers abortion must pay $1 a month toward a segregated fund that would pay for abortion services. One plan in every state exchange must offer coverage that does not include abortions, so there would be an option for those who morally object to $1 of their premiums going toward abortion services. Legislators supporting the bill — along with President Obama — insist that segregation of funds stays true to the Hyde Amendment restriction on federal funds for abortions.

The Senate bill’s provision on abortion was met with criticism from both sides. NARAL Pro Choice America called the provision “unacceptable bureaucratic stigmatization (that) could cause insurance carriers to drop abortion coverage, even though more than 85 percent of private plans currently cover this care for women.” The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) (which was instrumental in the creation of NRLC in 1974) argued that “if you send federal subsidies to a person who then chooses a plan that cover abortions, that’s federal funding of abortion”, and branded the plan as “nothing more than a bookkeeping scheme.”

Representative Stupak held the same position as NRLC and USCCB up until Sunday morning (March 21, 2010), when President Obama promised to sign an Executive Order reinforcing the language and intent of the Hyde Amendment. Although the Senate bill already included restrictions that would accomplish that federal funds didn’t go towards funding abortion, the executive order “went one step further” by “putting the president’s weight behind specific measures to ensure that funds are properly segregated.”

(Official White House photo by Pete Souza – Stupak stands to the left of Obama).

PolitiFact states that the executive order “mostly restates and reinforces the intent of the Senate bill” and that “it doesn’t fundamentally change the fact that people getting government subsidies for health care will be able to buy a policy on the exchange that covers abortions.”

Bottom line I:

Stupak’s issue all along was that if federal subsidies went to someone who could then choose a plan that covers abortions, that was federal funding for abortion. And that hasn’t changed. The president’s order spells out safeguards to ensure the funds are segregated. But if you thought that was a bookkeeping trick before, there’s nothing in the executive order that would change your mind.

Bottom line II:

The Senate bill states very clearly that public funding through tax credits and government subsidies for elective abortion services offered in the exchange is prohibited. But more than that, the bill sets up a mechanism to ensure that abortion services offered in the exchange are paid entirely from patient premiums, premiums paid by people who have chosen a private plan that covers abortion. The executive order puts the weight of the president’s word behind providing a way to ensure two checks go to insurers every month, so that abortion dollars and federal dollars are not co-mingled.

Bottom line III:

Since approximately 85 percent of the current private health insurance plans cover abortion, abortion opponents unwilling to let $1 of their money go to abortion coverage effectively have fewer available options to choose between. I’m surprised abortion opponents haven’t focused more of their energy on this point.

In the end, how did Stupak describe his own descision to support the Senate bill?

This Executive Order has the full force and effect of law and makes very clear that current law of no public funding for abortion applies to the new health care reform legislation. I have said from the start that my goal was to see health care pass while maintaining the principle of the sanctity of life. The president’s Executive Order upholds this principle that federal funds will not be used to subsidize abortion coverage. … This is an excellent Executive Order and a strong compliment to the health care reform legislation that was signed into law by President Obama Tuesday afternoon. I and other pro-life Democrats are pleased that we were able to uphold this important principle and vote for a health care bill that is pro-life at every stage of life.

On the floor of the House, Stupak stated that:

It is the Democrats who, through the president’s executive order, ensure that the sanctity of life is protected.

After casting his “yae”-vote together with 218 other Democrats, Stupak’s days as the pro-life movement’s hero came to an abrupt end. Congressman Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) yelled “it’s a baby killer” during Stupak’s speech on the House floor prior to the vote on the bill, and Stupak has received several death threats following his vote (check out this CBS-clip of some of the more disturbing messages left on Stupak’s answering machine). Some abortion opponents have apparently forgotten the essence of the “pro-life” mantra.

In closing, I’ve posted key Truth-O-Meter rulings on the abortion controversy (A & B):

Postscript I: In spite of PolitiFact’s ruling on the matter, and the arguments laid out above, the pro-life website LifeNews.com still argues that the Senate bill includes federal funding of abortion. In short, this controversy won’t die.

Update, March 29: Congressman Dan Lipinski (D-IL) was a member of the original Stupak dozen, but decided to split with Stupak when he reached his deal with Obama. LifeNews.com quotes from an interview with Lipinski published in the Chicago Tribune:

“People have asked me, ‘If it was good enough for Stupak, why wasn’t it good enough for you?'” Lipinski said. “The executive order most likely will be overturned by the federal courts. The order does not trump the law.”

In other words, the issue at hand isn’t the content of the executive order, but whether or not it will be overturned by the federal courts. True to the paranoid style, President Obama can’t be trusted. Ironically, when Presidents Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 signed Executive Orders to please the pro-life movement, no one voiced similar concerns. Oh no, those Executive Orders were blessings in the skies, but Obama’s Executive Order is bound to be a political trick in disguise.

Update, April 9: Congressman Bart Stupak won’t be seeking reelection.