Robert Gibbs' initial statement was pathetic. There are some things the Administration needs to be clear about, and this is one of them. President Obama's answer to Jake Tapper's question is much more like it.
The Stupak Amendment has got to go. We simply cannot allow health care reform to be hijacked and turned into something that harms and insults women. Grassroots Democrats needs to keep up the pressure on the White House, the Democratic leadership, Congressional Democrats, and the committees that elect them (DNC, DSCC, DCCC).
If this amendment passes, it will mean that virtually all women with insurance through the exchange who find themselves in the unwanted and unexpected position of needing to terminate a pregnancy will not have coverage for the procedure.
I don't think many Democrats, especially male Democrats, have any idea how profoundly the House has alienated Democratic women by accepting the Stupak Amendment. The level of pain and outrage I've seen from women writers (and women I know personally) is profound and deep. Women are a core constituency for Dems, and many of them may choose to stay at home in 2010 and even 2012 if the Stupak Amendment is retained in the final bill.
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This isn't "ideological purity" or "naive idealism" talking. These are the words of pragmatism. Your base will desert you in droves next year if you don't fix this thing. In fact, I say this with no pleasure, but with a pretty high degree of certainty:
The Stupak amendment says that women are free to buy an optional rider to their plans that would cover abortion, as long as no money appropriated by the bill is used to pay for it. Critics call this ridiculous. People don't think they'll need coverage for most medical procedures until the day they actually need it; as detractors of the amendment have pointed out, no one plans for an unplanned pregnancy. Imagine if all insurance plans worked like a smorgasbord, in which you tried to guess the operations and medicines you might require sometime in the future. How many procedures would you actually fork out for in advance?
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[A]n amendment offered by Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.)... would have allowed women to isolate their federal subsidies in a separate account and pay for abortions out of their premiums instead. But that compromise fell through after a vigorous lobbying push by the Conference of Catholic Bishops, which instructed priests around the country to raise the issue in their churches. In the end, the Stupak amendment passed 240-194, with 64 Democrats voting in support. (Twenty-three of those Democrats ultimately voted against the health care bill.)
The Republican Party has a women problem that they've earned. If the Stupak amendment is not scrapped, the same will be true of the Democratic Party.
Steven Benen on the comparisons of health care reform to Social Security:
This is not to say health care reform advocates should accept every abhorrent conservative demand, just to get something done. Democratic policymakers have a rare opportunity in front of them, and there's no reason in the world they can't pass a strong bill, with a public option, and without measures like the Stupak amendment.
Indeed, let's be clear. There may be some Dems who say, "Well, the reform bill could be better, so could the original Social Security bill have been, so let's not fight too hard for progressive goals." This attitude is entirely wrong and self-defeating.
That said, the Social Security example is illustrative -- even after historic policy milestones, the work will continue. Where reform advocates come up short this year -- if they come up short -- it's not the end of the fight.
