I’ve read the complaints
UPDATE, 11/14, 7:55a: Thanks to Erick Erickson for magnanimously crossposting this at RedState.com.
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11/13, 5:52a: I’ve read the complaints by conservatives (and even pro-lifers) following passage of the Stupak/Pitts pro-life amendment to the House healthcare bill. They say this simply enabled passage of the entire putrid mess.
My friend Erick Erickson at RedState.com wrote:
Stupak will go out….
Let me be clear to the conservative movement and the organizations participating in the health care debate: the fight over health care is about freedom, not your ridiculous little scorecards. [bold emphasis his]…
The Democrat strategy is going to be very simple. If the GOP and its outside interest groups raise an issue, the Democrats with a token Republican will hammer out a Grand Compromise to appear accommodationist and bipartisan.
If Republicans complain about abortion, the Democrats and Bob Bennett (R-UT) will offer up compromise language to take care of that concern….
The danger is that the GOP will start with the presupposition that the health care bill will pass and work to “improve” it….
Here’s the deal. With overwhelming Democrat majorities in both the House and Senate, and a very motivated president who has socialized healthcare as his top priority, a socialized healthcare bill was on its way to passage.
To think otherwise, to think generalized GOP complaints were stopping it, is to be naive and to not even to have a proper perspective of what happened Saturday.
No other issue, no other personality, no amount of loyal opposition, has been able to potentially shut down passage of healthcare except resistance to abortion in the plan. Read the headlines.
The pro-life fight has done 2 things:
1. It retarded the process. After the wonderful tea parties and town hall meetings of August, the battle over abortion gummed up the healthcare works during September and October, giving our special interest groups time to group or regroup to kindle their own fires. In the meantime, if Obamacare was going to happen, it was going to happen sans abortion funding.
2. It has potentially stopped socialized healthcare altogether. Read this post. The abortion issue has emerged as The Big Problem for Democrats, now in a real bind with no solution. And their quandary continues to buy the GOP and our special interest groups time to bring the entire bill down, death by a thousand bites. The more we eat the clock, the harder passage of Obamacare gets. If there is a stalemate, we win.
The perspective of those complaining is that pro-lifers are only out to stop abortion and are ok with passage of Obamacare if placated.
In fact, pro-lifers have many other problems with Obamacare. It is true abortion is our highest priority, but abortion was also the issue that got the most traction with legislators. It was, strangely, the low-hanging fruit. But, as Concerned Women for America wrote on November 10:
The bill still contains objectionable provisions that will ration and deny health care, pay for coercive “end of life planning”, create multiple bureaucracies that will control Americans health care, penalize Americans for not buying a product (health insurance), fine Americans if a government agent decides their health care plan is not “government approved”, and may force Americans to buy government mandated insurance that funds objectionable procedures.
If the objectionable issues are not corrected, Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee will oppose passage of the final bill.
All pro-lifers would totally agree with that statement. Ultimately, Erick and I agree on strategy, as he continued:
After the GOP is done demanding things come out, not be ameliorated or added, there will be no bill left that the left can support….
That’s what pro-lifers are doing, demanding that abortion come out. And our strategy is working. It leaves a bill pro-aborts cannot support. Erick concluded:
This bill doesn’t just have a few things wrong with it, it’s a thousand pages of bad ideas that will hurt – not help – America…. The Senate Republicans and right-of-center interest groups need to stop trying to negotiate a surrender and join the fight.
The GOP must not be afraid to shut down the Senate. The only acceptable victory is defeat of the legislation.
I agree there are a thousand things wrong with the bill. So we need a thousand groups demanding parts of Obamacare come out.
I don’t mean to pick on Erick. His post was just indicative. But Erick et al should be encouraging pro-lifers right now, not complaining about them, as well as encouraging those thousand other groups to light a thousand other fires. Who knows what fire will give what legislator a reason to oppose Obamacare. Together we’ll make Obamacare untenable. It takes a village, as someone once said.
And to pro-lifers complaining about pro-lifers right now, get to work opposing Obamacare yourselves on the myriad of other problems we have with socialized healthcare.

No other issue, no other personality, no amount of loyal opposition, has been able to potentially shut down passage of healthcare except resistance to abortion in the plan. Read the headlines.
Bingo.
Jill,
if there truly are other objectionable parts to the legislation, it is imperative that the USCCB knows about it. If it is a “life issue” (a la abortion, euthanasia, etc.), you can be sure that the Bishops will work to oppose it.
I learned as a child that you can’t spend more money than you have. Common sense tells us that we can’t afford this monstrosity of a bill. A high school student could write a better plan. Calling all over-achievers! Congress needs help!
Jill,
You nailed it on the head. I didn’t agree with Mr. Erickson’s article. I usually do agree with him, but I think your take on this is more level headed. Good job to all the pro-lifers who have made this happen.
Andy:
if there truly are other objectionable parts to the legislation, it is imperative that the USCCB knows about it. If it is a “life issue” (a la abortion, euthanasia, etc.), you can be sure that the Bishops will work to oppose it.
Most of these other objections arise not from a sanctity-of-life ethic, but from a rigid right-wing ideology that is (fortunately) not shared by the US Catholic Conference, which has a far more sophisticated and credible political philosophy than the redneck “tea party” crowd.
The U.S. Catholic Bishops have been out of their element for years, in understanding what economic means should be employed to achieve charitable ends.
Along the way they have stumbled in deciding to whom they should grant Catholic charitable resources.
Charity is an individual choice and act. Organization of the charitable acts is fine in theory, but has often become subversion.
It is not charity to forcibly take the money from one person to give it to another. Government programs to redistribute wealth are not charity.
Our confused leftie-catholics need also to attend to the fact that the Bishops have been diverting charitable dollars to decidedly anti- and un-catholic activities.
The USCCB defunded ACORN not because of its subversive and immoral activities, but because of embezzlement within the organization. A list of recently defunded and organizations which still need defunding exists at the American life league site. You can use their main URL and add the following to it, for this info. /article.php?id=12307
Some people find the diversion of Catholic charity towards activities which are against Church Teaching to be “sophisticated political philosophy”. The rest of us see it as fraudulently immoral.
Those of us who have not lost our minds await further reformation of the USCCB to become more adherent to Church teaching.
Our moral “leaders” should be making personal efforts to adhere to the precepts of their stated religion.
Pharmer,
The USCCB is well in line with Catholic social teaching. Maybe you should read some more Papal Encyclicals. The National Review once derided JPII as a “socialist” . . .
This bill does not make sense in so many ways. We do need change but there is no way I want my tax dollars to go toward funding abortion. That is my number one concern.
This would be easy to understand for most people…
It is against Catholic teaching to willfully and intentionally pay for activities which are against Catholic teaching.
USCCB is doing just that, and its campaign for human devolution is being boycotted for that reason.
The USCCB hasn’t condoned abortion in cases of rape and incest. Rather, they’ve acknowledged the political reality that allowing these extremely rare exceptions is the only feasible way to prohibit federal funding of the >95% of abortions that are entirely elective.
Huck, I think you didn’t comprehend my series of posts, which address a larger variety of notable nonadherence by the USCCB, as demonstration of its “sophisticated political philosophy”.
Further beyond the bumpersticker mentality….. the Stupak amendment addresses federal funding, but does not address the removal of conscience protections for institutions and healthcare professionals.
This is ONE of the reasons for which the Investors Business Daily Survey shows 45% of physicians planning early retirement should Obamacare come to pass.
The Stupak amendment was an inadequate and tiny little bone thrown to pro-lifers as a ruse by the Dems to facilitate passage of a wholly anti-life health care plan.