The House voted yesterday and the anti-women's health Stupak amendment passed 240 to 194, with one member voting present.
Sixty four Democrats voted yes on the Stupak amendment, which effectively bans insurance companies from selling insurance plans that cover elective abortion on the individual and small group market.
Firedoglake calls this "one of the most far reaching national [restrictions] placed on abortion in decades. It could also [potentially] be used by insurance companies to allow them to legally discriminate against low income Americans."
Many of the Democrats who voted in favor of the Stupak amendment will surely boast they did so because they are the sentinels of human life. Of course, these Democrats are only concerned with protecting certain types of life.
In preparation for such pharisaic claims, I compared the list of 64 Democrats with the roll call for HJ Res 114, the bill that authorized the United States Armed Forces to invade Iraq.
Nineteen of the Democrats who voted for the Stupak amendment also authorized the United States to invade Iraq (one representative, Ortiz, chose not to vote, which in a time of war, is just as bad as voting "aye.")
The so-called Democratic representatives that voted in favor of the Iraq invasion and for the Stupak amendment are: Robert Berry (AR), Mike Ross (AR), Sanford Bishop (GA), Baron Hill (IN), Stephen Lynch (MA), Collin Peterson (MN), Gene Taylor (MS), Ike Skelton (MO), Bob Etheridge (NC), Mike McIntyre (NC), Earl Pomeroy (ND), Paul Kanjorski (PA), John Murtha (PA), Tim Holden (PA), John Spratt (SC), John Tanner (TN), Jim Matheson (UT), Bart Gordon (TN) (voted "aye" on Stupak and "nay" on final bill) and Solomon Ortiz (TX) (didn't vote in Iraq authorization roll call).
All of these representatives are male, and with the exception of Sanford Bishop and Solomon Ortiz, they're white, and ten are from Southern states. None of them are poor. This is the kind of unrepresentative, elite club that gets to vote on sending our soldiers to possibly die after killing many innocent people in distance lands, and this Rich Boys' Club also occasionally votes to steal rights from poor women.
What's even sadder is that Southern states have historically high rates of unplanned pregnancies, which makes the need for women's health alternatives, including contraception (also not terribly popular in religious areas of the south) and abortion, all the more great. The Stupak amendment only ensures that poor, desperate girls will have to resort to terrible measures in order to terminate unwanted pregnancies.
Meanwhile, the Iraq authorization has resulted in the deaths of anywhere between hundreds of thousands and a million Iraqi civilians in addition to 4,000 US troops without counting the deaths of US allies.
These 19 Democrats voted in favor of a horrific, pointless war based on a lie, and have now voted to suppress the rights of poor women. This means they would rather authorize the US military to bomb, maim, and murder innocent civilians than allow a woman to make a personal decision about her own body.
If it goes to war like a Republican, and votes against women's rights like a Republican...
I can't wait for the primaries.
Cross-posted from Allison Kilkenny's blog. Also available on Facebook and Twitter.
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I heard this on an NPR discussion about the large numbers of young people dying by preventable causes worldwide.
Rich people will always be able to get safe abortions.
This is the basic dynamic which plays out in the Iliad by Homer. Helen wants the smaller Paris, but he has to fight it out with the her much larger Greek warrior husband who has come to demand her.
This is the dynamic which still plays out in human society. I am sorry to look at this problem is such a scientific light but this really is a part of human and non human nature which does cause, and is causing a societal split. In more isolation, it could over the long term be the cause of species split.
Understanding the big picture may lead to more insight in the immediate struggles.
In order to preserve choice tax dollars can't fund choice.
All tax dollars come with control
You can't have choice if accepting money in the way of tax dollars will control the choice.
By leaving it out of the bill it preserves your right to choice and your right not to be under any control over your choice by accepting money from tax dollars that will come with control and conditions.
Look at who the military has been forced to take into itself to plump out it's ranks: illegal immigrants with the promise of citizenship; convicts with the promise of lighter or sentence rescission...all sorts of bully boys and wimmin who need to go because they've lost their health insurance, homes and jobs.
I suspect strongly that America is turning into the military arm of the Global Government and, as such, will be taking away all sorts of things to force the least of us into the service. And the ones who can't go? Who cares
This attack on reproductive freedom for wimmin ( men already have it) has been going on since Roe and it won't stop with this piddly "health care" bill, you watch. They'll take every right away from wimmin and start on the men ( Obama's already gone back on his promise to gays).
When one sees a nation going backwards, something big is up. We are BECOMING the same as Isam.
Sadly, your allies are mostly hypocrites.
Abortion and war have little to do with each other. But the Forced-Birth Brigade claims that the reason they want to force a woman into bearing an unwanted child is because they're all about "life" and that we should never kill because it says so in the Bible. So, naturally, we all take a look around and notice that "life" apparently only means fetuses, because killing 600,000 Iraqis is just hunky-dory and doesn't violate God's commandment.
See, it's a tad bit inconsistent. Which makes me, at least, question their true motives.
Over the years, there has been a lot of debate within Christianity about under what conditions the use of military force is justified. Generally, though, Christianity has never held that absolute pacifism is required. Similarly, most Christian groups have historically held that the death penalty is sometimes justified, though its application is fraught with problems in terms of equity and impartiality.
It would be wrong to force someone to fund an activity that they feel is clearly immoral - the stopping of the human heart.
DLB
P.S. Did you see the lastest news that new borns cry in the tone of their mother's language and that they can recognize their mother's voice from hundreds of others. Dont' try to convince me that you are not ending a human life. - look at the DNA!