Less than a day after saying the Senate could live with a health care amendment that greatly restricted a woman's access to abortion in the private insurance market, Sen. Claire McCaskill, (D-MO) announced she opposed such an amendment.
The Senator, on her twitter page, said that she objected to the language offered to the House health care bill by Sen. Bart Stupak (D-Mich). "[I] Don't think we should change current law which is no public $ for abortions, but amndmt goes too far limitng [sic] private funds too," her tweet read.
McCaskill is a pro-choice lawmaker from a generally toss-up political state. So her support for a Senate variation to the Stupak amendment would have given it a major boost. Already, other socially conservative Democratic lawmakers have hinted that they would back such a provision or even introduce it themselves.
During an appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Monday, McCaskill said she didn't think such an effort would be a bitter pill in the health care reform debate.
"I am not sure that it is," she said. "Obviously, I have been a pro-choice candidate for my entire political career, and obviously there is controversy always surrounding this issue. But we are talking about whether or not people that get public money can buy an insurance policy that has a coverage for abortion. And that is not the majority of America. The majority of America is not going to be getting subsidies from the government...."
That remark, of course, didn't approach the question of whether McCaskill herself would support the amendment if introduced. So her tweet isn't, necessarily, contradictory. It just suggests that adding Stupak-like language to the Senate bill is more of an uphill climb than it seemed.