It allows for a public debate to be had,not that the Dems won’t try to silence it. People will be put on record, creating the ammunition needed going into an election year.

The pro-life Senators must hold the Stupak Minimum.

Well said Erick.

I really feel like the NRLC has blinders on their one issue, which is of course appropriate given their organization.

The problem is, I get the impression they’re willing to throw the entire conservative movement under the bus to score points for their hobby horse. I’m sure they put an enormous amount of pressure on Republicans not to vote present on the Stupak amendment, even though it had a good chance of bringing down the whole bill.

If there’s even a chance we can find a way to kill this bill, it’s worth temporarily upsetting the NRLC, especially looking at the long term implications that passing ANY universal health care bill will have on public funding of abortions. I certainly know I would be willing to sacrifice some issues that are of great importance to me if I thought it had a real shot at killing socialized medicine.

I think your point Erick was well reasoned, and we can’t lose sight of the much bigger picture.

Erick,

Glad you removed the verbiage attacking NRLC. But, a short response:

“The GOP and outside interest groups should now agitate for the “Stupak Minimum,” i.e. the Stupak amendment language must be the baseline for pro-life language in the health care legislation. Anything less should be opposed.”

You may enjoy knowing that that has been the approach from NRLC and every other major pro-life group since summertime.

NRLC led the charge when the House added the fake Capps amendment this summer. It led the charge against the fake Ellsworth amendment. And they will lead the charge if Harry Reid has a fake abortion funding ban as well. http://www.LifeNews.com/nat5645b.html

Also, you seem to have reserved your angst for NRLC. But every major pro-life gorup including FRC, CWA, AUL, Operation Rescue, Focus on the Family, SBA, etc. had the exact same strategy and approach on Stupak. No one had any reservations on Stupak until hours before the vote.

Now, let’s move forward and take on these Senate battles. http://www.lifenews.com/nat5638.html

Thanks,
Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com

From Ponnuru’s classic essay:

The abortion regime was born in lies. In Britain (and in California, pre-Roe), the abortion lobby deceptively promoted legal revisions to allow “therapeutic” abortions and then defined every abortion as “therapeutic.” The abortion lobby lied about Jane Roe, claiming her pregnancy resulted from a gang rape. It lied about the number of back-alley abortions. Justice Blackmun relied on fictitious history to argue, in Roe, that abortion had never been a common law crime.

The abortion regime is also sustained by lies. Its supporters constantly lie about the radicalism of Roe: even now, most Americans who “agree with Roe v. Wade” in polls think that it left third-term abortions illegal and restricted second-term abortions. They have lied about the frequency and “medical necessity” of partial-birth abortion. Then there are the euphemisms: “terminating a pregnancy,” abortion “providers,” “products of conception.” “The fetus is only a potential human being” — as if it might as easily become an elk. “It should be between a woman and her doctor” — the latter an abortionist who has never met the woman before and who has a financial interest in her decision. This movement cannot speak the truth.

will never get added in the Senate. Remember it takes 60 votes in the Senator to approve anything and while there are several Dems that would vote for it, there simply aren’t enough. Stupak knew it, this was just a way for some Blue Dogs to shore up their “conservative” credentials back home in hopes of avoiding a disaster in 2010

Plus, you can bet that Nancy will only be sending people to the conference (assuming it gets that far) that will strip that amendment out of the bill.

The passage of the entire bill is now basically in the hands of about a half a dozen Democratic Senators and, of course, Joe LIEberman. Unless the Dems decide to go nuclear or the reconciliation route.

It is getting uncomfortable close to passage.

It is impossible to express how much I AGREE with Erick on this !!!!

I fear some of our fellow Pro-Lifers have gotten as bad as Pavlovian-Blue-Dogs and just immediately knee-jerk to anything that they fear a NO vote could taint their Pro-Life Cred…. Such a shame, IMO.

As to others, we will have to just disagree as I don’t want to get into Pro-Life Cred debates with folks (that is what the Democrats/Liberals WANT us to do to each other) but just to add that if anyone wanted us to sell out (and allow the HC to go forward by this Stupak fiasco) for a funding gimmick was/is selling everyone short. Even if we were to be asked to sell-out (again, sorry, just the way I see the strategy - Five reasons why I think how the Stupid (er.. Stupak) Amendment was all a sham vote via that link) something much more significant like a complete ban would have been needed. And frankly, even then I would NOT have voted for it because I PAY ATTENTION TO HISTORY and know darn well any deal with the Liberals/Democrats will just lead to being stabbed in the back the very next opportunity!!!

Up until this last w/e I had more faith in my fellow Pro-Lifers to see beyond this (again, IMO) BEING SUCKERED kinda thing. When I ran for Office on the County/State level a firm stance of mine was NO PUBLIC FUNDING OF ABORTIONS so I don’t take the position/issue lightly, but again I would NOT have voted for Stupak (at best, NV/Present). Again, it is like a Pavlov response - it is deemed Anti-Abortion position, therefore MUST vote for it or risk Pro-Life Cred — I do not agree, you can/should explain how/why it was worth a NO (or NV at least) on!!!!

There is more to it, but I’m not going to repeat it all here just encourage you (if interested in understanding further) to check out the other how the Stupid (er.. Stupak) Amendment was all a sham vote discussion.

Enslaving unborn Children into this HC fiasco is not an acceptable trade-off for me!

Take care my friends!

Pro-life single issue “conservatives” are not genuine conservatives at all. In fact they can be destructive–to their own cause as well as to the conservative movement generally. This is because to achieve short term purity they will often sacrifice long term success.

Case in point: they helped elect Casey of PA, a pro-life Democrat, instead of Rick Santorum. Santorum had backed fellow Pennsylvanian Specter, a pro-choicer. But Santorum was worried about the bigger picture–the need to keep the GOP majority in order to get Bush’s strict constructionists onto the Supreme Court. He made a deal with the stronger candidate at that time–Arlen Specter–and Specter, as chairman of the Senate Judicial Committee, stuck to it when he won re-election, retaining the majority for the GOP. It was Santorum who ushered Roberts and Alito through the Senate, a conservative triumph–but he subsequently sacrificed his own career in the process. The pro-lifers never forgave him for having backed a pro-choicer, once again missing the forest for the trees.

Time and again these single issue types are their own worst enemies. They gave us McCain instead of Rudy–and ended up with Obama, the most pro-abortion president in American history.

to see abortion finally cut the other way. Claire MaCaskill ran from FireDogLike. It was like that old song about The battle of New Orleans that the Brits find so distasteful. Let “centrist” Dems attempt to reconcile with both NARAL and the 66% of the voting public that finds them ghoulish. Good Times in 2010!

…and I am far from convinced it is as DOA as many are saying, the Stupak amendment will be the very first thing that gets ripped out of it once it finds its way into the conference committee room.

And there is no end to the other atrocities that will probably find their way into it, as well.

Then I suspect they will run into their respective chambers in the middle of the night, and vote it through before anyone even knows what all is in it.

This is a scary and dangerous time for America.

-Dave

…to pass easily. I would guess many centrist senators have misgivings, not just Republicans. Senators like Pryor and Warner and Webb and Bayh–not to speak of Landrieu and Lincoln–all must have misgivings about the cost and what this might mean for the deficit. Then there’s Nelson of FL who has seniors to worry about and who has misgivings about the Medicare cuts. Sure universal care is a liberal’s dream–but not all Democrats are liberals.