Still not settled

By Jennifer J. Foster

Here’s your latest update on the status of the ongoing controversy over whether abortion will be covered in the pending public option.

From The New York Times:

House Democratic leaders struggled Wednesday to strike a deal that would restrict the use of federal money to pay for abortions under sweeping health care legislation headed for debate on the House floor this week ...

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, a supporter of abortion rights, has little choice but to heed the concerns of members of her caucus who oppose abortion. As many as 40 House Democrats, a potentially decisive bloc, have threatened to oppose the bill without tighter restrictions on abortion.

As the Times reports, the current House bill neither requires nor forbids health plans from covering abortions; Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services, would decide whether the public option would cover them.

Sebelius has a long record of support from and cooperation with Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in the world. So while the House bill doesn’t stipulate that the public option would cover abortion, everyone knows that if Sebelius is making the decision, it will.

I’ve told you here previously about the effort by U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak to ensure that tax dollars are not used to fund abortions. Stupak’s amendment, though it is being assailed as an infringement on women’s rights, would simply continue the policy the federal government has had to abortion funding for 30 years.

U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth now has a compromise proposal. As the Times reports, “if the public plan decides to cover abortion, it would have to hire private contractors to handle money that might be used for that purpose.

Predictably, neither side is happy.

Supporters of abortion rights, like the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the proposed restrictions went too far.

Laurie Rubiner, vice president of Planned Parenthood, said Mr. Ellsworth’s proposal would “tip the balance away from women’s access to reproductive health care.”

“Abortion should not be treated any differently from any other medical benefit or procedure,” Ms. Rubiner said. “It is our hope and expectation that the secretary would decide to include coverage of abortion in the public option.“

... The bill stipulates that in every part of the country, there must be at least one insurance plan that provides coverage of abortions and at least one that does not.

Douglas D. Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, said Mr. Ellsworth’s proposal was “a phony compromise.”

“It serves no purpose except to assist Speaker Pelosi in peeling votes away from an amendment that would flatly prohibit the public plan from paying for elective abortions,” Mr. Johnson said. That amendment was offered by Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan.

It’s been said that a sign of a good compromise is that neither side likes it. That may be true. But Ellsworth’s proposal does come off as a cop-out of sorts—not specifically precluding the public option from covering abortion, but simply providing a middleman to handle the money.

I hope the pro-life members of the Democratic Caucus see this for what it is: Worthless window dressing.

 

Hurrah for Hillary

By Jennifer J. Foster

Hurrah for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who’s finally speaking bluntly to Pakistani leaders and their people.

From the Associated Press:

In a lively give-and-take with students at the Government College of Lahore, Clinton said inaction by the government would have amounted to ceding ground to terrorists.

“If you want to see your territory shrink, that’s your choice,“ she said, adding that she believed it would be a bad choice.

Clinton likened Pakistan’s situation—with Taliban forces taking over substantial swaths of land in the Swat valley and in areas along the Afghan border—to a theoretical advance of terrorists into the United States from across the Canadian border. It would be unthinkable, she said, for the U.S. government to decide, “Let them have Washington (state)“ first, then Montana, then the sparsely populated Dakotas, because those states are far from the major centers of population and power on the East Coast.

Clinton was responding to a student who suggested that Washington was forcing Pakistan to use military force on its own territory. It was one of several questions from the students that raised doubts about the relationship between the United States and Pakistan.

I like that comparison Clinton made regarding the land concessions. The Pakistani approach takes on a new feel when you look at it from that perspective, doesn’t it?

The bottom line for Pakistanis is that, for better or worse, their country is a nuclear power. They wanted to achieve that status, and now they have to live with the responsibility of being one. If they are not going to do the things necessary to ensure the viability of their democratically elected government—and, therefore, the security of those nukes—then someone has to.

And all of us—Americans, Europeans, Talibanis, al Qaeda and everyone else alike—know that it’s not going to be the U.N.

Pakistan has a choice. They can do what’s necessary to stop the advance of the Taliban, or they can watch while someone else does.