Mandatory Abortion Coverage

The Weekly Standard reports that the Stupak-Pitts amendment has been defeated:

Last night, the House Energy and Commerce Committee narrowly passed the Stupak-Pitts amendment to prevent the bill from mandating that private insurance plans cover abortions, but when Chairman Henry Waxman brought the amendment up for reconsideration, Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee flipped his vote to ‘no’, defeating the Stupak-Pitts amendment 30 to 29. “I misunderstood it the first time,” Gordon said of his flip-flop, according to The Hill . Gordon and Zack Space of Ohio were the only Blue Dogs on the committee to vote against the amendment to ban mandates for abortion.

The committee passed instead an amendment from Lois Capps (D-Calif.), which allows both public coverage and federally subsidized private coverage to fund abortions. It claims, however, that it’s not mandating abortion coverage because the charge is pushed over to the private portion of the funding. How isn’t that government money being used for abortion? Only the meaningless fact of where it is entered in the bookkeeping is supposed to keep it from being what it is.

Thirty-nine Democrats in the House have recently voted against public funding of abortion in another context. If they stay true to their convictions, there is a good chance to defeat this new amendment by Capps. The Democrats with that prior pro-life vote are:

Altmire (PA)
Boccieri (OH)
Boren (OK)
Bright (AL)
Carney (PA)
Childers (MS)
Costello (IL)
Dahlkemper (PA)
Doyle (PA)
Driehaus (OH)
Ellsworth (IN)
Griffith (AL)
Hill (IN)
Holden (PA)
Kanjorski (PA)
Kildee (MI)
Lipinski (IL)
Marshall (GA)
McIntyre (NC)
Melancon (LA)
Michaud (ME)
Mitchell (AZ)
Mollohan (WV)
Murtha (PA)
Nye (VA)
Oberstar (MN)
Perriello (VA)
Peterson (MN)
Rahall (WV)
Ross (AR)
Shuler (NC)
Skelton (MO)
Stupak (MI)
Taylor (MS)
Davis (AL)
Davis (TN)
Donnelly (IN)
Kirkpatrick (AZ)
Wilson (OH)