In All Things

As we move into the final stage of negotiations and debate over the health care reform bill, it is very important that we not get caught up in two related, but counter, tendencies, the "pass it at all costs" or the "defeat it at all costs" mentalities that betray the triumph of politics over truth. It is important to step back and ask "Why do we care so much?" and "What are we fighting for?" This act of, you will pardon the expression, values clarification will not necessarily help pass a final bill, but it will help make sure that any final bill that passes is honest. And, this examination of why we care is not just about abortion coverage, although it is certainly about that. It is about why we Catholics are so determined to achieve universal health care access in the first place.

Let me stipulate something about the abortion debate. Most of the pro-choice advocates I know are decent, loving people. They do not relish the prospect of an abortion but they believe that it is not their place to tell anyone else what to do in such a situation as an unwanted pregnancy and many of them remember the days when women died procuring illegal abortions. (The suggestion, invoked by some of the less thoughtful pro-choice advocates, that the Stupak Amendment sends women back to the days of back alley abortion is an insult not only to Cong. Stupak’s amendment but to those women who actually did die procuring illegal abortions.) Pro-choice advocates may be wrong, but they are not evil and their concern for women is genuine albeit misguided in its application.

The twentieth century was, in retrospect, not merely the century of technological and scientific revolutions, the century of the atom and Apollo 11, of open-heart surgery and the computer. That century was also one long assault on human dignity. From the day-in and day-out slaughter of the Western front in World War I, through the mass murders of whole classes of people perpetrated by Stalin and Mao, through the targeting of civilian populations in World War II and beyond, to the final, genocidal crimes in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur, one long assault on human dignity. The apologists for each of these crimes saw benefit in their willingness to ignore the humanity of those they were killing. They were defeating the terrible Hun, building a better future for the proletariat, bringing the war to a faster conclusion, redressing prior wrongs. And, in each of these cases, the language of utility came to dominate, and becloud, the minds of those who defended the crimes.

Abortion is not like Darfur, still less Ukraine circa 1932, or Auschwitz or Hiroshima. But, those who defend abortion do so on the kind of utilitarian grounds that have become dangerously commonplace in the justifications for crimes in the twentieth century. There is a problem, the unwanted pregnancy, and there is a solution, abortion. Human beings, however, are not problems to be solved, even the littlest ones still in the womb, they are humans to be accorded dignity and respect. We Catholics believe this and it is not the kind of belief one tosses aside during a mark-up session on Capitol Hill.

In America today, there is precisely no prospect of overturning Roe V. Wade, and if Roe were overturned, most states would enact its provisions into statutory law the next day. I think Roe was wrongly decided, of course, but it will only be changed at the end of a long, cultural process of creating a Culture of Life, not at the beginning of that process. But, Roe was decided on specific grounds, namely, by invoking the privacy of the woman to make her own choice: Government cannot tell a woman what she can do with her own body. If that is the legal ground upon which the pro-choice argument stands, then it is more than a little bizarre that they now demand not an immunity from government interference but a government subsidy for the procedure. This turns Roe on its head faster than any pro-life argument I can think of.

Catholics believe that human beings are not encased in a prior privacy but are born into the world as social beings, that human identity and dignity is not rooted in our powers of rationality or capacity for independence, but in our profound ability to love and be loved, an ability first made manifest in the relationship between mother and child. That is why some Catholics are so appalled by abortion and sometimes say and do things that also assault human dignity. (I do not mean to excuse the Randall Terry’s of the world by that observation, just to explain it.) The point is that this commitment to human dignity is so basic, so primordial to a Catholic’s sensibility, that it propels us to insist that health care reform not be used as a vehicle for further deadening the conscience of our culture.

This same commitment to human dignity drives us Catholics to support universal health care. There are parts of the current bill before the Senate that could be better, no doubt. But, this is the closest the American polity has ever come to establishing in law the right to health care. There is no other option at the moment, nor in the foreseeable future. If we believe that those who mindlessly rush to extend abortion coverage are denying human dignity, we must also believe that those, mostly Republicans, who are objecting to the reform effort are not defending human dignity either.

As Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate the Church’s commitment to human dignity is not dividable. Life issues are social justice issues and social justice issues are life issues. The thing for members of Congress to remember in this final stage of the debate is this: Life is a precious gift from God. Human life demands the protection of our health care system and that protection can not be won by sacrificing unborn human life without denying the very same humane impulse that urges us towards health care reform in the first place.

There is much about the Senate’s health care reform bill to commend it for passage. It keeps costs lower than those anticipated in the House bill. It raises taxes on rich people, which is always a good thing, raising the Medicare tax on those making more than $250,000. It reduces the federal deficit over the long haul. It has robust conscience clause protections. And, while we are still trying to figure out the fine print (and I am not a lawyer) it appears to cover legal immigrants. All this is good and makes me think the bill should pass.

Except for abortion. The Senate bill erects what it calls a "firewall" between federal funds and non-federal funds pertaining to policies that cover abortions services in both the public option and in those policies offered in the exchanges that will be subject to subsidies. But, this is nonsense. The fungibility of money argument has not been addressed and while the bill would extend coverage for pregnancy care to millions of women who currently lack it, a very good thing seeing as a pregnancy, even without complications, can cost $10,000, it will also increase abortion coverage significantly and it will do so with federal money. A source close to the Senate negotiations described the Senate provisions as "Ellsworth Capps on steroids." Steroids or not, the premise of the Capps Amendment, and the finessing of the Capps Amendment with the Ellsworth proposals, was flawed from the beginning.

These provisions are worse than nonsense. They go beyond the criticism that pro-choice critics have been leveling since the Stupak Amendment passed. That criticism has focused on a consequence of the Stupak Amendment, that the insurance companies would not offer plans covering abortion to women, even if they are paying with their own money. That was a legitimate complaint for those of us, like myself, who felt that the health care reform effort should be neutral regarding abortion. But, this new language goes further, bringing back federal funding for abortion into the public option and the subsidies plans. Pro-life Democrats like Sen. Ben Nelson and Sen. Bib Casey should dig in and insist that the Senate bill only address the issue of access to plans paid for entirely with private money. They should insist that the ban on abortion in coverage in the public option and the subsidized plans be reinserted into the Senate bill.

I have dealt previously with the argument that the Catholic Church "segregates" funds it receives from the government for social services from the privately raised funds it uses for specifically religious purposes. This analogy was re-introduced in yesterday’s Post by Ruth Marcus. It is offensive to compare religious services to a procedure that many Americans believe is the taking of an innocent human life. It also overlooks the fact that government monies are awarded not to parishes but to organizations like Catholic Charities, which have their own boards, their own by-laws, and which do not proselytize.

Of course, the Stupak Amendment has already passed the House, and it did so with overwhelming numbers. So, even if the current language on abortion passes the Senate, it will need to be merged with the Stupak language passed by the House. But, it will be easier to do that, and the likelihood of an acceptable bill will be heightened, if the Senate passes a bill that forbids abortion coverage from the public option and from federally subsidized plans.

In a television interview, President Obama said that he opposed federal subsidies for abortion coverage. He needs to involve himself in the Senate negotiations to see that the bill recognizes that opposition, which the current language does not. The President, of course, needs to pass a bill no matter what it says about abortion, but he has to do so with an eye towards both the re-election of moderate and conservative Democrats in next year’s midterm elections, who will be vulnerable if the pro-abortion arguments prevail, as well as to his own re-election three years hence. As I said back in July, all of his hopes for common ground on this issue will go out the window if the public option contains abortion coverage.

The Stupak Amendment represents the profound ambivalence that many Americans feel about abortion. Some American Catholics (and others) are unflinchingly pro-life and they probably did not vote for Obama last year anyway. Some Catholics are unflinchingly pro-choice, but they voted for John Kerry too. The center of the electorate, the Catholic swing voters who decide elections, are those who may not want to see abortion made illegal but really, really do not like abortion and do not want to encourage it. One of the keys to the President’s success with those Catholics who voted for Bush in 2004 and for Obama in 2008 was the way he gave voice to this ambivalence they feel about abortion. It is a threshold issue for many centrist Catholic voters: If someone is hostile to pro-life concerns, these swing Catholic voters will not listen to anything else a candidate has to say. Last year, during the election, Obama showed no such hostility to our pro-life concerns, indeed he took steps to highlight his understanding of those concerns. He crossed the threshold, and that allowed these swing voters to listen to him on other issues.

The Stupak Amendment does not bar federal funds for elective abortions to save money, it does so because millions of Americans do not want to encourage abortion with their tax dollars. There is a principle at stake here. I hope the administration recognizes that not only a principle is at stake, but their entire effort to reach out to centrist Catholic voters. The solution is there: Keep the Stupak Amendment but add provisions to ensure the availability of plans that cover abortion for women who are paying with their own money for whatever coverage they want. The so-called "compromise" in the Senate bill released yesterday is not a compromise. It is a sham.

Ms. Marcus finished her article by stating her opposition to the Stupak Amendment but also arguing that pro-choice groups should not let it stand in the way of the health care bill: "The Stupak amendment is not worth killing health reform over." She is right, but as much as I want to see health care reform pass, the absence of the Stupak Amendment's real, rather than illusory, ban on federal funding of abortion is worth killing health reform over. Let's hope cool heads prevail in the Senate and the Conference Committee.  

"I’m opposed to the [Stupak] amendment," Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri told Politico.com. "I think it goes too far. It attempts to regulate private money in a private market. I think we need to continue down the path of limiting taxpayer dollars for abortions, but I don’t think we should go wander over into the territory of controlling people’s private money in the private market." This has become the central complaint against the Stupak Amendment, that it goes too far.

This comment shows that the first task of the USCCB in trying to preserve the Stupak Amendment’s ban on federal funding of abortion is to educate members of Congress and the administration. (Cong. Stupak himself has an article at Politico this morning that also answers this need.) The Stupak Amendment does not, in fact, attempt "to regulate private money in a private market." The insurance companies, not the legislative language itself, have said that they will not offer plans that cover abortion in the exchanges to be set up under the reform bill, and they do so because they think the pools of people will be too small to support such a policy. That is a private market decision.

Of course, the government regulates the private market all the time. And, here is an instance where they should do so again. The administration should find a way to make sure that the insurance companies will provide policies that cover abortion that women, with their own money and with no government subsidies, can purchase just as they can do today. Perhaps, the answer is to allow the administrators of the exchanges to grant permission to women who can’t find such a policy within the exchange to shop in another exchange. Perhaps, the insurance companies can re-assure the pro-choice advocates that they will offer such policies.

The politics of the health care debate is one long high wire act. At any point, it can all fall off the wire and it is vital, literally vital, to the millions of Americans who lack health insurance coverage that it not fall off the wire. The White House should leave Stupak alone and find a different way to answer the concern raised by Sen. McCaskill. The USCCB must recognize that so long as there is no federal funding of abortion, no return to the gimmickry of the Capps Amendment – and that is non-negotiable - they can allow the administration to find some kind of bone to throw to the pro-choice community.

Remember, we not only risk the health care reform bill if we don’t get this right, we also now risk the Stupak Amendment which is a part of that bill. It is a huge achievement to have passed pro-life health care reform. To preserve it, now is the time to make sure the politicians and the public know what the Stupak Amendment does and does not do.

The shadow of Pope Benedict XVI was everywhere apparent at the first day of the USCCB meeting. Except that it is not a shadow at all. A shadow obscures the light, making it more difficult to see. The dominant theme of the meeting so far is entirely positive, echoing the Holy Father’s insistence that the Church must proclaim what it is for, not just what it is against.

The opening sentences of the bishops’ statement on the health care reform debate read, "The US House of Representatives advanced major legislation to provide adequate and affordable health care to all. The Catholic Bishops of the United States have long advocated that adequate health care be made available to everyone." They go on to voice their continued concern that health care reform not be used to extend abortion coverage, and they seem confidant that thevictory they achieved in the House can survive in the Senate.

In his presidential address, Cardinal Francis George said, "Relations do not speak first of control but of love. If there is a loosening of relationship between ourselves and those whom Christ has given us to govern in love, it is for us to reach out and re-establish conditions necessary for all to remain in communion." In his address to the bishops, papal nuncio Archbishop Peitro Sambi reiterated the need for the Church to articulate a positive, compelling vision for the flock and for the broader culture.

Father David O’Connell, the President of the Catholic University of America, gave his last address to the bishops as president of their university: O’Connell earlier announced that he is stepping down as president of the bishops’ own university next summer. Nowhere is the need to articulate a positive vision for the Church in the culture more evident than at a Catholic University and few university administrators have done more than O’Connell to meet that need.

During O’Connell’s tenure, CUA focused on the Catholic identity of the institution. He has sponsored a variety of symposia, including one last month commemorating the "Year for Priests," the only such university symposium on the subject in America. He revamped the campus chaplaincy, making it a more integral part of campus life. O’Connell kept a tight rein on the extension of invitations to outside speakers, shunning any who disagreed publicly with the Church’s core teachings, avoiding the kind of controversies that usually shed more darkness than light on the role of the Church in society. On the other hand, he was frequently targeted by right wing critics for sponsoring such cultural events as a performance of Leonard Bernstein’s rock opera "Mass." But, if a Catholic University is not the right and proper place at which to perform such cultural gems, what is?

The shadow under which the Church in America has labored for too long is the negative view of human nature and, consequently, of human culture that is a hallmark of Calvinism. The Catholic Church has always fluctuated between adapting cultural norms and finding its own Catholic identity. Pope Benedict XVI has invited the Church to see its role differently from that of a scold. At the meeting this week in Baltimore, his invitation has been accepted.

The USCCB begins its annual plenary session today in Baltimore. On the formal agenda, the bishops will consider a proposed pastoral letter on marriage (which they should scrap and start over) and the final approval of Mass translations (some are good, some not so good but it is past time to fight over them anyway). Behind the scenes, the issue that dominates all the others is the polarization within the Conference, a polarization that seems to have been imported from the political world into the USCCB. The most important thing for the bishops to do this week is to heed the voice of their president, Cardinal George, to resist the political categories of left and right and return to “simply Catholicism.”

In the event, there is a political issue that is tailor-made for the “simply Catholicism” model proposed by Cardinal George: pro-life health care reform. For decades the bishops have backed universal health insurance for all Americans. Since 1973, the bishops have been the leaders, in season and out of season, of the pro-life movement in America. Now, thanks to the 240 members of Congress who voted for the Stupak Amendment banning federal funds for abortion, and the 220 members who voted for the final bill, the possibility of pro-life universal health insurance is that much closer to reality.

The Church’s commitment to pro-life health care reform does not conform to the orthodoxies of either political party. The Republicans have made it abundantly clear that they will do whatever it takes to defeat any substantial reform bill. Many of the most prominent Democratic members are now up in arms because of the pro-life restrictions of the Stupak Amendment. Catholic members of both parties – not just members of Congress but all of us – must ask a simple question of ourselves: Is our commitment to the Church’s teaching prior to our political orthodoxies or is it secondary?

As Pope Benedict made clear in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, life issues are social justice issues and social justice issues are life issues. The Church’s teaching must be received, understood and accepted integrally. I know that integralism is a word with a sinister history, espoused by Catholic witch-hunters during the reign of Pius X and the last years of Pius XII to brand anyone who disagreed with them as heretics. Among those caught in the web of suspicion in the reign of Piux X were Giacomo della Chiesa and Angelo Roncalli, who became Pope Benedict XV and Pope John XXIII respectively. That is not the integralism Pope Benedict XVI calls for. Instead, he merely suggests that all of the Church’s ethical teachings must be seen to flow from our dogmatic claims about the events on a hillside in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.

The solidarity with the human condition that caused the Son of God to endure suffering and death surely requires that we spare no effort to make sure our fellow citizens do not have to endure similar suffering and death unnecessarily because of an insane health insurance system. The abysmal loneliness of death which Christ endured requires all of us who invoke His name to propose a Culture of Life that cannot but see abortion as an unspeakable crime against the child and the mother and against all that it means to be human and humane. If you are pro-health care and pro-abortion, you are missing something about the consequences of Calvary. And, if you are anti-health care and claim to be pro-life, your inconsistency is transparent to all.

As mentioned before, the exact language of Stupak is going to be modified because as currently written it makes it impossible for women, with their own money, to purchase health insurance that covers abortions. I pray for the day when no woman wants such coverage, but I have to acknowledge that in this regard, Stupak goes beyond the Hyde Amendment, which only forbids the use of federal funds for abortion. The bishops should not turn Stupak into a totem: Even if the Stupak language stays exactly as it is, many women will still get abortions and the task of building the Culture of Life will remain. The victory in the U.S. House of Representatives was a great victory, and we should not squander it, and kill health care reform, by over-reaching. In politics, as in physics, every action produces a counter-reaction. If we over-reach, we might get pushed back further than we anticipated. The line in the sand is no federal funding of abortion. 

Democrats were quick to impute Torquemada-like attributes to the effort by social and other conservatives (neo- and paleo-conservatives) to back the candidacy of Doug Hoffman in the special election in an upstate congressional race over that of the more moderate Dede Scozzafava who had been selected by the local Republican Party officials. This concern for conservative orthodoxy, accompanied by a vicious campaign against Scozzafava, showed a party that is deeply divided. And, it showed something else: a party incapable of winning. The seat in NY-23 had not been held by a Democrat since the mid-nineteenth century, but last week, Democrat Bill Owens took his seat in Congress just in time to vote for the health care bill.

The new Republican orthodoxy is not rooted exclusively in social issues, although for some on the right Scozzafava’s support of gay rights was a deal-breaker. The Club for Growth, however, imposes its charges of heresy against those who do not sign irresponsible pledges to never raise taxes, despite the fact that taxes are today at historic lows as a share of GDP compared to most of the post-World War II era They are now leading the charge against Florida’s popular Governor Charlie Crist in his effort to win the GOP nomination for a Senate seat against the new conservative darling, Marco Rubio. The split in the GOP makes it possible for Democrats to pick up a Senate seat that otherwise would likely stay in the GOP column if Crist and Rubio were not engaged in a civil war. Electorally, the Club for Growth is only a club for moderate Democratic growth.

But, how is this different from the threats by pro-choice advocates to withhold support from Democrats who vote for a final health care bill that includes the restrictions on abortion coverage passed by the House last week? All this week, they have been suggesting, without saying, that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was asleep at the wheel when she signed on to permit a vote on the Stupak Amendment. Given the fact that this was the most important piece of legislation Pelosi has ever confronted, they must think she is either dumb or evil to have been so "hoodwinked." In fact, Speaker Pelosi did what good Speakers do: she counted votes and did what it took to get the bill past 218.

Yesterday, an op-ed in the New York Times by Kate Michelman and Frances Kissling said that they had long opposed the efforts, begun by then-Congressman Rahm Emanuel, to draft moderate candidates to run in more conservative districts. "They mistakenly believed that giving leadership roles to a small minority of anti-abortion Democrats would solve the party’s image problems with ‘values voters’ and answer critics who claimed Democrats were hostile to religion." Actually, I think the idea was to elect Democrats who reflected the values of more conservative parts of the country. A pro-choice Democrat doesn’t stand a chance in NC-14 or MI-1. Pelosi is Speaker because Dems now hold such conservative districts. And, yes, people like Michelman and Kissling have given the Dems a bad rap as the party that is hostile to religion. Just look at some of the anti-Catholic bigotry spewing from the pro-choice groups this past week.

Michelman and Kissling write: "If Democrats do not commit themselves to defeating the [Stupak] amendment, then they will face an uncompromising effort by Democratic women to defeat them, regardless of the cost to the party’s precious majority." Again, how is this different from the Torquemada stance of the Club for Growth? And the addition of the adjective "precious" shows the sense of moral superiority that makes one-issue advocates of all stripes so insufferable. Yes, majorities are precious because without them it is very hard to achieve anything for the people who sent you to Washington in the first place. Without a Democratic majority in both houses, we would not even be discussing health care reform still less close to passing a bill that will help many women in countless ways.

Pro-life Democrats are essential to the Democratic coalition. We heard President Obama’s call for health care reform to be neutral on abortion by precluding federal funding for abortion, a goal that Michelman and Kissling oppose. But, the Stupak Amendment, like the Hyde Amendment, reflects the deep ambivalence of most Americans about abortion. Most Americans may want abortion to be legal because they remember the days when it was not, but they really do not want to encourage it with federal subsidies either. Democrats in safe districts may be more worried about a primary challenge than about a general election opponent, so they do not need to take cognizance of where the center of the electorate is. President Obama and Speaker Pelosi do need to take such cognizance. The Democrats are either going to be a Big Tent party or not, but if you want us pro-lifers in the tent, you can’t steamroll on an issue of profound importance to us. If Michelman and Kissling want to "Scozzafava" pro-life Democrats, they will only succeed in electing pro-life Republicans. They are entitled to their opinions. They are not entitled to kill health care reform.

I have never met Nancy Keenan, the President of NARAL, but I did once interview Jon O’Brien, the President of the fabulously misnamed Catholics for Choice. He seemed like a very nice man although we obviously disagree about many things. Both Keenan and O’Brien are now desperate. They had planned to use the health care reform to vastly expand the ease with which women might be persuaded to terminate their pregnancies. But, they ran into a wall of facts. And, while I respect them as human beings, their arguments require a forceful rebuttal.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threw her pro-choice allies under the bus last weekend because there was no way to pass the bill without the votes of pro-life Democrats. Yes, we pro-life Dems are here to stay. We want to support health care reform, but we do not believe expanding abortion coverage helps women anymore than it helps the unborn. We pro-life Dems tend to grasp better than our Republican pro-life friends the fact that more than a change in laws is needed to create a Culture of Life. We see that overturning Roe v. Wade would have to occur at the end of a long process, not at the beginning, that the days when women sought back alley abortions is not a past to which we wish to return, and that the pro-life cause must tie itself completely, and unconditionally, with those women who face a crisis pregnancy and are in need of help. Our concern for the unborn is profound and it flows from the same commitment to human dignity from which flows our ambition to enact universal health care. President Obama told us in countless ways during the campaign that we pro-life Dems were welcome in any party he would lead, and he promised both the Pope and the American people that he would not permit federal funds to be used to procure abortions.

Keenan and O’Brien spent the summer trying to convince the country that the Capps Amendment was the compromise that guaranteed there would be no federal funds used to procure abortions. The problem was that we knew better. And Factcheck.org knew better. We know that money is fungible, that the Capps Amendment amounted to borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. Instead of engaging our arguments, they simply continued to assert what was transparently false. When the negotiations hit the wall, they were caught out.

Yesterday, in an essay at Politico, and in a "Hardball" appearance by Keenan, they repeated the canard about Capps being an acceptable compromise. But, the Capps Amendment is dead. Like the Soviet empire it collapsed because lies always collapse.

What was stunning about their essay, however, was the analogy they used to prove their point, an analogy that Keenan repeated on air. They argued that the Catholic bishops’ argument against Capps, that it amounted to an accounting trick, was hypocritical because the Catholic Church receives federal dollars for some of its social justice programs, but it also segregates those funds from the privately raised funds it uses to fund its explicitly religious mission, such as catechism or evangelization or administration of the sacraments. So, in this analogy, abortion is like Mass. That is offensive at every level but it also concedes a point I do not think Kennan and O’Brien want to concede. The Church has a first amendment right to say Mass and perform its religious ceremonies, but there is nothing private about the exercise of that right: Catholicism is one of the most public phenomenon in the world, rooted in specific historical claims about Jesus of Nazareth and his followers, carried on in a public ministry through the centuries, and still manifest in our nations’ culture, from its skylines to its music to its political debates. And, the government provides funds to our social justice ministries because it perceives a clear public interest in those social justice ministries. The Democratic Party is engaged in the fight for health care because we believe it is in the public interest too. But, abortion is not, according to the pro-choicers, in the public domain let alone in the public interest. Roe v. Wade argued that abortion was an explicitly private decision. If Keenan and O’Brien wish to concede that abortion is an act with public significance, they are making a huge concession that undercuts the logic behind Roe more significantly than I suspect they wish to do.

On "Hardball" Chris Matthews was kinder to Keenan than I would have been. And, he has exposed the myth of Capps not providing federal funds for abortion on previous shows. Readers should make sure that the editors of their local papers do not swallow the myth about Capps still being spread by Keenan and O’Brien: Their arguments may make it to a moderately well-read column on page A12, but everyone reads the Letters to the Editor, so do not let their misrepresentations go unanswered. Call your editors if news items state falsehoods. The politics of the Senate are looking a lot like the politics of the House, and I do not foresee any chance that the Capps Amendment will make a comeback. But, we need to make sure. And say a prayer for Keenan and O’Brien. They are lost, lost sheep, but our pro-life message suffers when we fail to love the sinner even while we detest the sin.

In a comment on my blog post from this morning, reader Michael Liddy points out that the Stupak Amendment does not, in fact, prohibit insurance companies from offering plans in the exchanges that cover abortion. It only requires that the companies offer an identical plan that does not cover abortion as well. Thanks for the comment Mr. Liddy and let me clarify the Stupak language.

You are right that the Amendment does not legally ban the offering of privately purchased plans that cover abortion in the exchanges. But, this is a distinction without a difference because the actuaries for the insurance companies, who are party to the negotiations for a reason, estimate that only 20% of those entering the exchanges will not be eligible for a subsidy. Of that 20% only a certain percentage will be women of child-bearing age, and so the pool of those participating in the plans would be too small to subdivide even further into those who want abortion coverage and those who don’t. So, Mr. Liddy you are correct that the Stupak language does not technically forbid it, but the reality of the insurance market does.

All summer I got into shouting matches with some of my pro-choice friends who insisted that the Capps Amendment took care of the issue of public funding. All summer, I said that it didn’t, that it was too-cute-by-half. It would be wrong of us on the pro-life side to try and be too cute about the consequence of the Stupak language in the real world. I am still worried that the backlash may be strong enough to carry us backwards in ways we do not want to go. There are plenty of members who would like to overturn the Hyde Amendment. Prudence is a virtue.

Some liberal Democrats are up in arms about the Stupak Amendment, even though many of those same liberal Democrats voted for the final bill which included that Amendment. They need to remember, however, that the objective here is to pass a health care bill and that inflammatory rhetoric may not help them achieve that goal.

Over at Politico, their featured "Arena" on health care includes some of the worst diatribes. Karen Finney, a Democratic consultant, writes: "The members of Congress who voted in support of the Stupak amendment sent a message to America’s women: after more than 200 years we are still not full citizens of the United States. Apparently members of Congress now believe that it is within their power to determine what legal medical procedures are acceptable." No, the members who voted for Stupak sent a message to the entire country that abortion is an issue about which most Americans evidence profound ambivalence. Even those who think it should be legal do not think it is something to be encouraged. "Safe, legal and rare" was the formulation Bill Clinton provided in 1996 and it captured the way most Americans feel still, especially those in the center of the electorate. Unfortunately, thanks to redistricting that makes most House seats "safe," most members have no reason to listen to the center of the electorate, and are more afraid of being Scozzafaved in a primary by a yet more ideologically pure challenge from the base.

Timothy Stoltzfust Jost, a professor of law at Washington and Lee University, thinks issues of Church and State are involved. He writes: "For Congress to have to look to a particular church for permission to move legislation is frightening. Religious persecution is a very real issue for many throughout the world today. We have been very fortunate in the United States to have been largely spared its ravages. But the only guarantee that we will continue to enjoy religious freedom is the jealous protection of the separation principle. If any religion dominates politics, it has the power to dominate other religions as well. Let us not become another Iran." This is pure baloney. No one looked to the Church for "permission" and America is scarcely in danger of becoming another Iran.

 Members of Congress looked to the Church for two things. First, for information. Professor Jost may not realize it but the Catholic Church runs hundreds of hospitals and other medical facilities, and work with indigent people who for-profit hospitals shun. We know something about the health care system so of course members of Congress turned to us for analysis of the problems and solutions involved. Second, members of Congress look to the Bishops for support. As Congressman Mike Doyle told the Wall Street Journal yesterday, "[The bishops] command respect because they have a good social-justice record….They actually wanted to pass the bill. That's why they had status. Other groups that had similar views on abortion weren't interested in passing the bill." The USCCB rarely "endorses" a bill, of course, but the members of Congress, and Speaker Pelosi in particular, understood that meny of the people represented in "the People’s House" have moral concerns about abortion and that the USCCB was the place to go to try and reflect those concerns in the final legislation.

Professor Jost also criticizes the Stupak Amendment because, as he writes, "it essentially applies the Hatch amendment [sic], which has long applied to Medicaid program, to all of the new programs created under the House bill." Now, leaving aside the fact that the Hatch Act applies to campaign contributions from federal employees and the Hyde Amendment bars federal Medicaid funds from being used for abortion, Professor Jost has given a fair description of what abortion neutrality looks like: The restrictions on the use of federal funds through Medicaid should apply to federal funds in any new government arrangements set up by the health care reform bill.

Now, to be clear, the final Stupak language goes beyond Hyde. It not only prevents plans that cover abortion from receiving government subsidies, at also bans any such plan from participating in the exchanges being set up. So, a woman who will be paying entirely for her own coverage, with no government subsidy, is still prevented from getting a plan that covers abortion. This is the provision that I think has most angered women and it is also the provision that can be dropped without breaking the compact with Stupak and his supporters to achieve a meaningful ban of the use of federal funds for abortion. I would prefer to keep the language, of course, but if either side is looking for a compromise, there it is. In the real world, of course, what will happen whether Stupak is touched or not, is that insurance companies will develop policy riders that cover abortion for women to purchase with their own money and, because abortion is not an expensive procedure, the riders will be very inexpensive. Women are not being cast back into the back-alleys as some have claimed.

What should be clear, crystal clear, is that many of us who support health care reform, who backed the President in part because of his pledge to accomplish health care reform, also cringe at the prospect of health care reform being hijacked by Planned Parenthood to increase abortion coverage with our tax dollars. There is no going back to the Capps Amendment which was always too clever by half. Yes, abortion is different from other procedures. There is no misogyny in the Church’s position: We stand alike with the unborn females and the unborn males. Even more, we stand with women who might think an abortion is a "solution" to their "problem" but who will discover that abortion is not a solution to anything. Of course, we in the pro-life movement must also make sure that we are doing everything in our power to help women see that a pregnancy is never just a problem either. Calling Nancy Pelosi a murderer doesn’t help anything.

But, here is the difficulty. The fact that there are actual solutions at hand doesn’t always matter. The Stupak Amendment has taken on symbolic importance, and while people will compromise over pragmatic solutions, they will fight to the death for a symbol. Members of Congress should be urged to remember, as President Obama said, that this is a health care bill not an abortion bill. Yes, you can’t achieve the first kind of bill without confronting the same thorny issues that would be raised by the second kind of bill. Those thorns, however, can be dealt with so long as members determine not to invest their political stances with more symbolism than the occasion requires. Yes, issue your statements to appease your constituencies, but leave the hubris at the door. Health care reform is too important.

Michael Sean Winters

Saturday afternoon football games always feature an ad for the universities engaged in gridiron combat. These ads usually consist of pictures of happy co-eds frolicking on well trimmed lawns interspersed with shots of students in laboratories or studying at the library. Sometimes, a famous professor is mentioned, sometimes a winning NCAA team, sometimes the great location of the campus.

This past Saturday, however, a national audience tuned into the Notre Dame v. Navy game saw a different ad that focused on adult stem cell research at Notre Dame. In that ad, the voice-over describes the research being conducted using stem cells from zebra fish, which have regenerative properties the cells of a mammal lack. But, within the ad, came this sentence: "As a Catholic University, Notre Dame is committed to cutting edge research that respects the dignity of human life from conception until natural death and does not engage in human embryonic stem cell research."

Last spring, you may recall, all manner of abuse was heaped on Notre Dame, and especially on its President, Father John Jenkins. He was accused of essentially winking at the Church’s teaching on the dignity of human life by inviting the President of the United States to receive an honorary degree and deliver the commencement address. Father Jenkins made clear that the invitation, and the degree, certainly were not intended as an endorsement of the President’s views on abortion or embryonic stem cell research, and at the ceremony itself, with the President sitting next to him, Father Jenkins reiterated the Church’s teaching. A nationally televised audience watched that moment too, an audience that would not have been watching if the graduation speaker had been someone other than the President.

Saturday’s commercial, as well as the work it highlighted, shows the depth of Notre Dame’s commitment to life issues. But, it shows something else too. It shows, in the finest tradition of Christian humanism, that it is not enough to protest. It is not enough to whine or throw up our hands at the ways our culture fails to honor and promote the dignity of human life. People who suffer from degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s Disease want a cure, not a bumper sticker. Notre Dame, by engaging in this work and telling a nationwide audience of football viewers about, is giving a profound and laudable witness to the Church’s teaching. Will the university’s critics applaud this ad?

One of them actually has. Notre Dame law professor Rick Garnett sent me the link to the ad and has written about it at his blog, Mirror of Justice. Garnett also provided the most thoughtful, non-inflammatory criticism of the university’s decision to honor the President. Garnett and I are as likely to disagree as to agree on any given political issue, but he writes from a profound commitment to the Church, a commitment that includes a willingness to engage in civil discussion and thoughtful criticism. He could not be more different from some of the fringe bloggers who uncharitably demean those with whom they disagree. Nor does Garnett indulge a nostalgic Catholic sectarianism. Neither does the University at which he labors.

Notre Dame has done more than witness to the Church’s teaching about the dignity of human life. It has given another example of what Pope Benedict calls the "great et, et." When Catholics confront technological innovations or so-called advances in research that are ethically impermissible, we do not damn technology or scholarship. We engage it and find ethically permissible ways to solve human problems. The tradition of Catholic theology is to avoid "either/or" formulations in favor of "both/and" formulations. This is a profoundly humane instinct. Whatever is authentically human, such as the desire to find cures for horrible diseases, must be embraced and it is the proper, and noble, task of a Catholic University to bring both the light of reason and the light of faith to the search for humane answers and cures.

The Notre Dame football team lost on Saturday, but the University itself won.

Liberal members of the Democratic caucus are realizing just how pro-life the Stupak Amendment restrictions are and the backlash is starting. We pro-lifers have been focusing on encouraging moderate Democrats in both the House and Senate to hang tough on abortion but pro-choice advocates are doing the same with those members who support their cause. Health Care reform is far from a done deal.

In this morning’s Washington Post Congresswoman Diana DeGette of Colorado claims that she has more than 40 Democrats in the House who have pledged themselves to opposing any final bill that includes the Stupak Amendment. The problem with this is two-fold. First, passing laws is like squeezing a water balloon, when you tweak something at one end, something pops out on the other. The bill, with Stupak, garnered a majority of the chamber. That has been demonstrated. Any other configuration of the bill might get 218, it might not. No other configuration will get the vote of a Republican, that is for sure. Democrats like DeGette, in totally safe districts, may bluster and complain, but Speaker Pelosi needs to count votes.

The second problem is, well, more problematic. Rep. DeGette said, "There’s going to be a firestorm here. Women are going to realize that a Democratic-controlled House has passed legislation that would prohibit women paying for abortions with their own funds." That is not true, but I understand her point. The Stupak Amendment prohibits any policies, private or public, offered in the insurance "exchanges" that are to be set up by the government from offering abortion coverage. This goes further than a mere ban on federal funding: There will be women who go to the exchange to find coverage who will not receive federal subsidies and they, also, will not be able to buy a policy in the exchange that covers abortion. In this sense, Stupak is not abortion-neutral, it is positively pro-life. I like that, and I hope we can keep it, but that single provision is not a deal-breaker for me and shouldn’t be a deal-breaker for the USCCB. Now, I suspect it is: Having achieved it once, they will be as loathe to give it up as the pro-choice crowd is loathe to swallow it.

But, here is where DeGette is also just wrong. The basic plans offered in the exchanges can’t offer abortion services but there is nothing in the bill that prevents women from buying an insurance rider or from paying for an abortion out-of-pocket. Sad to say, abortion is expensive morally and psychologically, but not monetarily. So, DeGette is wrong: Insurance companies will surely offer a variety of services with riders, and women will be free, as they are under current law, to purchase coverage for abortion services. The Senate might even entertain an amendment requiring at least one insurance company that participates in the exchange to offer such a rider. This is a far better solution than tampering with the Stupak language which achieves the complicated and non-negotiable goal of avoiding federal funding of abortion and abortion coverage.

There is a deeper issue as well. No one should confuse a legislative victory with a cultural one, or even with a political one. Speaker Pelosi is not now pro-life, she merely recognized the need to accommodate pro-life concerns to achieve her goal. It is still important that Catholics reach out to their representatives and senators. The Democrats need to be less doctrinaire in their pro-choice position (and those 64 Dem votes for Stupak were a good start) and the Republicans need to be less hostile to the Obama administration when it is pursuing policies that reflect the social justice teachings of the Catholic Church. We need to convert the Nancy Pelosi’s of the world to the pro-life cause, not just force her into a legislative compromise. And conversion, like all evangelization, requires patience, listening, respect and solidarity with the person being evangelized. Building a culture of Life was helped by Saturday’s vote, but that task was not finished. That task will never be finished this side of the abyss.

No one at the USCCB should contact insurance companies to make sure they are coming up with insurance riders that cover abortion. On the other hand, Nancy Pelosi was whipping liberal, pro-choice Democrats to vote for a bill that included the Stupak Amendment. And, in a strange way, the final outcome on Saturday was profoundly bi-partisan: It took GOP votes to amend the bill to make it something the Democrats (and Cong. Cao) could pass. The legislative result was and is fragile. But, it is a result worth preserving and everyone should tread carefully.