Abort Stupak

Trab Stupak (I refuse to call him by his proper first name because that was the name of my late boxer dog, who was a vastly superior creature) shares some plaintive thoughts with his fellow fetus fetishists at National Review Online:

Sitting in an airport, on his way home to Michigan, Rep. Bart Stupak, a pro-life Democrat, is chagrined. “They’re ignoring me,” he says… “That’s their strategy now. The House Democratic leaders think they have the votes to pass the Senate’s health-care bill without us. At this point, there is no doubt that they’ve been able to peel off one or two of my twelve. And even if they don’t have the votes, it’s been made clear to us that they won’t insert our language on the abortion issue.”

According to Stupak, that group of twelve pro-life House Democrats — the “Stupak dozen” — has privately agreed for months to vote ‘no’ on the Senate’s health-care bill if federal funding for abortion is included in the final legislative language. Now, in the debate’s final hours, Stupak says the other eleven are coming under “enormous” political pressure from both the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). “I am a definite ‘no’ vote,” he says. “I didn’t cave. The others are having both of their arms twisted, and we’re all getting pounded by our traditional Democratic supporters, like unions.”

Pesky unions! Always whining about trivial shit like benefits for union workers, non-union workers and even the unemployed! A Democrat in an anti-union, full-employment state like Michigan is wise to ignore them.

Then Stupak concocts a ginormous whopper transparently designed to gin up sympathy among people who get all teary-eyed over Snowflake Angels:

What are Democratic leaders saying? “If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” Stupak says. “Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue — come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we’re talking about.”

Emphasis mine. I think Stupak is a liar—I don’t believe for one goddamned second any Democratic leader tried to change Stupak’s mind by arguing that his amendment would result in costly additional children. Stupak insults our intelligence by making such an outrageous claim. Of course, NRO’s bovine editorial staff and readers lap lies like that up uncritically, so I guess Stupak gets a little credit for knowing his audience is not only dumber than dirt but eager to believe their political opponents are baby-killing monsters.

Stupak laments the diminished role for pro-lifers in the Democratic Party:

If Obamacare passes, Stupak says, it could signal the end of any meaningful role for pro-life Democrats within their own party. “It would be very, very hard for someone who is a right-to-life Democrat to run for office,” he says. “I won’t leave the party. I’m more comfortable here and still believe in a role within it for the right-to-life cause, but this bill will make being a pro-life Democrat much more difficult. They don’t even want to debate this issue. We’ll probably have to wait until the Republicans take back the majority to fix this.”

Yeah, the Dems are so inflexible on the choice issue, unlike the open-minded Republicans, who welcome intra-party debate on abortion. (Well, they debate how long the sentence should be for doctors who perform them and whether the death penalty should apply. They debate whether the lunatics who gun down said doctors should be fully embraced as heroes or just quietly admired.)

Anyway, kudos to the Dems for refusing to knuckle under to Stupak-the-lying-sack-of-shit’s self-aggrandizing antics on the non-issue of abortion rights expansion in the HCR bill. There is no expansion of abortion rights in the bill. It actually makes abortion less accessible, even for women who purchase exchange coverage with their own fucking money. This is all about Stupak getting his mug on TV and his name in the papers.

Balloon Juice created an ActBlue account to support Connie Saltonstall, a pro-choice Dem who is challenging Stupak in the upcoming primary.  I plan to donate. And I hope she wins.

Posted by Betty Cracker on 03/13/10 at 10:31 AM • Permalink

Labor.

Or at least they were until this year.

Of course, even an obvious lie is enough to set off angry fart-lighters like Dan Riehl, who can’t seem to stop himself from spinning “stupid” into “downright ugly.”

Stupak has definitely “nuked the fridge” this time.

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