Are you fucking kidding me?

This is a travesty [via BooMan by way of Atrios]:

House Democratic leaders agreed Friday night to settle an impasse over abortion by letting the entire House vote on a proposed solution, a risky decision that could determine the fate of their trillion-dollar overhaul of the nation’s health care system.

Under the agreement, anti-abortion Democrats will be permitted to offer an amendment on the House floor to the health-care overhaul bill. The amendment would prohibit a new government-run insurance plan created by the health-care bill from offering to cover abortion services, congressional sources said. It would also block people who received federal subsidies for the purchase of health insurance from buying policies that offered coverage for abortions.

The deal clears the way for the dozens of Democratic lawmakers who oppose abortion to lend their support to the health care package, the most dramatic expansion of health coverage in more than 40 years. It also satisfies the demands of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which had threatened to oppose the House bill. [...]

Upon learning of Friday night’s deal, the Planned Parenthood Federation of American quickly fired off a statement from president Cecile Richards opposing the amendment. Such a measure, Richards said, would effectively force private insurers to drop coverage of abortion in order to offer their policies through the new insurance exchanges.

“The fact is, the majority of private health insurance plans currently offer abortion coverage,” Richards said, adding that the Stupak amendment “upends the carefully crafted compromise in the House bill and unambiguously restricts women’s access to care.”

Arrrgggghhhh!

Read it all.  And then find a pair of needle-nose pliers to remove the pieces of keyboard from your forehead. Maybe that fucking asshole Bark Stupak can write up an amendment to provide coverage for those kind of head injuries since he’s going to be responsible for so many of them today.

UPDATE: Planned Parenthood has a bulletin up...

We need you, and your friends and family to call your representative now at 202-730-9001 and ask him or her to oppose the Stupak amendment.

Spread the word.

MORE: TBogg would like you to send a thank you card to Stupak.

UPDATE: You can watch live coverage of the House debate on HCR here at C-SPAN.

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/07/09 at 11:23 AM • Permalink

From TBogg:

Bart Stupak, who is apparently a congressman from some horrible depressing dying part of Michigan, does not seem to understand that abortion is a legal medical procedure in the rest of America that isn’t horrible, depressing and dying. So he would like to eliminate the part of the public option that would cover this procedure for poor women, and if his plan also makes it tougher for not-poor women to get this legal medical procedure, well, that gives him a boner too.

Since the Democratic leadership won’t stand up to him (because they are the Democratic leadership, after all) please go make a donation to Planned Parenthood in Bart Stupak’s name here.

Also. Please have Planned Parenthood send a thank you card to Bart Stupak:

Congressman Bart Stupak
2268 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Any amount, no matter how small, will do.

Thank you.

via @TBogg on Twitter

It looks like the amendment was defeated by voice vote although someone called for a recorded vote to be done later.  I don’t know if that means it could change??
House Debate on Stupak: Amendment Defeated on Voice Vote

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