Joseph Petrich

Mr. McGill
Honors Political Science, p. 5
13 November 2009

“Abortion Upends Health-Bill Alliance”

Gerald Seib’s article in The Wall Street Journal accurately describes the growing
controversy over abortion in relation to the health care bills in the Senate and Congress,
specifically with regards to the Stupak Amendment. While both conservatives and liberals claim
to want to preserve a status quo on federal abortion funding, technicalities are ratcheting up the
debate and slowing the bill’s passage. When there seemed no threat of an abortion-restricting
amendment to the bill, Democrats criticized supporters of such an amendment as being divisive
and distracting, downplaying the abortion issue as unimportant and irrelevant. However, once
the “tables turned” and the Stupak Amendment passed, the issue soon became prominent for
Democrats, with those in the majority party becoming more divisive and critical.
Also interesting to note about this article is the emphasis placed on the United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). While the Catholic Church is the largest religious
group in the world, the clout of its bishops shows the importance of religion in a usually secular
government. Presently, American culture is one the purports to be about reason and science, not
faith and religion, and religious figures of all denominations are often held in contempt by the
press. However, it remains that the United States is a predominantly Christian nation, with a
very small fraction of the population describing themselves as atheist. Religion and government
are held separate by the Constitution, but our elected officials are often religious, and, if not,
their constituent certainly is. It should not be surprising, therefore, that the USCCB has such a
large voice in congress, especially when advocating so vehemently for such a relatively small
issue.
Whether this situation is morally or ethically right, whether institutions like the USCCB
should have such clout, is debatable. What is not debatable is the hypocrisy of both liberals and
conservatives who downplay the issue of abortion whenever the pendulum swings their way.
We are at a point where the American population is evenly divided on the abortion issue, and a
status quo is desirable to both sides concerning the health care bill. Liberals, wanting to emulate
Canadian and European countries in moving more towards a socialistic system should keep the
abortion status quo in order to further the larger agenda, and conservatives, especially the
religious, want universal health care in order to provide for the impoverished without losing
ground on abortion. Whatever their motives, our elected officials should realize this, and accept
the Stupak Amendment as the most reasonable of compromises, given that it reproduces the
already approved Hyde Amendment nearly word for word.