The final few paragraphs of Parker's article expose Stupak for the coward and hypocrite he is:
Stupak, too, knew that the executive order was merely political cover for him and his pro-life colleagues. He knew it because several members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops explained it to him, according to sources. The only way to prevent public funding for abortion was for his amendment to be added to the Senate bill.
Clearly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the president didn't want that. What they did want was the abortion funding that the Senate bill allowed.
Thus, the health care bill passed because of a mutually understood deception — a pretense masquerading as virtue. No wonder Stupak locked his doors and turned off his phones Sunday, according to several pro-life lobbyists who camped outside his office.
Stupak's fall from grace is a lesson in human frailty. In a matter of hours, he went from representing the majority of Americans who don't want public money spent on abortion to leading the army on the other side. Already he has lost a speaking invitation to the Illinois Catholic Prayer Breakfast next month. [He also lost a speaking invitation from Catholic Vote and an award from a pro-life group.]
After the Sunday vote, a group of Democrats, including Stupak, gathered in a pub to celebrate. In a biblical moment, New York Rep. Anthony Weiner was spotted planting a big kiss on Stupak's cheek.
To a Catholic man well versed in the Gospel, this is not a comforting gesture.See the full column at the Chicago Tribune.
This should put an end to the myth that some of us have known to be a lie for a long time.....the myth that there are pro-life Democrats.
ReplyDeleteVery few can be heroes and especially when they receive death threats which I read Stupak did get.
ReplyDeleteThat's why we have to put God first so we will have the strength to do the right thing and God's will be done.
I've linked to this post on my blog I've issued a challenge to progressives. I hope you'll follow along.
ReplyDeletea question for progressives.
Nailed Stupak...I'm a bit skeptical...because he's been on video for a long time saying he'd vote for this bill...why didn't we take him at his original word?
ReplyDeleteIt's no longer really about Stupak... after all, what would you expect of a Democrat whose platform runs red with the blood of abortions? He is acting true-to-form. To focus any more energy or vituperation on him is as productive as it is to complain about Obama.
What it's really about is the so-called prolife organizations who propped him up as an emblem of prolife virtue, focusing their efforts mainly on supporting Stupak, and negligently allowing the many other deep problems with the bill to go unexplored). These organizations never allowed the principles of subsidiarity and socialized medicine, medical rationing, euthanasia, artificial reproduction to come to debate, because they made abortion the single issue and they did even that badly (for example rape/incest babies were tossed under the bus).
Who are these organizations? Look in your emailboxes (the organizations have "scrubbed" their websites, but they can't delete emails you have received). In November, right before the House vote, they were the ones who could have sent a mass email asking you to urge Congressmen to vote the health care bill down, but instead emailed you to contact your Congressman in favor of Stupak. At the same time, they told all Congressmen they would be holding a vote against Stupak as "antilife", but completely ignoring the Congressmen's vote on the deathly bill itself!
These organizations have huge email lists, built from online petitions that people have signed in the past. The lists are almost like money, in the power the confer upon the organization possessing them. They can use these email lists to bully or threaten Congressmen, claiming that they can mobilize "x" number of people in support of the policy at hand, even if it bears no relation to the original petition issue which brought them the email addresses.
Not only did these "prolife" organizations mangle the bill opposition, they shut out savvy prolife organizations like ALL, who saw through Stupak, and derided those who pointed out the need to oppose the bill at all costs. The enormity of this bill's impact on people's freedom and lives is only now becoming understood by some conservatives, let alone the many liberals, whereas it should have been vigorously communicated for the last six months.
We need an apology and an explanation for their behavior before these organizations should be allotted trust in the future. Whether through negligence, incompetence, or ill will, these organizations should account for why they cut principled debate of this bill off at the knees. It is to these organizations that we can partly attribute our serfdom under Obamacare, and the many lives that will be aborted (both old and young) to pay for health care for the rest.
It is hard to figure what restitution would be adequate to cover the harms, other than repealing the bill, but to start out, a serious, non-dismissive attempt to help with the Personhood battle that ALL is waging would be a good faith gesture. And an effort to step all the way back and sponsor an open debate on the whole health care question, to identify all the real problems, and then come up with real solutions, would be a good way to start making up. For all the yammering about healthcare being a prize sought for decades, a true debate has never taken place.
What can we do about this? If you are on the mailing list for any such organization, email back to them asking them to account for their past support of Stupak, or to remove your address from their list.
If no apology is forthcoming, we can only assume socialised health care was also the covert objective for these organizations as well. A thought that ought to make us all more careful about the online petitions we sign in future.