Yesterday’s respected Quinnipac poll shows 72% of Americans don’t want abortion funded in health care– but that will happen in the Senate health care bill President Obama supports.
Politico reports today that White House officials are conceding the abortion divide could keep any health care bill from moving forward until after Obama’s State of the Union address in late January.
Any delay in achieving health reform is unwelcome by Obama, whose popularity continues to plummet. Today’s Rassmussen poll shows 55% of likely voters now disapprove of his performance, 44% strongly so.
Kansas U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback says, in an opinion piece yesterday, that
“ the abortion funding divide is now the central debate in reconciling the differences between the House and Senate Democratic bills. …If the issue of abortion funding brings down this bill, it will be a victory for the cause of protecting innocent human life. That would be an irony that Henry Hyde would have greatly appreciated.”
Brownback
As Lifenews.com reports, one group of pro-abortion House members wants to remove the Stupak amendment and believe the Senate language funding abortion is too weak. A second group of pro-abortion senators supports keeping the Senate language in the bill. And a third group is comprised of pro-life House Democrats who want the Stupak amendment kept in the final bill.
The timetable for Obama is made difficult by the previously-approved Congressional schedule as the House comes back into session after Christmas on January 12 but then Democrats immediately take a party retreat. The Senate is not expected to resume until January 18, days before the Fri. Jan. 22 annual March For Life in Washington D.C.
Once Democrats work out a deal on the language of the health care bill, it will take the Congressional Budget Office over a week to deliver the final cost analysis on the bill so both chambers can vote. The timetable gives pro-life advocates over a month to organize and prepare for the votes in the House and Senate.
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