Health-care reform hijacked by Catholic church and house pro-life caucus

Scott McDowell
Examiner
Nov 11, 2009

Why were representatives of Catholic Bishops allowed to sit at the negotiating table while the House of Representatives hashed out a health care reform bill? The United Stated Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) had lobbied hard to have an amendment presented by Democrat Bart Stupak included in the final House health care reform bill. Stupak told Speaker Pelosi that if she wanted democratic members of the pro-life caucus to support health care reform, she would need to meet with the Bishops’ representatives.

Nancy Pelosi, who is a pro-choice Catholic, agreed to the meeting, and the result was the Stupak-Pitt amendment being brought to the floor of the House for a vote. The amendment would make it illegal for the public option, or any insurance plan that is purchased with the assistance of a federal subsidy to offer coverage for abortion, except in cases of rape, incest, and danger to the mother’s life. How is the USCCB able to draw this line? A fetus wouldn’t know it was conceived by rape or incest. Are these fetuses inherently less valuable than a fetus conceived by consensual sex? What about the value of the 45,000 people who die every year because they lack health insurance?

Stupak-Pitt passed by a final vote of 240-194, with 39 Democrats voting for the amendment. In turn, 21 of those 39 Democrats then voted against the healthcare reform bill. So much for the pro-life caucus’s support. Why did Speaker Pelosi, a liberal Representative from San Francisco, allow the bill to be hijacked by this conservative wing of her party?

Churches have long enjoyed tax exempt status in the United States, but with the extensive lobbying done by the USCCB, will this change? If Rep. Lynn Woolsey of California has any say in the matter, it will. Woolsey wrote an op-ed piece here, questioning the legitimacy of USCCB’s tax exempt status.