Re: [Marxism] Negotiators Add Abortion Clause to Spending Bill

["acpollack2@xxxxxxxx" <acpollack2@xxxxxxxx>]

NPR reports Boxer threw in the towel after Frist promised her the Senate would 
vote on the abortion provision by March 1st -- even though the House, says NPR, 
is unlikely to delete it even if the House does.

So much for the ABBers who said only they could save abortion rights.

-- "Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/politics
November 20, 2004
Negotiators Add Abortion Clause to Spending Bill
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 - House and Senate negotiators have tucked a
potentially far-reaching anti-abortion provision into a $388 billion
must-pass spending bill, complicating plans for Congress to wrap up its
business and adjourn for the year.

The provision may be an early indication of the growing political muscle
of social conservatives who provided crucial support for Republican
candidates, including President Bush, in the election.

It would bar federal, state and local agencies from withholding taxpayer
money from health care providers that refuse to provide or pay for
abortions or refuse to offer abortion counseling or referrals. Current
federal law, aimed at protecting Roman Catholic doctors, provides such
"conscience protection'' to doctors who do not want to undergo abortion
training. The new language would expand that protection to all health care
providers, including hospitals, doctors, clinics and insurers.

"It's something we've had a longstanding interest in," said Douglas
Johnson, a spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee. He added,
"This is in response to an orchestrated campaign by pro-abortion groups
across the country to use government agencies to coerce health care
providers to participate in abortions."

The provision could affect millions of American women, according to
Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, who warned Friday that she
would use procedural tactics to slow Senate business to a crawl if the
language was not altered.

"I am willing to stand on my feet and slow this thing down," Ms. Boxer
said. "Everyone wants to go home, I know that, and I know I will not win a
popularity contest in the Senate. But they should not be doing this. On a
huge spending bill they're writing law, and they're taking away rights
from women."

Ms. Boxer said that she complained to Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska
Republican who is the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, but that
he told her that House Republican leaders insisted that the provision,
which was approved by the House in July but never came to the Senate for a
vote, be included in the measure.

"He said, 'Senator, they want it in, and it's going in,' " Ms. Boxer
recalled.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Stevens, Melanie Alvord, said her boss would have no
comment on the spending bill because House and Senate negotiators had not
settled on the final language.

Some lawmakers and Congressional aides interpreted the House leaders'
insistence as reflection of the new political strength of the
anti-abortion movement and of Christian conservatives, who played an
important role in re-electing Mr. Bush this month.

"They are catering to their right wing doing this," said Senator Tom
Harkin, Democrat of Iowa. "It doesn't make it right. I think this is the
first step."

Mr. Harkin said he intended to try to force a vote next year on support
for upholding the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, which legalized
abortion. "I think it is time the women of America understand what is
happening here," he said.

The spending measure, called an omnibus bill, was the main reason Congress
returned to Washington after the election, and members of both parties say
that despite Ms. Boxer's warnings, it is likely to pass with the abortion
language intact.

The alternative is to let government funding for a wide array of
agencies - like the F.B.I., the National Park Service and the
Environmental Protection Agency - run out, in effect causing a partial
government shutdown.

Lawmakers in the House and the Senate intended to vote on the omnibus bill
on Saturday, when a stopgap spending measure is set to expire at midnight.
Congress failed to pass 9 of its 13 required spending bills before
recessing for the election, leaving much of the government - with the
exception of the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security - to
operate under the interim measure.

The 11th-hour controversy over the abortion language capped a long and
chaotic day Friday. In the House, the ethics committee ruled that a
Democratic lawmaker had brought exaggerated charges against Representative
Tom DeLay of Texas, the majority leader, a finding that provoked another
round of bitter recriminations between Republicans and Democrats.

In the Senate, the Democratic leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, who
lost his re-election bid, delivered a poignant farewell speech that
brought him a standing ovation.

"It's had its challenges, its triumphs, its disappointments," Mr. Daschle
said of his 26-year career in Congress, which included a decade as the
Democratic leader. "But everything was worth doing."

Mr. Daschle is the first Senate party leader in more than half a century
to lose re-election. His emotional talk, in which he also urged his
colleagues to find "common ground," was attended by nearly all of the
Senate's Democrats, who gathered him in their arms and hugged him
afterward.

But only a few Republicans showed up, and Senator Bill Frist, the majority
leader, who broke with Senate tradition to campaign against Mr. Daschle in
his home state, South Dakota, did not appear until after Mr. Daschle
finished speaking. The scant Republican showing provoked Senator Frank R.
Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, to speak out. "I don't know why, why
in the closing days, some element of comity, some element of grace, some
element of respect for a human being, could not have gotten some of our
friends out of their offices," Mr. Lautenberg said.

Outside the Senate chamber, the common ground Mr. Daschle spoke of seemed
hard to find. House and Senate negotiators were still trying to salvage a
reorganization of the nation's intelligence agencies. And Ms. Boxer was
trying to negotiate changes to the abortion language, she said, with
little success.

Louise Melling, director of the Reproductive Freedom Project at the
American Civil Liberties Union, which has opposed the provision, said it
would effectively strip states of their right to "enforce laws that were
designed to protect women's health."

For instance, she said, there are four states - Hawaii, Maryland, New York
and Washington - that pay for some abortions for low-income women through
their Medicaid programs. Under the language included in the omnibus bill,
hospitals would not have to comply with those requirements.

On Friday, nine female senators - eight Democrats and one Republican,
Olympia J. Snowe of Maine - wrote a letter to Senator Stevens asking that
the language be changed and complaining that it had not gone through
committee or to the Senate floor for a vote.

Ms. Snowe called the language "a bad provision" that would "adversely
affect reproductive health access for women across the country." She
added, "It is an ill-advised policy that is clearly harmful to women."

The bill generally holds spending to the level sought by the White House.
The huge measure was still being completed Friday and will also contain
scores of home-state projects sought by lawmakers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/politics/20spend.html?hp&ex=1101013200&en=
34c38192ba5e17fe&ei=5094&partner=homepage





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