I Got What I Wanted: Health Reform That's Pro-Life

The health-care bill passed this week is plenty pro-life for Bart Stupak, the anti-abortion Democrat whose amendment didn’t make the final cut but who wrangled an executive order out of President Obama that carries “the full force and effect of law” in prohibiting federal funding for abortion. In a Washington Post op-ed, the Michigander further blasts conservatives for rallying, unbidden, behind him, using abortion as merely a pretense for defeating health reform.

Stupak cites other weighty executive orders, such as the Emancipation Proclamation, and one by George W. Bush restricting stem-cell research that was cheered by the same pro-lifers now angrily calling him a cowardly “backstabber.” “My goal was to see health-care reform pass while maintaining the long-standing principle of the sanctity of life,” Stupak concludes. “I and other pro-life Democrats are pleased that we were able to hold true to our principles and vote for a bill that is pro-life at every stage of life and that provides 32 million Americans with access to high-quality, affordable health care.”
(More health care reform stories.)