Bonnie Erbe: Women, are we going to let this happen?

By BONNIE ERBE, Scripps Howard News Service

Last update: November 15, 2009 - 8:57 AM

Hello, American women. Welcome to the back of the bus.

We were pushed back six decades in time courtesy of an amendment to the House version of health care reform, approved last weekend, called the Stupak-Pitts amendment.

One account describes the amendment thusly: "The Stupak amendment forces insurance companies that currently provide abortion coverage to choose between continuing that coverage or dropping it for all women if they want to participate in health insurance exchanges and sell their product to government-subsidized consumers." The reaction from Democratic female members of Congress was vehement and immediate. I received an e-mail from Congressional Women's Caucus cochair Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., saying that she and many other prominent female House members would vote to kill health care reform if Pitts-Stupak is included. By late Monday, Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado had collected more than 40 signatures from fellow members who vowed they would not vote for a combined House-Senate health care bill if it contains language "that restricts women's right to choose any further than current law." Pitts-Stupak represents the greatest congressional invasion of privacy rights in decades.

How far will Democrats go to try to lure prolife evangelicals and Catholics into the fold (a constituency that rarely votes Democratic in any event)? In the long run, this is a crowd that looks backward -- clinging to a 1950s vision of American society, and women's place in it.

I'm not a fan of health care reform in its current configuration. And I sure do not believe that pursuit of health care reform merits tossing women's rights over the side as so much detritus. We all understand that politics is the art of compromise. But compromise in pursuit of a crowd Democrats will never please seems risible at best and irresponsible at worst.

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