This is a rant. It's a rant most of you are probably going to viscerally disagree with. That's fine. I think discussion makes us stronger, not weaker.
Anyway, here's the short of it. I don't understand why everyone has such a big problem with the Stupak-Pitt Amendment.
I'm Catholic. I consider myself both pro-choice and pro-life. Yes, really. I believe that (1) abortion is morally evil but (2) Free Will is a higher good than Life, and when both virtues come into conflict, we need to tread very carefully. That's why I generally oppose government regulation of abortion - because I recognize that abortion is often a choice between life (of the embryo/fetus) and free will (of the mother). Having a child fundamentally alters the choices you can make with your life, and being forced to have a child you don't want to is like being forced to lose your free will. On the other hand, abortion is killing.
I'm aware that Daily Kos is a progressive community, and that my views here are probably out of the community mainstream, but let me carry you through my logic.
The pro-life argument is founded on one simple idea - abortion is murder. I suspect most of us just hear the words and dismiss them these days, instead of thinking about what they mean. The pro-life contention is that as soon as an ovum is fertilized, it becomes a human being and it's deserving of the same legal protections as all other human beings.
The counter-argument to this position is often a simple refutation of the premise. An embryo is NOT a human being. But this raises the question, when does the embryo/fetus/baby become a human being?
In some sense, it's entirely reasonable to argue that the organism in question doesn't become a human being until a number of months after birth. This has some historical precedent - in the past, there are cultures (including our own) that have waited to name their children until those children were old enough to be considered to have good survivability potential. So, in the extreme case, we could argue that the organism in question doesn't deserve legal protection until well after birth. It remains almost completely dependent on its parents for survival, after all. (NB: I'm not arguing in favor of this bill, I'm just pointing out that it has some validity. I know people who do actually hold this view.)
In another sense, we could consider the organism a human being, deserving of legal protection, at the moment of birth. This seems to be sort of the industry standard in the pro-choice community. Birth is the point at which the fetus separates from its mother, with whom it has held a direct parasitic relationship. There is no longer a physical connection between the two. From a reproductive rights perspective, it makes sense to consider this dissociation as the central point of change. Before birth, the mother has control over whatever is part of her body, and the fetus survives through parasitism. After birth, the organisms are disjoint and what happens to the mother does not directly affect the child. (NB again: I'm not using parasitism as any sort of loaded word here to mischaracterize the pro-choice viewpoint. It is obviously true that an embryo/fetus is a parasitic life form, under a standard biological definition of parasitism. This is not a value judgment, it is an empirical fact.)
Plenty of people also make the weaker argument that a fetus deserves legal protection at the point where consciousness develops. Just because an organism is parasitic doesn't necessarily mean it ISN'T human. If the fetus is aware of its surroundings and aware of itself, so the argument goes, at that point it becomes deserving of legal protection. It doesn't matter whether the organism is physically resident inside another organism, or whether the organism could survive on its own without help (which it wouldn't really be able to do for years anyway). There's a certain logic to this view as well, since fetuses can be delivered and made viable long before natural pregnancy occurs, thanks to modern medicine. While this viewpoint doesn't appear particularly popular with the progressive community, it seems quite popular with Americans as a whole - whenever the fetus develops consciousness, it should be legally protected from that point forward. Thus the significantly higher opposition to late-term abortion, even among people who would otherwise consider themselves pro-choice.
The point I'm making is this: you can't argue that the embryo/fetus/infant GAINS legal status and protection at some point without deciding on a (relatively arbitrary) point at which that happens. And if you realize that the point you choose is arbitrary, you have to acknowledge that other peoples' views about when that point is may also hold some validity. Because once the embryo/fetus/infant IS considered fully human with legal protection, then killing it becomes murder. Wherever the point is, there's some point past which killing this organism becomes murder.
And unless you're particularly callous or solipsistic, you should probably acknowledge that if you, individually, are wrong about where that demarcation line between pre-human and human goes, you're basically endorsing the view that it's okay to murder certain people because YOU judge them to be not sufficiently developed.
(An aside, I don't think it's okay to murder anyone. I'm a staunch opponent of the death penalty.)
Anyway, this is the point I think most progressives miss. That as far as most pro-lifers are concerned, abortion is murder, no better or worse than walking up to someone on the street and shooting them. And for all the arguments that can be marshaled against this view, they all come down to explanations of why it's okay to kill someone. It is, for example, more convenient for the mother, since it will spare her the considerable trouble of carrying a child to term.
Now again, lest you think I'm being terribly unfair, let me remind you that I do not believe Life is the highest good. I believe the "more convenient for the mother" argument has actual merit, and can be argued. But pro-choice advocates should recognize that (at least as far as pro-life advocates are concerned) this IS the argument being made. "My desires are more important than the life of this organism". Without recognizing that fact, without having a moral framework in which to present that argument, pro-choice advocates have a hard time getting traction with their opponents.
I told you this was going to be a rant. Now, Stupak-Pitts.
I do not see what the big deal here is. Stupak-Pitts says that the government won't pay for people to get abortions, except in cases of rape or incest, or when the mother's health is in danger.
Fine. What's the big deal?
I've seen a lot of complaints about equal rights, here. Women are being made second-class citizens because they can't control their reproductive rights. Well, men can't have babies, so of course these sorts of laws don't matter as much to men. Reproduction is a fundamental gender difference. Are we going to forever say that it's beyond the scope of government discourse, just because men can't have babies?
Stupak-Pitts isn't a ban on abortion, it's a ban on public funding for abortion, largely in keeping with the Hyde amendment by my understanding. I have no problem with my government not paying for elective abortions. There are lots of elective things I'd like my government to NOT pay for. Wars. Wall street bailouts. Dick Cheney's pension.
Let me put this in different terms:
If you want an abortion, and you didn't get raped or sexually abused, and if your life isn't in danger, you have to pay for that abortion yourself.
That's what Stupak-Pitts says. If you want an abortion and you don't have a pressing medical reason, you have to pay for it yourself.
Fine. Where's the problem?
And if the "problem" is that you can still get Viagra on the government's dime, well, you shouldn't be able to do that either. Health insurance is about having coverage to deal with unavoidable risks. It's not about being able to get rid of your accidental pregnancy - that's what birth control is for. And it's not about being able to get it up again when your body tells you you're too old for sex. Health insurance is not about facelifts and botox. It's not about liposuction. It's about saving lives.
Pregnancy is an avoidable risk, and in most cases it's not a life-threatening condition. If it is a life-threatening condition, Stupak-Pitts says that you can have an abortion. If it isn't, why is it so offensive that you might have to pay for an abortion yourself?