By Dave Andrusko

Part Two refers you to a great website that will help you make the case that adult stem cells already are helping patients. Please send your comments on either part to daveandrusko@gmail.com.  If you'd like, follow me on http://twitter.com/daveha.

Pro-Life Congressman Bart Stupak

There is lots to talk about today. Let me begin by thanking those who kindly responded to yesterday's TN&V on the media reaction to Sarah Palin's new book, Going Rogue. The follow-up barrage of hostility to the pro-life former governor of Alaska and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee continues unabated. (As I flipped channels last night I saw CNN starting still another tiresome "fact-check.")

With Senate action on health care "reform" imminent, there is a non-stop stream of articles trying to place the debate in perspective. Okay, let's give it a go.

• Ruth Marcus is one of the Washington Post's stable of pro-abortion op-ed writers. In her 742-word-long contribution today, she tells us there are "three fallacies swirling about the question of abortion coverage in health-care reform," two of which pro-lifers are alleged to be perpetrating. We'll address those below (hint: she is, typically, wrong). What is interesting is regarding the third fallacy--"The Stupak amendment is such an intolerable intrusion on the rights of women to choose that it cannot be allowed to stand"--Marcus now writes, "I've come to the reluctant conclusion that this is wrong, and that pro-choice forces may be making a mistake in elevating the importance of the amendment to the degree they have."

• To fund abortion would be to clearly run counter to where the American people are, and have been for a long time.  To cite just two examples of where the public is on this, a CNN poll released this morning found that "Six in 10 Americans favor a ban on the use of federal funds for abortion," even though the wording was designed to elicit the opposite results. A less biased question found that 67% did not favor measures "that would require people to pay for abortion coverage with their federal taxes."

• All of this is taking place against a backdrop that is making Democrats very, very nervous. The White House offered the usual palaver to explain away the victories of pro-life gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey earlier this month. But "Mounting evidence that independent voters have soured on the Democrats is prompting a debate among party officials about what rhetorical and substantive changes are needed to halt the damage," according to Politico.

This revolt is gaining momentum, with Independents turning against the Democratically-controlled Congress and pro-abortion President Barack Obama. It was the great inroads into Independent voters that fueled the Democratic sweep last year. This resistance also applies in the way voters of all stripes are looking at health care "reform."

l     Finally, returning to Marcus's charge that pro-lifers are prompting fallacies, she resurrects for the umpteenth time the fictitious notion that the Capps Amendment, added to the bill by the Energy and Commerce Committee, was a good faith compromise. In fact, substantially, the Capps Amendment would establish direct federal-government funding of elective abortion by a government insurance plan, and would also result in large-scale federal subsidies for private health plans that pay for elective abortions, a radical departure from past practice. Symbolically (as well as substantially), this was also no "middle of the road" proposition. "This compromise was struck without an anti-abortion presence at the table," according to pro-life Congressman Bart Stupak, author of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment. "It is hardly a good-faith compromise when you circumvent the very group whose concerns you are attempting to address."

Marcus routinely hammers the Stupak-Pitts amendment, but the observations of Gerald Seib, writing in the Wall Street Journal last Friday, illuminates how it, in fact, genuinely extends the principles of the Hyde Amendment that governs all of the current federal health programs: "The Hyde Amendment's language is reproduced almost precisely in the Stupak amendment. The Stupak language also includes provisions saying explicitly that it wouldn't prevent a state or local government from offering supplemental coverage for abortion services, or block a private health plan from offering abortion coverage in a supplemental policy paid for with personal funds."

Please be sure go to http://nrlactioncenter.com and http://powellcenterformedicalethics.blogspot.com to keep up to date on the latest developments.

Send your thoughts to daveandrusko@gmail.com.

Part Two