Politics Daily, March
22, 2010
How
the Bishops Lost, Even as Their Cause Prevailed
By David Gibson
The Catholic bishops
of the United States held the best cards of all in the high-stakes
showdown over health care reform, and yet remained the odd men
out in the political gamesmanship on the pivotal issue of abortion.
So perhaps it was inevitable that as the legislation passed the
House in a historic vote, the bishops were on the outside looking
in, with their soul mates in Congress abandoning them and foes
thumbing their noses.
How did this happen?
The paradoxes were evident from the start. Universal, affordable
health care has long been considered a pro-life priority for the
Catholic hierarchy; indeed, the church considers universal health
care a fundamental human right. Yet the man most responsible for
making that long-held hope a real possibility was Barack Obama,
whom the most vocal and prominent bishops have excoriated in the
harshest terms since the 2008 campaign.
Moreover, as the debate
wore on, the U.S. hierarchy and its Washington staff allied itself
with some of the most die-hard opponents of not only the health
care bill, but of President Obama himself; they spent day after
day in the trenches with Tony Perkins and the Family Research
Council and the National Right to Life Committee.
In the end, the self-imposed
contradictions of their position collapsed on the bishops.
Perhaps the Catholic
hierarchy was riding a bit too high after their paladin in the
House, pro-life Democrat Bart Stupak of Michigan, won a stare-down
with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the pro-choicers last November and
succeeded in having strong language against abortion financing
inserted into the bill that passed the House -- barely -- thanks
to Stupak and his allies. Members of the bishops' staff were literally
in the room with Stupak during the negotiations, and they had
every reason to think that their new-found influence would continue
to shape the legislation's route through Congress.
But when the Senate
bill passed with language on abortion financing the bishops did
not like, their indignation seemed exaggerated even to some of
their allies. Others saw it as a sign they were intent on using
a winner-take-all approach once again. But they may have showed
their hand too early, and been a little too confident.
The victory of Republican
Scott Brown in the Massachusetts special election to fill the
Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy stunned not only the Democrats
but also meant that the Catholic bishops would have little opportunity
to press for a change in the Senate bill. That's because Brown
-- a supporter of abortion rights -- had vowed to vote against
health care reform and thus gave the GOP 41 votes and the ability
to block the legislation from coming to the floor again.
That in turn revealed
another serious political weakness for the bishops -- namely,
their inability to convince even one Republican in the Senate
to allow the bill to go to a vote even if only to toughen the
abortion language. For decades the bishops have pointed to the
Republican Party as representing the pro-life position in American
politics, and the Democrats the "party of death," as
many of them put it. Yet when the chips were down and the bishops
needed a vote, they could not summon a single Republican to support
them, either in the Senate or, in the end, in the House.
Still, the pro-life
line of attack that the Senate bill would lead to "massive"
taxpayer underwriting of abortion-on-demand carried the day, as
did many conservative complaints about the bill. Until, that is,
earlier this month, as experts and pro-life supporters of health
care reform began questioning the assumptions about abortion financing
in the Senate bill and discovered they were based on mistaken
or greatly exaggerated assumptions.
As those critiques
began to gain traction and notice, at Politics Daily and elsewhere,
and as it became clear the bill was headed to a vote, various
players in the process began to show their hands.
On March 13, the Catholic
Health Association and its president, Sister Carol Keehan, gave
its backing to the Senate bill, which the House was preparing
to vote on, thereby splitting with the Catholic bishops over an
interpretation of the legislation's abortion provisions -- which
was not, Keehan insisted, a split on their shared pro-life beliefs.
A few days later a prominent coalition of nuns representing most
women's religious orders in the United States also backed the
bill and decried "false claims" about the its abortion
funding provisions.
Those actions led many
in Congress to begin re-thinking their position even as the criticism
against the sisters from bishops and right-wing opponents of the
bill became so sharp that it led to a backlash.
Steadily, inexorably,
pro-life Democrats who had been against the Senate bill over the
abortion issue began to peel away from the opposition forces,
and at the same time Pelosi and the White House continued courting
Stupak and the few holdouts whose votes would be critical to passage.
At the same time, however,
the Catholic bishops kept digging in their heels. They began coordinating
their efforts more obviously with the Family Research Council
and other conservative groups close to the Republican right wing,
to the extent that it wasn't clear whether the point was to oppose
the abortion provisions in the Senate bill, or the bill itself.
By Sunday, when Stupak
announced that he and his handful of allies would support the
health care bill after receiving a guarantee that Obama would
issue an executive order -- drafted by Stupak -- barring any taxpayer
money from going to abortions, the bishops were left isolated
and defeated. Richard Doerflinger, point man for the bishops in
the pro-life effort and health care negotiations, had e-mailed
congressional staffers telling them the executive order solution
would not fix the bill's problems, but by then it was too late.
Stupak was their last,
best hope, yet he finally decided to take "yes" for
an answer.
So who are the winners
and losers?
Before all this, Bart
Stupak was a little-noticed congressman from northern Michigan,
and while it's clear he gained an enormous amount of national
recognition in these past months, it is also clear that among
conservative pro-lifers his reputation has been seriously tarnished.
The "Judas" charge quickly zipped around the anti-abortion
blogosphere, as well as other jabs: "Bart Stupak Trusts the
Promise of the Infanticide President," Deal Hudson, who has
advised Republicans on Catholic outreach, wrote in one of the
more literary skewerings Stupak suffered.
It was just as ugly
on the floor. An unidentified congressman from the Republican
side of the House shouted "Baby killer!" as Stupak was
explaining his support for the measure. And of course it may take
Stupak a good bit of time to repair his relations with the Democratic
leadership as well as with moderate pro-lifers. Many still hold
Stupak responsible for stringing the drama out for so long and
nearly killing a once-in-a-generation moment with eye-popping
claims that seemed to some to compare the bill's abortion provision
to eugenics. Count Stupak as a winner, and a loser -- a draw.
The passage of health
care reform could also quite easily be read as a serious setback
for the many lobbies that oppose abortion. If their apocalyptic
warnings come true -- which appears more unlikely than ever --
then they have lost the greatest battle in the abortion wars since
Roe v. Wade. In addition, they could begin to see the Democrats
take some of the pro-life mantle from the Republican Party, which
could potentially lead to a significant electoral shift.
But groups like the
Family Research Council, National Right to Life Committee and
Americans United for Life have often worked most effectively when
they were in the minority, much like their Republican allies.
And even in the run-up to the historic bill's passage, these groups
were capitalizing on fears about the legislation to raise money.
They are sure to pursue that strategy with even greater fervor
as the fall campaign approaches.
As for the Catholic
bishops, the other central player in this drama, there appear
to be few redeeming elements.
Their run as political
dealmakers was cut short by their own miscalculations, and within
the church they did little to burnish their already strained credibility.
Politically conservative Catholics were already angry that the
bishops supported such a repellent idea as universal health care
in the first place, and many blame them for not succeeding in
killing the bill altogether. The more liberal members, including
pro-life elements, of the church, on the other hand, saw the greater
(and common) good of health care reform as so obvious that they
just shrugged the bishops off.
"Catholic members
of Congress showed that they will not bow to the bishops when
it comes to something that is outside their area of expertise
-- namely the interpretation of legislative language," said
Father Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and longtime observer of
politics both inside the church and the Beltway.
And in the background,
of course, is the other dominant Catholic story line of the last
decade, that of the sexual abuse of children by clergy, which
is emerging again in Europe and even the Vatican, doing the reputation
of the hierarchy no favors.
Then again, at the
end of the day Congress took a major step toward universal, affordable
health care that will not finance abortions and will likely go
a long way toward reducing abortions by supporting pregnant women
and financing adoptions.
So the bishops won
in the end, even if they don't know it. The problem is, no one
else does either.
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