This is an excellent article by Kathleen Parker in today’s Chicago Tribune. In it she analyzed Bart Stupak’s betrayal of the pro-life movement, a movement that, as she documents, went to great lengths to embrace Stupak and other pro-life Democrats during this entire process–right to the end. Here’s a bit of her analysis.
The executive order promising that no federal funds will be used for
abortion is utterly useless, and everybody knows it. First, the
president can revoke it as quickly as he signs it.
Second, an
order cannot confer jurisdiction in the courts or establish any grounds
for suing anybody in court…The order is therefore judicially unenforceable.
Finally, an executive order cannot trump or change a federal statute…
Stupak…knew that the executive order was merely
political cover for him and his pro-life colleagues.
Thus, the health care bill passed
because of a mutually understood deception ? a pretense masquerading as
virtue.
My personal explanation for this is that if you are a socialist and pro-life, when push comes to shove, that is when you have to choose between the two, it is the pro-life stance that will be thrown under the bus. This is because the pro-life position starts with, as Pope John Paul II put it, the sanctity of the individual human person and socialism holds as its highest value the sanctity of the collective. So given a perceived conflict between the two, the socialist, being true to his principles (such as they are) must choose the latter over the former.
