Steny Hoyer claims a separate abortion bill may may be a possibility to pass healthcare reform now

  The biggest sticking point in passing the healthcare reform bill may be the issue of abortion as Bart Stupak has predicted the bill will “go down in flames” if his abortion language is not added into the Senate version of the bill. He has at least 12 other pro-life Democrats who have threatened to join him and vote against this bill if the bill permits the federal funding of abortion.

  Bart Stupak is refuting House leader Steny Hoyer’s claim that federal money will not be used for abortions, calling the abortion language in the Senate bill unacceptable.

  In an attempt to appease Bart Stupak, Steny Hoyer is claiming that if Bart Stupac and the Blue Dog Democrats vote for the current version of the healthcare reform bill the issue of federal funding of abortion will be addressed in a separate bill in the future.

  I can only hope that Bart Stupak isn’t dumb enough to take Steny Hoyer at his word. I can only hope that Bart Stupak holds firm and demands that the issue be addressed now while he holds all of the bargaining chips. Once this bill is passed there will no longer be any urgency on behalf of the Democrats to address this issue, the time to act on this issue is now while Stupak still has bargaining power. If this bill is passed on the promise that the abortion issue will be addressed at a later date, there is no guarantee that date will ever come.

  And we need to look no further than the words of the House Majority Whip, Dick Durbin, who admitted that there has been no discussion on a :clean up: bill in the House to address Bart Stupak’s concerns. This is Bart Stupak’s one and only chance to make sure that federal money is not used for abortions, hopefully he doesn’t agree to vote for this bill which includes abortion language that he finds unacceptable on a promise that it might be addressed somewhere down the line.