The following comes from a Mar. 11 USA Today column by Bart Stupak, former U.S. Congressman (D-Mich.) who was part of Pro-Life Caucus and who famously defected from the caucus to support Obamacare.
As a member of Congress, I was proud to vote for the Affordable Care Act, providing 32 million Americans with access to quality, affordable health care. I was eager to see many of the reforms in the act, including its provision to lower health care costs for women by increasing access to affordable preventive care. Today, as a private citizen, I’m proud to stand with the Green and Hahn families and their corporations, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood, in seeking to uphold our most cherished beliefs that we, as American citizens, should not be required to relinquish our conscience and moral convictions in order to implement the Affordable Care Act.
No, I haven’t changed my position. I continue to believe the Affordable Care Act is critical to reforming our health care markets and providing a critical safety net for millions, such as those who qualify for the Medicaid expansion, or for the seriously ill who will no longer see their benefits capped by annual limits. The objection to the Department of Health and Human Services mandate is that the preventive care provisions force businesses and their owners to extend health insurance coverage to methods of contraception that may cause the abortion of new embryos: new human beings. It is possible to support the president’s signature legislation and still object to the way the preventive care provisions have been applied by the Department of Health and Human Services.
I had hoped that more of my Democratic colleagues would object to the way the contraception mandate has been applied. During the battle over the ACA’s passage, pro-life Democratic members of Congress negotiated with the president to ensure that the Act would not be employed to promote abortion. During the final debate on the Affordable Care Act, I engaged in a colloquy with Chairman Henry Waxman reaffirming that Americans would not be required to pay for abortions or violate their conscience by participating in or promoting a procedure they find morally objectionable. In response, we received an ironclad commitment that our conscience would remain free and our principles would be honored. With our negotiations completed and our legislative intent established by the colloquy, we agreed to an executive order directing federal agencies to respect America’s longstanding prohibitions on government funding of abortion and most relevant here, to respect longstanding protections for individuals and organizations conscientiously opposed to participating in or facilitating abortions.
I was deeply concerned and objected to the HHS mandate that required all health plans to cover all FDA-approved contraceptives, including four drugs and devices that could terminate human life at its earliest stages by preventing an embryo’s implantation in the womb….
Former Congressman Bart Stupak and Democrats for Life of America have filed a brief supporting Hobby Lobby and Conestoga in the US Supreme Court cases.
To read the entire column, click here.
I’ll bet CCD was dying to title this column, “Naïve, or just plain Stupak?”, but figured a civil underastriver would be along shortly.
Stupak, was stupid (pun intended). I believe he was a Catholic. Everyone knew the Obamacare act was pro-abortion, pro death for the elderly, and anti-Catholic, Yet, where was the voice of the Catholic hierarchy? Why did not his bishop or his pastor advise him NOT to vote for this un-godly act? They were all urging the passage of Obamacare. The devil is having a field day. An abortion is like a sacrament to the satanists, and the devil loves it when there is one less soul around to give praise and honor to God. Shame on Catholics like Stupek who are democrats first and Catholics second.
He’s Methodist
Whenever the government takes over anything – the government makes the rules. This is 5th grade knowledge.
All the government had to do was to pass a simple law making certain that those with pre-existing conditions would not lose their insurance and/or bot be charged exhorbitant rates.
Medicaid for the poor already existed.
Instead the government will be lowering health care quality for everyone (except the wealthy and) except for themselves and Government workers.
Euthanasia will be next because of necessary cost cutting.
Most members of Congress admitted that they did not even read the OBAMACARE (affordable health care act) legislation prior to voting. If OBAMACARE was so great, why didn’t Congress and the President put themselves under OBAMACARE. – This is the true test of goodness for the citizens.
If OBAMACARE is not good enough for the President and Congress and their families, it is not good enough for the rest of us.
Stupak is merely trying to justify his support of abortion, contraception, voluntary sterilization, etc., and making everyone pay for them.
He was told by the USCCB of the problems involved prior to his vote, and he purposely ignored them.
Stupak is stupid if he believes anything in government is ironclad. – It’s all a slippery slope.
Congress is doing nothing about the President’s violation of the US Constitution with his Executive Orders.
Why didn’t Congress merely fix MEDICAID for those who might fall through the safety net due to financial need ?
This is laughable and Mr. Stupak knows it. He simply caved in to his Democratic pals on the ACA vote. The Executive Order was, and is, worthless. The ACA was clearly, and unequivocally, focused on establishing and protecting public money for “reproductive rights,” most specifically abortion. And this goal, in turn, was to reward Planned Parenthood for its donations to the Big Ds, and to various Feminist Groups, which demand complete sexual license (and we better all like it!). Stupak’s self-serving article is not surprising; as a Catholic it is certain that he suffers at least some level of guilt over his cowardice and about the lives lost as a result. (No, he was not the only one to enable this, but Stupak was central to the final vote.) It is nice that Mr. Stupak is supporting Hobby Lobby, but he should be publicly repentant. And now, how about a word or two from his bishop? Or from the brave-hearts at the USCCB? Stop the nonsense and the constant insults to our intelligence and to the Faith. Eliminate abortion and those that support it. And, while at it, cast out a few false priests and bishops here and there — or, simply say that the Catholic Church is over and we will now all join the Methodists, or Anglicans, or United Church of Christ crowds. Pretty much anything goes, there.
I am always mystified at persons like Stupak, perhaps well-meaning Catholics, who somehow cannot admit when they are terribly clearly wrong.
Years ago comedian Flip Wilson made the following phrase a household word: “The devil made me do it!”. We need to revive that phrase and apply it to more circumstances – like Stupak’s fall.
Where’s the beef?
The beef is that Stupak and the Democratic Party knew perfectly well that Obamacare = free abortion sacrament. They knew it and the American People knew it and Justice John Roberts passed it as a tax because his adopted daughters were from Ireland and not Guatemala. Bart Stupak in not stupid, this is standard operating procedure for Communists. Exactly as in the Jesuit tradition, for progressives/Commies the end justifies the means. We are being had by Obama and Francisco.
Gratias I meant my comment in total gest. But your response is so ridiculous as to be laughable. You just throw a bunch of words together and pretend they are factual.
YFC do you even have the honesty to admit that the ACA is a complete failure and that Pharoh Obama is illegally making changes to the law. I doubt as I have learned liberals cannot recognize Truth or Evil
Naïve like a Fox. Here’s True Blue Bart on record:
“If everything I want [is] in the final bill, I like everything in the bill except you have public funding for abortion, and we had a chance to run our amendment and we lost. OK, I voted my conscience, stayed true to my principles, stayed true to the beliefs of this district, could I vote for healthcare? Yes I still could.”
The Third Reich was Founded by Homo-Anal Coprophie Pederasts Ernst Rohm (leader of the Homosex Terrorist ‘SA’ Storm Troopers & ‘hitler youth after destroying the Boy Scouts) and his syphilitic prostitute protege / lover Adolf Hitler.
A Favorite tactic was for SA enforcers to give the stiff arm ‘hitler salute’ – and anyone who failed to return in kind was targeted – kind of like the ‘tolerance’ industry in the USA. Even the US-DOJ (Disciples of Judas) require mandatory pandering to the SSM Scam – and those who chose to remain Silent are Punished – because at the DOJ ‘Silence = Disapproval”
So much for the 1st Amendment in the age of Abomination:
“Ben Carson Compares America to Third Reich
America today is tantamount to Nazi Germany, “a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe,” provocative conservative Dr. Ben Carson told a gathering at The New York Meeting this week, Breitbart reports.
Carson said that just like Germany under Hitler’s reign, “the government using its tools to intimidate the population” is manifesting in the United States in 2014.
He chided “political correctness” and spoke bluntly about “living in a Gestapo age,” according to CNN, which notes Carson’s rise to favored status in the GOP occurred after publicly criticizing President Obama’s policies in front of the president at last year’s National Prayer Breakfast.
https://www.newsmax.com/US/Ben-Carson-political-correctness-Nazi-Germany-Breitbart/2014/03/13/id/559341#ixzz2vsDlQH6J
Bart Stupack was under ENORMOUS pressure to get this deal done. That he eventually caved to it is a matter of public record. What HE really believed about the Executive Order at the time is known only to him and God. It was obvious to everyone else, and should have been to him, that this was a convenient lie to bring all of us (including unborn children) into the hands of the Sibellian bureaucrats.
All the arguments over what government should and should not do can be resolved by reading the Constitution or by just plain common sense. The government doesn’t do very much that they do well. In fact, it’s only good at warfare and then only when politicians let the military run things.
That tells us what government does well. It’s good at killing people and reducing places on earth to absolute ruin. Domestic policies are slower, but they get the same results in the end. For questions, see Detroit and you’ll see the answers for yourself. The United States government will give us the medicine of a third-world country within 15 years, tops.
From Mass Resistance – to all the Naive Panderers out there:
“Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade fighting political & financial pressure to include hardcore homosexual group. Not giving in — but your help is needed fighting back!
https://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen2/14a/st-patricks-parade/index.html
On Wednesday MassResistance got a call from the organizers of the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade. The parade is this Sunday, March 16, at 1:00 pm. We spoke with them at length.
They need help from good people in Boston and across the country. We are asking everyone who gets this email to make a few phone calls and/or send a few emails. You can make an important difference with your activism.
The organizers of the Catholic-oriented pro-family South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade are under siege by the media, politicians, and “gay” activists because of their principled stand against the homosexual agenda.
The Massachusetts liberal establishment is pressuring them to include blatant homosexual-activist groups in the parade and threatening the parade’s financial livelihood if it doesn’t relent.