Democrat Betrayal On Abortion Continues: Boxer Says Senate Won’t Add In Abortion Amendment
In the House, Nancy Pelosi only won a narrow majority for the health care bill by striking a deal with pro-life Democrats on stripping funding for abortion from the bill. In the Senate, though, Senator Barbara Boxer is saying a similar amendment won’t get the 60 votes needed.
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said that 60 votes would be needed to strip the current health care bill of its abortion-related language and replace it with a version resembling that passed by the House of Representatives on Saturday. And, in an interview with the Huffington Post, the California Democrat predicted that pro-choice forces in the Senate would keep that from happening.
“If someone wants to offer this very radical amendment, which would really tear apart [a decades-long] compromise, then I think at that point they would need to have 60 votes to do it,” Boxer said. “And I believe in our Senate we can hold it.”
“It is a much more pro-choice Senate than it has been in a long time,” she added. “And it is much more pro-choice than the House.”
The problem is that if the Senate bill doesn’t match the House bill the House will have to vote again to approve the changes. Given that, again, the original narrow victory in the House was only won by a 5 vote margin predicated on this pro-life amendment that doesn’t portend good things for the passage of this bill.
Unless Democrats are expecting their pro-life party colleagues to collapse and ultimately approve the Senate version of the bill. Which is possible, I guess, and is all the more reason why we need to keep the pressure on our Senators and our Representatives.
