Well, Barack Obama did it.
He succeeded in making Bart Stupak look like a complete idiot. I’m not too sure that would be hard to do. As Moe Lane at Red State put it,
“Now, it’s like this. It’s one thing to be a prostitute. It’s another thing to be a cheap prostitute. It’s yet a third thing to be a cheap prostitute who accepts Monopoly money. But to be a cheap prostitute who gets stiffed on your Monopoly money? That takes skill.”
Almost ruined my keyboard with a mouthful of water when I read that.
So what I am getting to? The AP has released this story about Obama’s fulfillment of his promise to Bart Stupak that he would sign an Executive Order that would prohibit the use of federal funds for abortions in return for Stupak’s vote for the health care reform bill.
AP Special Correspondent David Espo writes,
WASHINGTON – Anything but jubilant, President Barack Obama awkwardly kept a promise Wednesday he made to ensure passage of historic health care legislation, pledging the administration would not allow federal funds to pay for elective abortions covered by private insurance.
Where’s the catch? It covers only those elective abortions covered by private insurance. According to the Guttmacher Institute, only 13% of all abortions in 2001 were billed to private insurance. Additionally, the vast majority of abortions are obtained by single women, living below the poverty line. The women in this demographic are the same group that are most likely to not have private insurance, but are on some kind of government assistance. They cannot pay for abortions through Medicaid, but they can use state funds in several states. In other words, the women most likely to have elective abortions are the very people that ObamaCare was designed to cover (that is, when those provisions finally do actually kick in, four years from now), because of a lack of private insurance.
Barack Obama’s magnanimous promise to Bart Stupak will likely prevent federal funds from being used for only about 15% of all abortions. And that might still be a generous percentage.



