Senator Reid unveiled his plan last night with both fanfare and steely resolve:

Reid's plan would expand coverage to 94 percent of Americans through a government-run health insurance option - allowing states to opt out - and other features, all while reducing future federal deficits by $130 billion over the next 10 years, according to a Congressional Budget Office report released late Wednesday. [...]

But Reid's plan contains considerable differences from House legislation passed earlier this month - with a more limited public option and different ways to pay for the bill. Reid included an excise tax on insurers who offer "Cadillac" health plans, not the "millionaire's tax" that's in the House bill.

And one of the biggest differences between the bills – on language restricting federal funding for abortion – could prove problematic for Reid. His bill doesn't include as many limits as the House bill and already is drawing fire from anti-abortion activists.

On the issue of abortion, the bill makes the following provisions:

The bill grants the secretary of Health and Human Services the authority to determine whether federal money is being used to fund abortions under the public plans, but doesn't ban those plans from offering the coverage. Reid's bill also explicitly requires insurers to separate private premiums from any public subsidies used to pay for that coverage to assure taxpayer dollars aren't used to fund the procedure - which is prohibited by the Hyde Amendment. [...]

There is a conscience clause that makes it perfectly acceptable for insurance companies to deny that coverage or health care providers to refuse carrying out the procedure. But the bill also requires each exchange to offer one plan that provides abortion coverage and one that doesn't - a major sticking point for critics of the original House language.

California Rep. Lois Capps, who tried to hatch a compromise on the Energy and Commerce Committee, commended Reid's language, saying, "I am pleased that the Senate has adopted a reasonable, common ground approach on this difficult question. It appears that their approach closely mirrors my language which was originally included in the House bill."

In a statement, she went on to point out that the bill "ensures that federal funds do not pay for abortions but allows continued access to this legal medical procedure."

We also have a date: Reid's version of the bill would start exchanges in 2014.

Reid, it should be noted, isn't fucking around with party holdouts.

At a special evening meeting of the Democratic caucus tonight, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid outlined, in broad strokes, the details of his health care bill, which the CBO has found, in a preliminary analysis, will expand coverage to 94 percent of Americans while reducing the deficit. And earlier in the day, during a separate meeting about floor procedure, Reid let three of his party's key skeptics know that if they join Republicans at any stage of the process to block the bill, he still retains the option of passing major parts of it through the filibuster proof budget reconciliation process.

In response to a question from TPMDC Nelson told reporters that, at a meeting this afternoon with Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Reid "talked about process, procedure, discussion about reconciliation and a whole host of issues of that sort."

"Nobody's really jumping up and down to push for reconciliation," Nelson said, "he's not threatening that, but anybody can conclude that if you don't move something on to the floor, that is one of the possibilities."

National Right to Life-rs are, of course, talking shit, but I'm going to ignore them in favor of reason and sanity. The real battle begins on Saturday.

Reid plan ups pressure on moderates [Politico]
Reid's restrictions on abortion [Politico]
Reid Outlines Bill For Caucus, Warns Conservative Dems That Reconciliation Is Still An Option [TPM]
National Right to Life blasts the Reid bill [Politico]

Both the pro-choice and anti-abortion movement are upset about the potential inclusion or exclusion of abortion funding in the upcoming health care reform bill, though neither side agrees whether it's definitely going to be excluded or definitely included. The National Review's K-Lo thinks the funding will be in, and that will be the end of the world as we know it.

But Obama is now pushing a health-care plan that in its various congressional iterations could "result in the greatest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade," according to the National Right to Life Committee.

This plan, and the president's record - which errs on the side of death when it comes to international abortion funding and embryo-destroying stem-cell research - aren't the only signs of a deadly change in Washington. A shameful acceptance of abortion as a fact of life is creeping into mainstream establishment culture.

Because, obviously, not accepting the existence of abortion kept women from doing it for thousands of years.

K-Lo's piece ignores what the President said last week: namely, that since Congress has generally agreed not to appeal the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits Medicare from covering abortions, he assumes that an appeal of that amendment won't be on the table.

"I'm pro-choice, but I also think we have a tradition in this town, historically, of not financing abortions as part of government funded healthcare."

Mind you, the debate about abortion funding in the bill isn't actually about the Hyde Amendment of Medicare funding of abortions. The debate in Congress is whether abortion coverage will even be allowed to be considered by the Department of Health and Human Services as part of the public option — which is to say they one that, if you don't have employer-sponsored health care, you would be able to buy into with your very own money and which would not be government funded.

Frances Kissling at Salon at least knows the difference between abortion coverage in the public option and the Hyde Amendment, though her piece assumes K-Lo and her ideological colleagues will be successful.

The healthcare plan has now been delayed. The longer it takes to pass a plan the more momentum against including coverage for abortion — and possibly contraception — will build. If the past is any predictor of the future, then there is a good chance there will be limits on government funding for abortions in the healthcare package, if not outright exclusion.

Now, there's no evidence that there's a grassroots movement to eliminate birth control coverage from the public option — in fact, increasing contraceptive access is part of Obama's common-ground-on-abortion bill recently introduced in Congress, so it seems unlikely that eliminating it from the public option will come to pass. Whether the bill will remain silent on abortion coverage or not is an open question, and that the bill won't revoke the Hyde Amendment on Medicare funding for the abortions seems likely. But the sky-is-falling rhetoric from both sides does make it clear that advocates really, really want their grassroots supporters to weigh in with Congress and are willing to play a little loose with the rhetoric to make that happen. And that seems less than helpful.

Human Life Is More Than A Distraction [National Review]
Obama Abortion Backtrack Shows He's All Rhetoric, No Fight [US News & World Report]
The Feds Should Fund Abortion [Salon]

Related: Culture of Death [Slate]

Earlier: To Conservatives, Not Banning Abortion Is A "Hidden Abortion Mandate"
Health Insurance, Anti-Abortion Amendments, & Howard Dean's Big Brass Balls

Today, a federal appeals court overturned a lower court ruling that said Virginia's ban on partial birth abortion was unconstitutional because it made no exception for the health of the mother. Of the 31 states that enacted bans on the procedures after the anti-abortion movement figured out it was a good way to trump the idea that a woman's health is paramount, 16 have now been upheld and 15 remain blocked.

The Virginia law mirrors the definition of "partial birth abortion" enshrined in federal law, which is to say there isn't one, making it harder on doctors (and women) to make decisions about women's health. The Guttmacher Institute explains:

In its April 2007 decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, the Supreme Court upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 and, in the process, set a major jurisprudential precedent. The federal law includes no health exception. Moreover, although the law does not include a precise medical definition of what is banned, the Court found the federal law's definition sufficient to pass constitutional muster.

So, basically, the government doesn't care about women's health as long as it can continue to vaguely define what procedures women can't have in order to protect said health or fertility if they're ever in need of a late term abortion. Don't you feel more protected now?

Virginia: Abortion Law Upheld [NY Times]
Bans on "Partial-Birth" Abortion [Guttmacher Institute]

Terry was 40 when she became unexpectedly pregnant; she had one miscarriage behind her, an 18-month old son and a lot of love for the child she was expecting. At 12 weeks, given her risk factors, they had an early ultrasound to check the child's nuchal fold measurement, a measurement of the translucency of the space at the back of a fetuses neck. In cases of normal fetal development, it appears as a black bar; in abnormally developing fetuses, it indicates a damaging fluid build-up. In Terry's case, the problem was obvious even to her at a glance.

What should have been a tiny line of darkness looked like a deflated balloon stretching from the baby's neck down its back to its rump. I simultaneously noticed that it looked wrong and immediately deleted the thought from my mind, asking instead about the profile, the legs, the hands.

The technician leaves, and a doctor comes in to inform Terry and her husband of their suspicions.

He told us that instead of the two millimeters they expect to see, our baby's nuchal translucency measured 76 millimeters, off their charts. He suspected Trisomy 18, a chromosomal disorder that kills most affected children before birth, and the remainder a few days or weeks after. The rare child who survives more than a few months with Trisomy 18 will be profoundly mentally retarded and painfully physically disabled. Virtually none survive more than a year or two.

Once it was confirmed with a genetic test, Terry and her husband had no doubt of what they would do.

We agreed we would almost certainly terminate the pregnancy, we would say goodbye to this very much wanted, very much loved child.

Although it seems like an obvious decision to Terry and her husband, some in the anti-abortion movement decry even these abortions, despite the fact that a continued pregnancy is likely to result in miscarriage or stillbirth, both of which carry risks to the mother.

Terry ends up at the A Heartbreaking Choice website, reading the Kansas Stories that drew so much attention last week. She realizes that, in some small way, she was lucky.

Reading their stories, I realized I was almost lucky; I live in a state where insurers cover the nuchal fold test, I was old enough that it was recommended. If my situation had been different, I might have found out about this baby's condition when they did, at the 20-week ultrasound - after feeling the baby move, after weeks in maternity clothes, in the midst of shopping for cribs and bibs.

Terry goes through with the termination, under sedation. And while some of her friends euphemistically refer to her miscarriage, Terry calls it by its name: her choice.

But when your pregnancy takes the kind of turn mine did, all your mothering boils down to one choice - and I chose to spare my child the suffering of a brief, painful life. Of all the million and one things I wished I could be doing for this child, the only act of love circumstances allowed me to perform was this one.

The only thing Terry doesn't acknowledge is that she made a second choice: to talk, without shame, about the love it took to make the first one.

The Hardest Choice [Babble]

Earlier: Tiller's Patients Speak: The Tragedy Of His Death, The Inspiration Of His Life

Marcus quotes the Alaska governor:

"I had found out that I was pregnant while out of state first, at an oil and gas conference. While out of state, there just for a fleeting moment, wow, I knew, nobody knows me here, nobody would ever know. I thought, wow, it is easy, could be easy to think, maybe, of trying to change the circumstances. No one would know. No one would ever know.

"Then when my amniocentesis results came back, showing what they called abnormalities. Oh, dear God, I knew, I had instantly an understanding for that fleeting moment why someone would believe it could seem possible to change those circumstances. Just make it all go away and get some normalcy back in life. Just take care of it. Because at the time only my doctor knew the results, Todd didn't even know. No one would know. But I would know. First, I thought how in the world could we manage a change of this magnitude. I was a very busy governor with four busy kids and a husband with a job hundreds of miles away up on the North Slope oil fields. And, oh, the criticism that I knew was coming. Plus, I was old . . .

"So we went through some things a year ago that now lets me understand a woman's, a girl's temptation to maybe try to make it all go away if she has been influenced by society to believe that she's not strong enough or smart enough or equipped enough or convenienced enough to make the choice to let the child live. I do understand what these women, what these girls go through in that thought process."

In other words, Sarah Palin understands the reasons women might want to terminate a pregnancy, but she'd like to change the laws to make sure they can't.

Marcus points out this inconsistency:

This is not a particularly complex point, but it is one toward which Palin seems deliberately obtuse. It came up at the Republican convention last summer, when the Palins issued a statement about their daughter's pregnancy: "We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby." Again, in the world according to Palin, there would be no decision at all. Abortion would be illegal except to save the life of the mother.

I think calling Palin "deliberately obtuse" is probably giving her too much credit. Despite the fact that she herself says she considered having an abortion, she's not willing to do much about President Barack Obama's and the Democrat Party's platform to reduce the underlying reasons that women do choose abortions — from inadequate contraception (or education about it) to lack of economic options to access to emergency contraception for victims of sexual assault, Sarah Palin isn't willing to do much at all for the women who, in her mind, too easily consider abortion. It's just easier (and far more politically expedient), after all, to take away the right to have a safe and legal one from those of us not as strong and moral as herself.

Palin's Personal Choice [Washington Post]

The 23-minute film by Lisa Russell, which is available for viewing online, follows two young women who are seeking safe abortions after being assaulted. The film was produced by Ipas, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to preventing deaths and disabilities from unsafe abortions. According to the organization, 67,000 women die every year from unsafe abortions across the world, and more than half of the deaths occur in Africa.

In 2004 the Ethiopian Parliament approved a new law legalizing abortion for minors, women who have been raped, and cases in which the mother's life is in danger. However, due to a lack of supplies and education, legal abortions are still extremely hard to come by. In Ethiopia unsafe abortions, including ingesting herbs and placing objects in the uterus, are still the second leading cause of death for women of child-bearing age.

Tigist, who is now 20, was raped while working in a tea room by a man whose marriage proposal she refused. When her employer found out, she was kicked out of her home and lost her job. In the clip above, she seeks treatment at a local health center, but is told the facility can only perform the abortion in the first trimester, and she is three months and 15 days pregnant.

Eventually, she gets an abortion at a regional hospital. In an interview posted on Shakesville, filmmaker Lisa Russell said, "Tigist life will has changed remarkably after having the procedure. She can go on to get a job, get an education, and pursue her goals."

Saba Kidanemariam, who works at Ipas Ethiopia says in the documentary that she doesn't feel that if a young woman gets pregnant she should be blamed because society has failed her. "Maybe the information she needs she is not getting, services she might need, she is not getting," says Kidanemariam. "Society is responsible for this. It should have been her right to get services, to get information, and to live as a person is entitled."

Watch Not Yet Rain [NotYetRain.org]
Not Yet Rain Debut And Interview With Filmmaker [Shakesville]
Not Yet Rain [Feministe]

Michael Novak, who wrote the book No One Sees God before he realized that every atheist automatically adds "Because He Doesn't Exist" to the title, is taking issue with the fact that the President of the United States, Barack Obama, will be giving the commencement address and receiving an honorary degree at the University of Notre Dame, a Catholic institution. Because Obama is pro-choice. Apparently, in this day and age, Novak believes that only people who oppose abortion rights should be granted degrees by Catholic-sponsored institutions of higher education (Guess I should turn mine into Georgetown! Can I get my money back?) and the students at the university should never hear anyone who doesn't believe that abortion is immoral speak. Next up, by the way, will be litmus tests for the professors.

Anyway, from that incredibly nuanced and intelligent position on the benefits of higher education for indoctrinating today's youth into the anti-abortion movement, Novak heads straight for Crazy Town, population Michael Novak. Some of his assertions:

• Abortion is like slavery. Your takeaway from this should not be that Michael Novak thinks that African-Americans are, say, less than fully human and equivalent to cell clusters in any way, shape or form.
• Novak is pretty sure that, in 1858, the university did not invite then-Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas to address the (all-male) student body because of Douglas defense of states' rights and slavery. He did not, however, call the university to confirm this. I, however, did. A spokesperson confirmed that Douglas was not a speaker at commencement, nor was he specifically disinvited from speaking because of his position on states' rights. In fact, the university held its first commencement in 1845 and "Commencement speakers for the next several years included local educators, priests and attorneys, but that changed in 1865 when the guest of honor was Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, commander of the famous Civil War 'March to the Sea.'" So they might have welcomed a high-profile Senator in 1858.
• Other pro-choice commencement speakers at Notre Dame included President Jimmy Carter and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, whose government was responsible for decriminalizing birth control and abortion in 1969. They were not, however, black.
• Novak also knows that abortion is really bad because you can see pictures of fetuses and "the organism growing in the womb of its mother is human. It is not the embryo of a cocker spaniel, or a camel, or a donkey." Well, thank fucking God for that, ladies, amirite?
• Because the fetus has DNA, it is an individual human even when it's two cells.
• The Declaration of Independence thus declares each two-celled human to be entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Thus, all pro-choice people are exactly like slaveowners.
  

  For them, the choice of the mother takes precedence over the choice of the individual, just as under the Douglas plan the choice of the state takes precedence over the liberty of the individual.

• If Barack Obama has his way, there will be forced late term abortions for all! Because he's evil. (And a slaveowner.)
• Also, all doctors and nurses will be forced at gunpoint to perform these late term abortions. Doctors and nurses that don't want to be forced by Barack Obama to perform late-term abortions on the multitudes of women that Barack Obama will soon force to have late term abortions are the new abolitionists. Like Frederick Douglas, only he was black.
• Also, despite not contacting the university about Stephen Douglas, Novak claims, "A defense of slavery would have barred him. His support of harsh offenses against human beings in the womb does not disqualify him?" See: Barack Obama loves slavery.
• In fact, the President's support for abortion is killing millions of potential future black people every day, and is the reason he's only the first black President. He's not just a slave-defender and a slave-owner, he's personally responsible for the million of African-Americans who live in poverty today because of abortion.
• Also, abortion is the reason Social Security will fail.
• Obama's stimulus package will spur further abortions, and abortion is the reason for his stimulus package.
• Obama hates America.
• Abortion is responsible for the financial crisis.
• Also, The Surge totally worked. No, he doesn't try to relate this to abortion.
• He'd also like you to know that the Pope thinks abortion and doctor-assisted suicide are absolute moral evils, but the death penalty is cool and so's war.
• Obama will probably get on stage and perform an abortion himself just to say "fuck you" to the people who think abortion is the new slavery.

Got that? The new slavery. Black people are just like fetuses!

Notre Dame Disgrace [National Review]

Related: Notre Dame Commencement Speakers [Notre Dame]
President Obama To Deliver Notre Dame's Commencement Address [Notre Dame]
President Of Ireland To Deliver 2006 Commencement Address [Notre Dame]
Abortion Rights: Significant Moments In Canadian History [CBC]

"Before thinking about excommunication, it was necessary and urgent to save her innocent life and bring her back to a level of humanity of which we men of the church should be expert and masters in proclaiming," Fisichella, a Vatican prelate who heads the Pontifical Academy For Life, wrote in the Vatican newspaper. Though he clearly noted that he was against abortion, he believed that in this case, the girl ""should have been above all defended, embraced, treated with sweetness to make her feel that we were all on her side, all of us, without distinction," and noted that the highly public excommunication of the girl's mother and doctors on the Vatican's behalf "unfortunately hurts the credibility of our teaching, which appears in the eyes of many as insensitive, incomprehensible and lacking mercy. There wasn't any need, we contend, for so much urgency and publicity in declaring something that happens automatically." [AP]

Steele, who is adopted and is a former Catholic seminarian, has what he calls some pretty strong views on the subject. Early in the interview, he says:

We are a party that values life, born and unborn.

Sounds pretty clear, right? He delves deeper into that later:

How much of your pro-life stance, for you, is informed not just by your Catholic faith but by the fact that you were adopted?
Oh, a lot. Absolutely. I see the power of life in that-I mean, and the power of choice! The thing to keep in mind about it… Uh, you know, I think as a country we get off on these misguided conversations that throw around terms that really misrepresent truth.

Explain that.
The choice issue cuts two ways. You can choose life, or you can choose abortion. You know, my mother chose life. So, you know, I think the power of the argument of choice boils down to stating a case for one or the other.

Now, keep in mind, one of the advertising slogans of the anti-abortion movement is "Choose life." The entire premise of the now-infamous CatholicVote commercial about Barack Obama is that his mother chose to not have an abortion. The Republican party and the anti-abortion movement seeks simultaneously to eliminate that choice and to convince women not to choose abortion until they succeed in eliminating it (hence with the crisis pregnancy centers and the clinic protests and the guilt-tripping).

But despite affirming his support for unborn Republicans and "life" and all those buzz words, you'd think the next thing he said was anti-abortion apostasy:

Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?
Yeah. I mean, again, I think that's an individual choice.

You do?
Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah, because it (currently) is a legal choice for women to make. And for thousands of years — if not more — before it was a safe and legal choice, it was an often-unsafe and sometimes illegal choice. That's the reality: laws don't keep people from choosing certain actions (like, say, smoking pot or driving drunk or drinking at age 17), they just punish people for doing so. But to listen to Republican pundits, you'd think Michael Steele had advocated for the Freedom of Choice Act.

Ben Smith at Politico gets some of those pundits on the record:

"I think it is very troubling for a public figure, of either party, particularly one who presents himself as pro-life, to describe the abortion issue as being a matter of 'individual choice,'" That is language straight out of Planned Parenthood's messaging playbook," said Charmaine Yoest, the president and CEO of Americans United for Life Action, who said she hadn't heard from the RNC.

There's also Jill Stanek, a big advocate of "Choose Life" license plates:

"Michael Steele has just unmistakably proclaimed himself to be pro-choice," she said in an email. "You thought he was 'embattled' last week over his Limbaugh comment? Ha. He has now stepped both feet into it."

And Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council weighs in, too:

"I expressed my concerns to the chairman earlier this week about previous statements that were very similar in nature. He assured me as chairman his views did not matter and that he would be upholding and promoting the Party platform, which is very clear on these issues. It is very difficult to reconcile the GQ interview with the chairman's pledge."

And then, last but not least, former Arkansas governor and Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee:

For Chairman Steele to even infer that taking a life is totally left up to the individual is not only a reversal of Republican policy and principle, but it's a violation of the most basic of human rights—the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It's like we didn't even read the same interview. But then, of course, I can read. And Michael Steele kept talking, so I kept reading.

Are you saying you don't want to overturn Roe v. Wade?
I think Roe v. Wade-as a legal matter, Roe v. Wade was a wrongly decided matter.

Okay, but if you overturn Roe v. Wade, how do women have the choice you just said they should have?
The states should make that choice. That's what the choice is. The individual choice rests in the states. Let them decide.

And there's the actual crux of the matter. Even if a statewide abortion ban or a embryonic personhood amendment gets to the Supreme Court and even if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade — which, in effect, said that states can regulate but not eliminate abortion — and throws the banishment question back to the states, the truth is that in many states, abortion would remain legal. No amount of right-wing advocacy is likely to convince the states of New York or California, for instance, to roll back women's reproductive rights any time soon.

But here's where the Christian right rubs up against the other bedrock principles of the Republican party: federalism and limited government. A limited government supposedly seeks to regulate the lives of its citizens somewhat minimally — and eliminating abortion, using federal funds to teach abstinence in schools and other pet projects of the Christian right are hardly bastions of limited government. The folks who have their panties all in a wad are not remotely limited-government Republicans, they are Christian-ideology Republicans who are perfectly happy to espouse the limited government principles when it suits them and to expand the role of government in Americans' lives when it doesn't.

Michael Steele might or might not survive this supposed gaffe, and Republicans (other than, to give credit where credit is unfortunately due, Kathryn Jean Lopez who did read the entire interview rather than relying on an out-of-context quote) may or may not bother reading the interview in its entirety. But what booting Steele will do is prove that the Christian right is still helming the party that they, their President, their policies and their intolerance of dissenting voices has helped run into the ground. So, you know, woo Ken Blackwell! Ride that recall!

The Reconstructionist [GQ]
Steele, Under Fire, Walks Back 'Choice' Remark [Politico]
Huckabee Blasts 'Troubling' Steele Remarks [Politico]
Re: Steele [National Review]
Blackwell Raises The Stakes [Politico]

Related: Choose Honesty [Jill Stanek]

Earlier: Anti-Abortion Movement Exploits The Dead, And The President

On March 4th, a medical team from Recife, Brazil, performed an abortion on a 9-year-old girl. She was pregnant with twins after being raped, allegedly by her stepfather. Police say that the abuse had been going on since she was 6. Abortion is illegal under Brazilian law, but it is possible to get a judge's approval in cases of rape or when the mother's life is in danger, both of which applied in this case. The girl's doctors, her family, and the court were all in agreement that this was the safest way to deal with the pregnancy. The Catholic Church disagreed.

Archbishop Don Jose Cardoso Sobrinho (seen above left) swiftly excommunicated the entire medical team, along with the the girl's mother. Church law exempts minors from excommunication, so the girl was not included in the blanket condemnation of the medical procedure. They also chose not to excommunicate the stepfather. Sobrinho told Globo TV that "A graver act than (rape) is abortion, to eliminate an innocent life." As Hortense mentioned over the weekend, a senior Vatican official has spoken out in support of Sobrinho's actions, and said: "Life must always be protected, and the attack on the Brazilian Church is unjustified."

The Church's decision has sparked an international debate on the ethics of abortion, and inspired a great deal of criticism of the Catholic Church. The Brazilian Minister of Health, Jose Gomes Temporao, publicly acknowledged the work of the medical team that performed the abortion at a national convention on women's health. He called their work "brilliant," and argued that doctors must put law before religion: "The question posed is very simple. There is a Brazilian law which states that a pregnancy can be interrupted in case of rape. It is legitimate for the church to have its dogmas, but these dogmas must not be imposed on society as a whole." President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has also spoken out against the excommunications. "In this case, the medical profession was more right than the church," he said.

Some are even arguing that the Church's position on abortion is losing it followers, and weakening their message. Beatriz Galli, the policy associate for Ipas Brasil, an NGO that works for women's rights, said: "In this case, most people support the doctors and the family. Everything they did was legal and correct... But the Church takes these positions that are so rigid that it ends up weakened. It is very intolerant, and that intolerance is going to scare off more and more followers." In the past few years, Brazilian devotion to the Catholic Church has already begun to decline. This trend is also visible in America, where the young adults are steadily becoming increasingly less religious than their elders. Dr. Olimpio Moraes, who was involved with the pregnancy termination procedure on the 9 year old girl, says he is thankful that the archbishop excommunicated him because the resulting controversy will draw attention to Brazil's restrictive abortion laws. He hopes that the public outrage over this girl's case will lead to greater reproductive freedom for Brazilian women, who are "victimized by Brazil's ban on abortion." This is tragically true: out of the 1 million women to undergo illegal abortions in Brazil each year, 250,000 need further treatment for complications resulting from botched back alley abortions.

Excommunicated Doctor Hailed For Abortion On Child Rape Victim [CNN]
Nine-Year-Old's Abortion Outrages Brazil's Catholic Church [Time]

Related: The Young And The Godless [Andrew Sullivan]

Earlier: "She Is Very Small. Her Uterus Doesn't Have The Ability To Hold One, Let Alone Two Children.", Vatican Defends Brazilian Catholic Church After Excommunication Of Mother Of 9 Year Old Rape Victim

The lede of Julie Rovner's NPR story today is that the Obama Administration may well sign an order rescinding the global gag rule today (the gag rule prohibits U.S. funds for family planning from being utilized by groups that perform or even talk about abortion to clients) and touched on the Administration's platform of making abortion more rare through measures like increased contraceptive access, education and support for women. In the blogosphere, Jill and Cara over at Feministe have posts up about today's anniversary; Courtney at Feministing has a personal take on the fight for reproductive choice; and RH Reality Check will be hosting a live-blog with Gloria Feldt, former president of Planned Parenthood, and Sarah Stoesz, the President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, who has been in the forefront of the campaign by antis to make abortion illegal at the state level in order to set up a Supreme Court challenge to Roe.

Of course, the right wingers have their own overwrought missives to the end of civilization brought about by Roe, including a not-well-labeled anti-abortion opinion piece on Politico by Gary Bauer; a call for "relief for the unborn" by G. Tracy Mehan, III. in The American Spectator; and a hopefully overly-optimistic piece by Michael New in the National Review Online in which Mr. New argues that President Obama will have to take care of the shitty economy before he can restore women's reproductive rights eroded under W. But whither the majority of the mainstream media? Why, to the anti's protests, of course.

The Associated Press and the Washington Post both paint today as less the anniversary not only of Roe v. Wade but as a day when D.C. gets an influx of those from the religious right running around with their fetus posters, their rosaries, their religious beliefs that they seek to enshrine in law and an inflated sense of moral superiority. Didn't you know today was all about their struggle, and their fight, and their beliefs? What is this country coming to, anyway, when a sanctimonious religious minority can't impose its will on others, particularly women? Fucking hope.

'Roe V. Wade' Anniversary Could Bring Policy Change [NPR]
Happy 36th, Roe! [Feministe]
Blog For Choice: Sexual Rights [Feministe]
Thank You Thursdays: Reproductive Justice Advocates [Feministing]
Learn Myths Of Roe V. Wade [Politico]
The President and Abortion [The American Spectator]
The Case for Pro-Life Optimism [National Review]
Abortion Debate Altered By Obama Presidency [MSNBC]
Anti-Abortion Activists Mark Roe v. Wade Anniversary [Washington Post]
Live Blog: Pro-Choice Messaging's New Wave or Passing Ship? [RH Reality Check]

Through most of the 1990s and until recently, the Supreme Court had a solid 6-3 majority in favor of upholding the right of a woman to choose abortion. But the margin has shrunk to one, now that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is retired and has been replaced by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

And Justice John Paul Stevens, a leader of the narrow majority for abortion rights, is 88.

In fact, John McCain has said that he expects to have three seats on the Supreme Court to fill during his Presidency — and "Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned." But despite the fact that 54 percent of Americans think abortion should remain legal, it's not the biggest issue in the election and neither candidate tends to talk about it a lot on the campaign trail.

Which is not to say that there hasn't been incremental change, or that there won't continue to be incremental changes. As a former clerk to Clarence Thomas and right-wing judicial activist Wendy Long points out, "I think the consensus is Roe will fall slowly and incrementally, not in one decision." They expect to win, and given that their strategy has been a long-term one (instead of a Chicken Little "the sky is falling" one), they have a decent chance of doing so. In favor of the pro-choice movement, though, the Supreme Court can't just wake up next January and decide to overturn the decision; it has to have a case by which to do it. That's why you see the anti-abortion movement pursuing late term abortion bans in some states, and fetal recognition referendums in states like Colorado and complete bans in states like South Dakota (both of those are on the ballot this year). They're looking to get a case before the Supreme Court right about the time they have a majority in the Court that is skeptical of Roe in the first place.

And, true, in most states, abortion would not be immediately illegal — if by "most," you mean "30." Four states have trigger laws that will make abortion illegal when Roe is overturned, another 12 have never actually changed their abortion laws since Roe, and four allow abortion only to the "extent permissable" by the Supreme Court's decisions. By comparison, only 7 have law which protects the right of women in those states to have abortions regardless of the decisions of the Supreme Court.

So, thy sky might not have fallen yet and the pro-choice movement has been ginning people up to give money and get active for years claiming that it's imminent, and the ability to have a safe and legal abortion might not end the day McCain gives his inaugural speech. But, he is set on making sure that the conservatives on the Supreme Court have the tools (i.e., conservative justices) they need to further erode women's rights, and sometimes the law is much more about luck and timing than it is about the law... or even what's right.

This Time, Roe v. Wade Really Could Hang In The Balance [LA Times]
Is McCain the Nostradamus of the Supreme Court? [CBS News]
Abortion Policy in the Absence of Roe [Guttmacher Institute]

Now sure, Alaska is a small place, and it might be hard for an avowedly pro-life governor elected in an upset based on a platform that can essentially be summarized as "I Am The Only Republican Who Is Not A Corrupt Hypocrite Of Mindbending Proportions" to slip into Planned Parenthood without someone hearing about it. But, you know, not so hard, I dunno. The way it works now you can find this shit out in the first trimester****, and in the first trimester you can still induce a miscarriage with a few pills prescribable by pretty much any doctor. I mean, who knows, maybe in Alaska the doctor don't work that way. But ninety percent; that is a big majority to buck. And the ten percent who choose "life" in such a case contains many pro-choicers, people like Sarah Palin with husbands and families and secure jobs and decent schools who just think, in her words, "Well, why not us?" And, "I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?"

It's an interesting line, that actually very much echoes some old John McCain's sentiments on abortion itself. In a perfect world, he and many "pro-lifers" have often argued, Roe V. Wade wouldn't be necessary. But America is very very far from perfect. The whole point of Obama's speech last night is that John McCain doesn't get that. Does Sarah Palin? Of any other former beauty queen and "hockey mom" born and raised in the country's whitest, least populous state whose idea of "culture" is Ivana Trump and whose foreign policy essentially amounts to "My ancestors didn't pay Russia $7.2 million not to drill oil here," I would say no fucking way. In fact, I would probably still say no fucking way, but here she is, she signed up for this, and now we have ourselves a candidate who will have to go on TV and say, "Yes, I made a choice, and it is still a choice in this country, to give birth to a son who by definition will never be able to pull himself up by those bootstraps Barack Obama was talking about last night. And I recognize that that it is a deeply unpopular choice to make in this country, and that the very deep unpopularity of that choice in the face of all those poll numbers showing us that 59% of Americans believe life begins at conception, rather neatly encapsulates the gulf between the America that my party would like to pretend exists and the one that actually does."***** Well no, probably no one will make her say that, but they should try, because you get the distinct sense watching Ms. Palin, a self-professed feminist, that at 44 years old her views are still malleable, that her ideology is trumped by a momlike dedication to common sense, the sort of momlike common sense that strikes you as the antithesis of whatever the fuck has been motivating Dick Cheney all these years, and that it may be common sense to oppose abortion when you're moving up the political ladder in a tiny state dominated by dudes who barely get laid anyway.

But this is national now. What worries me about Sarah Palin is that Sarah Palins of this country, the non-ideological non-dogmatic no-nonsense swing-voting suburban soccer mom demo — have up until now had every reason to vote for Barack Obama.

They still do, of course. The key now will be getting Palin to say so herself somehow.

*Fox News has been calling her "Susan" Palan; and unless this is another one of their subliminal tricks — SUSAN; as in "B. Anthony," angry feminists! — that shows you exactly how known this lady is.
** Do Linda Hirshman and Geraldine Ferraro and the PUMAs respect that ten percent? It will be interesting to find out. It may even restore "interesting" to this campaign.
***It has been pointed out to me that this is unfair. Okay, okay, it is true that what the North Vietnamese basically wanted was for POWs to commit treason and sell out their fellow soldiers. The point, however, was that it if you know anything about what he went through it is inconceivable to think of John McCain, for all his gaffe-ing and flip-flopping and being a Republican and shit, as a guy who 1. is not a guy of unusual conviction and 2. has never been forced to confront the opposing view, or reconsider ideas and policies and principles he had theretofore blindly accepted. So he came away with the conviction that there was something ideologically superior about "Us", and the way we operate — fine, he lived it, ergo, he opposes torture now — but not without entertaining the possibility that maybe there wasn't, or that in any case maybe it wasn't worth trying to prove, because all humans are shitheads and life meaningless etc. Which is to say, it is easy to disagree with him, even to pass off many of his views to the intensity of his personal experiences, but it is harder to accuse him of intellectual laziness, insincerity or hypocrisy, which is sort of annoying, given the redolence of those three traits within the party he represents.
****I do not know what month of pregnancy Palin learned about her child Trig's extra chromosome, I can only say that I have observed that women who get pregnant in their forties tend to get more rigorously tested for things and that according to a story in the New York Times last year, "Now, with a first-trimester sonogram and two blood tests, doctors can gauge whether a fetus has the extra 21st chromosome that causes Down syndrome with a high degree of accuracy and without endangering the pregnancy."
***** Indeed, there are many many people, a silent plurality I would even venture, who believe abortion is technically a kind of murder, but that it should stay legal anyway. It is well within the rights of those people to respect and admire someone like Sarah Palin without expecting America to sign up for that, the same way you might respect and admire Michelle Obama's biceps without expecting America to show up at the gym at four in the morning, but more to the point, the VERY same way Michelle talks about how she was so struck by her future husband's decision to sign on to a life of public service when they had all those goddamned student loans. And yet Republicans always manage to make the Obamas sound snooty and contemptuous when they let it slip that, yes, they made some SACRIFICES to get here, as if public service is something to which it is just rational human nature to want to aspire, which is actually the precise OPPOSITE of what Republicans are supposed to believe, which is what makes everything about them so intellectually indefensible.

Prenatal Tests Put Down Syndrome In Hard Focus [NYT]
Alaska Governor Balances Newborn's Needs, Official Duties [USA Today]
59 percent of Americans believe human life begins at conception [Zogby]