Rep. DeGette: White House Helping Strip Abortion Language from Health Care Bill; Stupak ‘Won’t Have the Votes’

ABC News’ Rick Klein: With Democrats still grappling with the fallout of an abortion-rights deal that allowed the House to pass its health care bill last weekend, a key Democrat is predicting that abortion-rights supporters will have the votes to keep new abortion restrictions out of the final bill. On ABCNews.com’s “Top Line” today, Rep. Diana DeGette, co-chairman of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, said opposition is growing to the House-approved amendment authored by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich. She said the Senate is seeking out compromise language that won’t go as far as the House — and said President Obama’s team is “absolutely” helping press for a different path in the final bill. “What happened is after the Stupak amendment passed, people really realized it was an unprecedented restriction on a woman’s right to choose,” said DeGette, D-Colo. “So now everybody’s sort of taking a deep breath and saying, you know, we really don’t want to stop people from buying full reproductive care with their own private money.” Stupak and his allies maintain that their amendment formalizes the government’s existing ban on federal funds going toward abortion services. But Stupak’s amendment went beyond prohibiting abortion coverage as part of the public insurance option. It would also ban private plans that participate in the national insurance exchange from offering abortion coverage — a standard DeGette and others say would scale back abortion rights. DeGette and most other Democrats who support abortion rights voted for the health care bill, despite the inclusion of the Stupak restrictions. But she is rallying her colleagues to say they’ll vote against final passage if the bill alters the status quo on abortion rights; more than 40 of her fellow House Democrats have signed a letter to that effect, DeGette said. Stupak told Fox News today that he has the votes to prevail: “Health care will not move forward” if the language is taken out, he said. Asked to respond, DeGette said: “I think he won’t have the votes when people explain to … those members exactly what the Stupak amendment does.” The Stupak language was the product of last-minute negotiations with the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, who endorsed the health care bill after their concerns over abortion rights were assuaged. Asked if that should influence Congress’ thinking, DeGette said: “I gotta tell you, last I heard we had separation of church and state in this country. I don’t think the Catholic bishops are in charge of writing our health care bill. I think that they are one of many groups that we should listen to. But in the end, they should be concerned that 36 million more people in this country will get health care — many of them are their parishioners.” She added: “I think that the Catholic bishops and all of the other groups should have input. But in the end what we need to do is have health care for 36 million Americans and not take away rights that people have right now to get full reproductive care.” Watch the full interview with Rep. Diana DeGette HERE. We also checked in with Republican strategist Kevin Madden, who gave us his take on the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll — and, of course, Sarah Palin’s return to the spotlight. (With Palin giving President Obama a 4 on a scale of 1-10 so far, Madden gave Palin an 8 for her book roll-out to date.)
 
You can watch the full discussion with Kevin Madden HERE.