No Stupak Language in Senate Bill; Boxer
Source: Alternet.org By Adele Stan Women's rights advocates have been holding their collective breath as the Senate hammered out its bill. So far, so good. At Majority Leader Harry Reid's announcement yesterday about the health-care bill he seeks to introduce on the Senate floor, the elephant in the room was women's reproductive rights, which were not addressed from the podium. But ever since the House passed its health-care bill with the egregious Stupak amendment attached -- which bars virtually all abortion coverage from being offered in the exchanges through which most individual policies will be purchased -- battles over reproductive rights have taken center stage as the Senate hammered out its version of the legislation, titled the the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Washington Post reports that the bill does not go the Stupak route, and instead establishes a "firewall" between federally-funded subsidies for insurance premiums and private funds that could be used to pay for plans that contain abortion coverage. ""I couldn't be happier," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., told the Post. "For those who want to keep abortion out of this bill, Senator Reid did it the right way." Boxer is regarded as the Senate's foremost pro-choice advocate. On the issue of reproductive rights, Reid, who is anti-choice himself, had no good options. With the passage of the Stupak amendment in the House, the stage has been set for a battle royale. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., last week promised to withhold his support from any bill that didn't contain the Stupak language. That matters because the Democrats need every single vote of the 60 their caucus holds in the Senate in order to merely move the bill to the floor. Yesterday, Reid told reporters he was cautiously optimistic that he could get all 60 votes to prevent Republicans from successfully launching a filibuster, the procedural move used to block the legislative process. Click here for full text | 
