With word on Sunday that Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI) had reached a deal with the White House, Democrats confidently moved toward a landmark vote on health care reform. Stupak, and the pro-life Democrats who joined with him, were holding out for tougher language banning any federal funding for abortions. They got the reassurance they were looking for in the form of an Executive Order from President Obama. But critics say, no executive order can trump laws passed by Congress. Bill Burck, former Deputy Counsel to President George W. Bush, says, \u201cIf it came down to a challenge between what the Executive Order says and what the legislation says, any court would go with the legislation \u2013 not the Executive Order.\u201d Burck says no president has the independent authority or power to overrule legislation via an executive order, which apply only to personnel and agencies with the executive branch.<\/p>\n
Others, like Doug Kendall of the Constitutional Accountability Center, believe the Order from President Obama will settle the abortion funding question, \u201cIf the goal is to make sure that federal funds don\u2019t go directly to abortion, to fund abortions, the Executive Order does that.\u201d It was certainly enough to convince Stupak, who concedes he would have preferred to have his own language inserted into health care legislation. Stupak says when it became clear that wouldn\u2019t happen, the Executive Order was the next best option. According to Stupak, \u201cThe Executive Order will have the full force of law.\u201d<\/p>\n
But both sides of the abortion debate remain unconvinced. The pro-life Susan B. Anthony List was set to give Stupak its \u201cDefender of Life\u201d award on Wednesday night, but has since rescinded the prize. President Marjorie Dannenfelser tells Fox News Stupak morphed from someone she believed in to, \u201csomeone who could trade away the lives of unborn children and force taxpayers to pay for it.\u201d Under those circumstances, Dannenfelser said of the award, \u201cwe just couldn\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even Planned Parenthood issued a statement suggesting Stupak was duped. The message from the organization\u2019s president, Cecile Richards, said, \u201cWhat the president\u2019s executive order did not do is include the complete and total ban on private health insurance coverage for abortion that Congressman Bart Stupak (D-MI) had insisted upon,\u201d and went on to add, \u201cIt is critically important to note that it does not include the Stupak abortion ban.\u201d In the end, what the Congressman may have been left with is simply political cover for his vote. Burck says if Stupak didn\u2019t like the bill\u2019s underlying language, he shouldn\u2019t be comforted by a piece of paper. \u201cThis Executive Order does nothing to change that,\u201d Burck continues, \u201cRepresentative Stupak, if he doesn\u2019t know that \u2013 he really should.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With word on Sunday that Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI) had reached a deal with the White House, Democrats confidently moved toward a landmark vote on health care reform. Stupak, and the pro-life Democrats who joined with him, were holding out for tougher language banning any federal funding for abortions. They got the reassurance they were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4741,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-459681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4741"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}