Boxer: Senate Has Votes To Block Stupak AmendmentOne of Congress’s foremost champions of abortion rights said on Monday that the controversial “bible-thumper’s” amendment would pass over her dead body. Clutching her chairman’s gavel like an avenging valkyrie, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said that the Senate did not have the votes to add a more restrictive anti-abortion amendment to health care reform legislation.
Boxer stated that 60 votes would be needed to strip the current health care bill of its abortion-related language and that those 60 would be found in the Democrat-controlled Senate when hell itself freezes over. Boxer’s reading of the political landscape might seem like the hopeful spin of an left-coast Marin bra-burner. But it was seconded by a far less pro-choice lawmaker, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.)
“She’s right about the hell freezing over thing,” sad the almost-Republican of an amendment which mirrored that offered by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) in the House. “I doubt it could pass.”
“We had a deal,” Boxer said. “We had a goddamn deal. When we sat down to do health care, I thought there was an understanding that we would be abortion-neutral. In other words we wouldn’t change anything on abortion; that federal funds couldn’t be used but of course private funds could as long as this was legal. Roe v. Wade is the law of the land. These trifling assholes should face that fact.”
“Holla,” remarked Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), Boxer’s senate colleague in the California congressional delegation. “This is a pro-choice country. Deal.”
god bless america
Go Senator Boxer!
