Kennedy, Catholic Church, and Politics of Compromise

Published Nov. 18, 2009 at 8:52 p.m.
Reform Dept...
...US Representative Patrick Kennedy's confrontation with Providence Bishop Thomas J. Tobin over abortion and health-care reform has soaked up quite a bit of ink...

US Representative Patrick Kennedy's confrontation with Providence Bishop Thomas J. Tobin over abortion and health-care reform has soaked up quite a bit of ink. But the fight is just the most dramatic fallout of a larger effort by the nation's Catholic bishops to write abortion restrictions into the reform package.

Church leaders penned sharply worded letters to lawmakers on the subject starting in July. Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston lobbied President Barack Obama during Ted Kennedy's funeral. And the bishops' representatives were in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office for three hours the night before the House's health-care vote, negotiating for abortion curbs — curbs that ultimately passed, to the horror of pro-choice forces.

Now, it's off to the Senate, where the bishops vow to continue their fight, and where abortion politics threaten to derail health reform yet.

Kennedy, in the comments that sparked his public row with Tobin, suggested that the church's effort is deeply misguided — that the bishops should not risk scuttling health-care reform, "the biggest social justice" push of our time, in the service of abortion politics. And there is something to be said for this argument, particularly when the Hyde Amendment already bans most federal funding for abortion.

But the bishops argued rather convincingly that the original health-care bill stood to underwrite abortion by funneling subsidies to plans that provide for the procedure — even if insurers were forbidden, as some proposed, from using public dollars to pay for abortions.

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