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Ann Friedman quotes Pilgrim Soul on the passage last night of Bart Stupak’s appalling amendment to prevent anyone receiving a federal subsidy from buying a health insurance plan that covers abortions:

Charmingly I expect that in the next few days all your liberal dude friends will be trying to explain to you that this is really no big deal, look, they had to get the Republicans/”Democrats” onboard SOMEHOW, this is just a battle but we won the war, etc etc.

God knows we liberal dudes can be clueless sometimes, but are any of us really saying that this is no big deal?  That’s hard to believe.  What I can imagine us saying is that Bart Stupak had the votes and we didn’t.  That’s a huge problem.  But not a big deal?  Hardly.

On a related note, I wonder what the insurance industry thinks of this?  I know that if I were an insurance company, I’d sure rather cover an abortion (cost = $500 or so) than a pregnancy carried to term (cost = $10,000 or so).  But they’re probably too scared to speak up.

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