Bart Stupak continues to spin his weak moment, this time in a Washington Post oped piece:
Last November, an amendment I introduced succeeded in making sure the House health-care-reform bill contained the current law prohibiting public funding for abortions. I was disappointed that the Senate could not pass my language and only mustered 45 pro-life votes, far short of the 60 votes needed to keep the amendment intact.
Many of my Democratic pro-life colleagues and I worked tirelessly in the days leading up to the final House vote on health-care reform to strengthen the legislation’s restrictions on abortion funding. We proposed numerous procedural and legislative options, but ultimately all of our efforts required the 60 votes we could not obtain in the Senate.
Once it was clear that the House leadership would eventually obtain the 216 votes necessary to pass health-care reform, I was left with a choice: vote against the bill and watch it become law with no further protections for life or reach an agreement that prevents federal funding for abortions.
Therefore, I and other pro-life Democrats struck an agreement with President Obama to issue an executive order that would ensure all Hyde Amendment protections would apply to the health-care reform bill. No, an executive order is not as strong as the statutory language we fought for at the start. We received, however, an “ironclad” commitment from the president that no taxpayer dollars will be used to pay for abortions.