No, this isn’t about the Stupak Amendment, not directly, anyway. An op-ed in Sunday’s Post makes a point I should have thought the pro-abortion crowd would have considered long ago:

If you’re a progressive like me, and you’re upset by the Stupak amendment, which bars federally subsidized insurance from covering abortions, consider this: What if we had a single-payer health-care system and someone like Jeb Bush or Sarah Palin were running the country?
Many liberals remain angry and disappointed that single-payer legislation never stood a chance in Washington. To them, a government-run health-care system seemed an obvious way to put patients ahead of profits.
But a single-payer system would have put us at the mercy of whomever happened to take control of Washington. I’m very happy to have a public plan as an option. But since I don’t know who will be in the White House in the years to come, I’m glad that government-run health care won’t be the only game in town. If you’re not happy about the Stupak amendment, imagine what other limits a conservative government could impose on our health care.

With apologies to St. Thomas More, what’s she’s saying is that when you’ve cut down the last of capitalism, where does a pro-abortion person hide when Sarah Palin turns on you? Now, the author’s simply mistaken in assuming that the public option is anything other than a “downpayment” for socialized medicine, the camel’s nose under the tent eventually leading to a full government takeover of health insurance. And that’s precisely why the militant pro-choicers should be against any health-care reform measure that includes a government plan — eventually “someone like Jeb Bush or Sarah Palin” will be running the country, or at least the executive branch of the national government, and with a single-payer system abortion might well not be covered. Pro-lifers shouldn’t back socialized medicine for that reason, since there’s a lot of green between here and there, as they say in golf and pool, but it sure seems a good reason for the pro-choice crowd not just to sit this one out but to oppose it outright. And if the Stupak Amendment gives them a pretext for that, so much the better.