Debra Haffner and Jim Wallis on Stupak

One more reason why I'm not a Jim Wallis fan - his piece at Huffpo titled "Health Care: Keep Your Eyes On The Prize."

You can read it all for yourself, but he writes,

"Whether every American woman has a health plan that pays for abortion or not, tens of millions of currently uninsured women in this country will be much better off with health insurance than without. Therefore a focus on "women's health" cannot just be restricted to access to abortion."

Yeah, but you can't talk about women's health without realizing that access to reproductive health care is part of that.

I just can't believe that he put quotes around "women's health." As if it's not real. Fake. Pretend. A figment of my imagination. If he has his way, my access to affordable, comprehensive health care will be a figment of my imagination. I'd like to think my health is more than just a series of air quotes in a lengthy and puffed up Huffpo article.

If I went on, I'd just be restating what Daniel Schultz says in "Jim Wallis' Egregious 'Memo To Nation's Leaders' on Stupak" over at Religious Dispatches. From Schultz, "In his passion for health-care reform, he seems not only willing to toss aside basic questions about human rights without a second thought, but unable to understand that some people might have a problem with that. Even worse, he's quick to blame the people who got screwed for not making a compromise more quickly."

Also over at Huffpo is Rev. Debra Haffner's take on Stupak in light of King Solomon, compassion and justice. She rightly juxtaposes the role and authority of religious institutions to the Constitution, quoting from the Religious Insitute's Open Letter to Religious Leaders on Abortion as a Moral Decision. The document states, "No government committed to human rights and democracy can privilege the teachings of one religion over another. No single religious voice can speak for all faith traditions on abortion, nor should government take sides on religious differences."

Let's hope our congresspeople remember that we are a nation not bound to one religion or doctrine and thus cannot legislate on one interepretation of morality.