I think that you have a point about the larger issue: Obama put himself (and Pelosi) in a situation where he/they needed Stupak’s vote. But I think that it is simplistic to turn this into a morality play with Obama as the villain. The article that I quote does indeed suggest that Pelosi stuck to her guns with regard to legislative language. The events of the weekend, however, suggest that this was not so much a matter of principle as politics: Pelosi was prepared to make a deal with Stupak (on Friday) until she realized that it wouldn’t fly. And she clearly played a role in brokering the executive order.

As for the failure of leadership, I think that you can always lay it at the foot of the president because, well, he *is* the president. But remember that the Congress, under Pelosi and Reid, spent the better part of a year spinning it’s wheels in committee. It was arguably when Obama stepped in forcefully last month that the momentum changed.

The entire process was a mess, and both Obama and Pelosi (and Reid) deserve some of the blame for what happened and some of the credit for finally getting it through, in an albeit imperfect form. If you want to give Obama more of the blame and less of the credit, I won’t disagree, but I think that statements like “it was Obama who capitulated” oversimplify a complex reality.

In the end, though, I don’t think it’s because of different views of fetal life that this issue is irreconcilable. It’s the fact that one side wants to make the decision for everyone, while the other side accepts that living in a democracy means that other people get to make decisions of which we may not morally approve. (And I realize that this argument too will also seem like a diversion to many pro-lifers, for the reasons you describe above!)

But, of course, most pro-lifers will never ditch the rape/incest/life of the mother exceptions, because they know how deeply offensive that would be to most Americans. Most Americans are against forced pregnancy under any circumstances, but ditching the rape and incest exceptions would just highlight the injustice of forced pregnancy.

I think that the exceptions for rape and incest (which not everyone believes in) come from people believing that the moral issues involved become more complex in some circumstances. I think this just highlights the problem of both sides ascribing the worst possible motives to each other – what seems like the acknowledgment of moral complexity to a person on one side of the issue looks like hypocrisy and evidence of bad faith to a person on the other side.

I can only speak for myself, but when I used to be strongly pro-life my main reason was that I saw abortion as the ultimate product of a “throw-away” society – human life itself has become something to toss aside if it is inconvenient. I now think that my old views were somewhat skewed and of course assumed the worst possible motives from the other side, but I am still torn on the issue. One thing that I am pretty confident of, though, is that most people who are pro-life do genuinely see it as a moral issue of an unborn child’s right to life. From that perspective, to frame it as a woman’s rights issue looks like a smokescreen, a deception to take attention away from the real core of the issue. I suspect that many, possibly most, pro-lifers have great difficulty believing that pro-choice people really care so much about womens’ rights, just as many pro-choicers have great difficulty believing that the pro-life people are really sincere about concern for unborn childrens’ lives. That is why I think that there may genuinely be no middle ground on this issue.

How many Executive Orders did George W. Bush issue that were direct insults to his base and to the majority of his voters? The failure of leadership on HCR lies in the WH.

I guess if health care reform is screwed up or fails, we should blame Nancy Pelosi? (Because this was her platform when she ran for President in 2008? Huh?) I think you need to read up on the history of the modern presidency, and Speakership. Things have changed since 1789.

Indeed it is president that signs legislation, but it is the Congress who drafts and passes it, as least as far as I remember from Schoolhouse Rock. (“I’m just a bill…”) As for executive orders, well, there’s nothing in the Constitution about them, so it’s anyone’s best guess.

So don’t kid yourself, Pelosi has plenty of power.

Where does the buck stop, again?

As the week wore on, Pelosi peeled off Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, one of the Democrats holding out because they did not consider the bill to have an adequate firewall against taxpayer dollars being used to subsidize abortion coverage.

And by convening the rest of that faction in one room of the speaker’s suite and female abortion-rights Democrats in a nearby parlor, Pelosi was able to broker the content of a presidential executive order that reinstated existing law banning federal money from being used for elective abortions.