President Obama has waded into the abortion controversy that’s currently roiling Congress’s health-care-reform efforts, doing his best to sound evenhanded while also making it clear that he wants the controversial Stupak-Pitts amendment gone. Obama says he simply wants to maintain the status quo which sounds reasonable enough, if only people could agree on what maintaining the status quo would entail. “I’m confident that we can actually arrive at this place where neither side feels that it’s being betrayed,” he told ABC’s Jake Tapper, “but it’s going to take some time.” Indeed, Harry Reid is now grappling with how to deal with the issue in the Senate. While there aren’t enough votes to add the Stupak-Pitts language to the bill, there are enough pro-life Democrats in the Senate to potentially endanger the final passage of the legislation. “Some time” might be an optimistic way of putting things.
Obama: ‘This is a Health Care Bill, Not an Abortion Bill’ [ABC News]
