the Dems' abortion problem in health care reform

From William McGurn in the WSJ...

Someone ought to tell the president and the speaker of the House that they are creating a new Bob Casey problem for their party....The Bob Casey in question is the late governor of Pennsylvania, so famously humiliated at the 1992 Democratic convention. Party officials who denied the podium to the pro-life Democrat somehow found speaking slots for several pro-choice Republicans. That moment helped tar the Democrats as a party of abortion intolerance...

Now party elders are making the Casey mistake all over again. A nine-term congressman from northern Michigan, Mr. Stupak is the kind of Catholic who once constituted the heart of the Democratic Party. Just like Gov. Casey before him, Mr. Stupak's stand for life—in this case, his fight against tax dollars for abortion—is making him a thorn in the side of a Democratic president.

It didn't have to be this way. In his Notre Dame speech, President Barack Obama called for "open hearts" that would help us find "common ground" to "reduce the number of women seeking abortions." During his more recent address to a joint session of Congress, the president was even more specific about health-care reform, promising that "no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions."

That is just what Mr. Stupak is trying to do with an amendment to the health-care legislation would explicitly ban federal funding for abortion. Here's the problem: His own party won't let him bring it to the floor for a vote...

The effort to suppress Mr. Stupak's amendment is particularly ironic given the pledges Speaker Nancy Pelosi makes in her manifesto "A New Direction for America." In this document, she asserts that "no Member of Congress should be silenced on the floor." She also calls for a "full amendment process."

Last week Mr. Stupak, 24 other Democrats and 158 Republicans sent the speaker a letter asking her to make good on that pledge....

We'll see. Rank hypocrisy, blatant lies, and taking money from taxpayers to subsidze the killing of babies in the womb-- or not?