C Street abortion ban: the revenge of “The Family”?

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Affordable Health Care for America Act was supposed to be the first time since Medicare was enacted in 1965 that health care was reformed to move the country closer to universal medical coverage for all of its citizens.

Instead, the bill was hijacked by anti-abortion activists to enact the most regressive anti-reproductive freedom of choice for women provision in the past 30 years. Apparently conservatives in both political parties don't want government run health care except for women so that government can dictate their reproductive health care choices. (Also to dictate all of our end-of-life decisions, aka"death panels" and Terri Schiavo government intervention). The government dictating to you your most intimate, personal health care decisions doesn't sound very conservative or libertarian to me.

So how is it possible that a Congress controlled by Democrats, who have steadfastly defended women's reproductive freedom of choice and constitutional right of privacy in their most intimate, personal health care decisions, got hijacked by anti-abortion activists?

It turns out there is a connection to "The Family" (aka The Fellowship) religious cult which formerly occupied a residence on C Street in Washington, D.C., since apparently abandoned after the bad publicity given this secretive religious cult earlier this year with the sex scandals of Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC), and former Rep. Chip Pickering (R-MS), all members of The Family. Republican sex scandal meets spirituality on C Street Dozens of members of Congress from both political parties are members of the secretive religious cult The Family.

The co-sponsors of the anti-abortion Stupak-Pitts Amendment are Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Joe Pitts (R-PA), both are members of C Street's The Family.

Rep. Stupak threatened that a coalition of 40 anti-abortion Democrats would vote for the health reform bill if and only if the Stupak-Pitts anti-abortion amendment passed. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi allowed this amendment to be voted upon to prevent an embarrassing defeat for the Affordable Health Care for America Act by these anti-abortion Democrats.

In the end, 26 of these Democrats voted for Stupak-Pitts and still voted against the health reform bill that included it anyway. (If you are looking for a list of Democrats to target for defeat in Democratic primaries, this would be the place to start.)

Included in this group of 26 were Democrats like Missouri's Ike Skelton; reportedly a member of The Family; North Carolina's Mike McIntyre, reportedly a member of The Family; Tennessee's John Tanner, reportedly a member of The Family; Lincoln Davis, also of Tennessee, also reportedly a member of The Family; Oklahoma's Dan Boren, reportedly a member of The Family; North Carolina Democrat Heath Shuler, also reportedly a member of The Family. 'The Rachel Maddow Show' for Monday, November 9

As Rachel Maddow observed Monday night, "C Street shares the same code of silence as fight club, none of its members can be counted on to be forthright about The Family's role in trading the promise of votes for a regressive anti-abortion amendment."

Do Democrats really want to be electing to Congress individuals who are members of a secretive religious cult built upon the belief of exercise and control of political power for the benefit of The Family? We expect to find this kind of Christianist/Dominionist fundamentalism in the Christian Right of the Republican Party, but not within the ranks of the Democratic Party.

In this segment, Rachel Maddow interviews Jeff Sharlet, author of "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power." 'The Rachel Maddow Show' for Monday, November 9:

MADDOW: What are Congressman Stupak and Congressman Pitts' connections to C Street and The Family? Is one of them more deeply involved than other?

SHARLET: Yes. Well, Congressman Pitts has been involved with The Family since 1976. And in the 1980s, he was instrumental in bringing anti-abortion politics into this kind of elite fundamentalism, and to that point had been focused on economics and foreign affairs.

Bart Stupak, meanwhile, has been living at C Street since – at least since 2002, when he told "The Los Angeles Times," "We kind of don't talk about what happens here."

MADDOW: Are there signs that The Family had anything to do with the Stupak-Pitts amendment? I mean, this is quite a legislative coup that they've pulled off.

SHARLET: Well, you have to consider that Congressman Pitts is what The Family calls a core member. This is a little bit like being the board of directors. You can go online and find video of him talking about the objectives of the group is to create a God-led government.

He has worked over the years to prevent, not only abortion, but AIDS education overseas and so on. This has been a lifelong project for him, going back years and years and years. Stupak is a little bit newer to this issue.

And I think what you really have to question here is Pitts, who has been active in this for a long time and was bringing up these amendments, I think. And Stupak and his brother in The Family, as it's called, found a Democrat to carry the issue for him.

* * *

MADDOW: Well, let me ask you about some of the other conventional wisdom here, because the sort of conventional explanation for this is that this anti-abortion amendment to health reform resulted mostly from the Catholic bishops pressuring Catholic politicians to support it. But I know that you think that it's bigger than that. Can you explain why?

SHARLET: Well, I think it's unfair to Catholics. I think it's unfair to Evangelicals. First of all, most of the press has focused on Catholics despite the fact that a number of the congressmen involved in this are not Catholic including congressman Pitts, including Congressman Shuler, who you mentioned.

And frankly, the majority of American Catholics are pro-choice. That's not true of the majority of American Evangelicals. I think it's a very comfortable story to tell ourselves this is just traditional Catholic conservatism rather than facing the fact there's a growing and new Evangelical – conservative Evangelical influence within the Democratic Party.

MADDOW: We have talked a little bit about this in the past. I mean, obviously, because we've been talking about a form of conservatism and how this religious movement dovetails in many ways with a lot of conservative agenda items. Do you feel like we've overlooked or, generally speaking, it's been overlooked how conservative Democrats are part of this, too?

SHARLET: Yes, absolutely. I mean, conservative Democrats have made this happen. I mean, look, here we are with a fully Democratic government and Joe Pitts and his colleagues like Chris Smith and so on have just achieved a goal that they could not have achieved during eight years with Bush.

And they've done it with Democratic help and they've done it with I think wa's crucial is, you have to look at the traditional Catholic pro-life votes, respect those. But look at the new influence of evangelical Democrats like Heath Shuler, traditional evangelical Republicans like Joe Pitts and you see a growing movement within the Democratic Party that we haven't faced up to yet.

The 64 Democrats who voted for the Stupak-Pitts anti-abortion amendment are not, of course, all members of The Family. They did, however, vote to enact into statutory law the dictates of religious dogma of their own personal religious faiths, to impose the religious dogma of their own personal religious faiths on their fellow American citizens of other religious faiths (of which there are hundreds in America) or of no religious faith by the power and force of law of the federal government.

In my view this violates the spirit if not the letter of law of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The Establishment Clause is not meant to be read narrowly as only preventing the establishment of a state religion, such as the Church of England, but is meant to be read expansively to prevent the enactment into law of religious dogma shared by a majority religion to be imposed by the force of law on a religious minority who do not share or subscribe to the same religious dogma.

This dovetails into the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. One is free to practice their own religious faith freely, but this does not mean one is free to impose their religious beliefs and dogma on their fellow American citizens of other religious faiths or of no religious faith by the power and force of law of the federal government. There cannot be free exercise of religion if one or more religions deem to limit or restrict the free exercise of other religious faiths or persons of no religious faith. We are all Americans regardless of any religious faith.

The federal government has no compelling state interest to intervene into the most intimate, personal health care decisions of individuals. There is an implicit constitutional right of privacy for one's person, which includes privacy for one's medical consultation and treatment by a medical professional. (The Privacy Act of 1974, The Medical Records Confidentiality Act of 1995, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rules, etc.) For women this includes reproductive freedom of choice.

The Stupak-Pitts Amendment should be stripped from any conformed bill that the House-Senate conference committee sends to both chambers for a final vote later this year. If anti-abortion Democrats kill health care reform, the signature issue of the Democratic Party since Harry Truman proposed national health care, Truman Library – November 19, 1945: Truman Proposes Health Program, over religious dogma then Democrats have a bigger problem that needs to be dealt with in next year's Democratic primaries.