Peter Nixon's comment on Matt Boudway's Jost post is worth highlighting here:

I worked in Washington DC for ten years and am familiar with... worst case scenarioism, where opponents of legislation come up with increasingly bizzare predictions of how a particular bill could lead to disastrous unintended consequences. The idea that the Senate bill will enable CHCs [community health centers] to perform abortions falls into this category. It comes across as a desperate ploy rather than reasoned legislative analysis.

Josts analysis is accurate and compelling. As I and others have argued at length, the Senate language, while different from the House, provides sufficient protection of current abortion policy to meet the USCCBs stated test that health care reform be neutral with respect to current law. What deficiencies remain are not of the magnitude to justify defeating a measure that will extend health insurance to tens of millions of low-income families.

It seems to me, though, that many of the bishops and their lobbyists are increasingly closed to any dialogue on this. Stupak and only Stupak will do. Its bad enough that the USSCBfor all its protestations to the contraryis perilously close to becoming a single issue lobby. But its degeneration into a single amendment lobby would be comic if the consequences for the nations millions of uninsured were not so serious.