Reflection from Thomas Atwood, Lay Leader at the UU Fellowship of Redwood City, Volunteer Organizer for Peninsula Interfaith Action and Member, UULM Healthcare Steering Committee:

The Stupak amendment poses important strategic challenges to us as health care reform advocates. While we work to defeat it, it's important to consider that this amendment is not only about rolling back hard-won rights of women. It is also a "divide and conquer" strategy that exploits a classic “wedge issue” in American politics. Opponents of reform hope to defeat the bill by pitting health care reform advocates against one other over reproductive rights.

History is calling us to do our best work in the coming weeks, to pool our collective wisdom, and to formulate a balanced strategy that both defeats this amendment and passes the health care bill. We need to have important conversations about what we will do in the final days leading up to the Senate vote and the conference process. This much I'm sure of: to the extent that the debate becomes about abortion instead of health reform in the final hours, that is the extent to which we will have played into the opposition's hands.

Poor women are especially vulnerable to the predatory practices of the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. The regulations in the bill will ease the pain of exploding costs, delayed care, and denied coverage. The following provisions are poised to become the law of the land, and must pass:

Let us move forward faithfully,
Thomas