Losing the Battle Before It's Fought

At No More Mister Nice Blog, Aimai explains just how stupid, unnecessary and self-destructive the Stupak amendment was:

But it should never, ever, have come to any Democrats voting for the Stupak amendment once it was submitted to the floor. And, frankly, I don't think it should ever have come to allowing Stupak to forward the amendment in the first place. Pelosi and the Democratic Majority should never have allowed women's health issues to be severed from family health issues in the first place. They should have insisted, publicly, that the whole point of the legislation was to "get government and insurance companies out of the business of telling you what you need and what you don't need." No amendments referring to specific procedures should have been permitted and the grounds for that refusal should have been made generic, not specific to women's health care. The rallying cry should have been "Democrats stand for freedom of consumer choice. Your health care money will be spent as you choose--not as we choose."

It gets much, much better, including the best plan I've ever read for dealing with the self-righteous fuckers in the Catholic hierarchy. Read the whole thing.