Religion & Law

The following is MOJ friend Mark Stricherz's reply to Bob Hockett's posts on Senator Casey:

In his defense of Senator Casey, Professor Hockett makes a few good points.  My post for TrueSlant should have commended the Senator for voting for Nelson's anti-abortion amendment; and it should not have attributed the Senator's failure to withdraw support for the health care bill solely to his likely concern about voters in the Philadelphia suburbs.  But Professor Hockett's political critique does not strike me as convincing.  Whatever else might be said of it, it does not reflect reality in Congress or the country.

Casey's vote for Nelson's amendment did not take "something like an awful lot of courage," as Professor Hockett writes.  It took little more than listening to the people.  Just look at the polling on this issue.  According to a CNN poll released in mid-November, more than six in 10 Americans oppose using public money for abortion for women who can not afford the procedure; and fewer than 4 in 10 support it.  In Casey's home state of Pennsylvania, which is one of the two or three most pro-life states in the country, opposition to government funding of abortion is likely stronger.

Casey's vote for Nelson's amendment was all but meaningless.  The amendment was simply not going to pass on its own.  Casey's only leverage is to threaten to hold up the bill.  If Stupak's supporters had announced they would support the health-care bill regardless of abortion funding, they would not have gotten a vote on his amendment.

Withholding support for a health care bill will not stop health care reform in its tracks.  It means that, if the bill cannot get 60 votes, the abortion funding will be removed, because the Democrats want to pass a health care bill.  So Casey's actions would affect only one thing:  abortion funding.

Senator Casey is pro-life.  But so far on this issue, he is a pro-life follower, not a leader; a Bob Casey, Jr., not a Bob Casey, Sr.; a backbencher who won't draw a line in the sand and buck the party's top officeholders.  He hasn't even done it on a "foundational issue" that Professor Hockett rightly identifies as such.