Seriously, though, this is utter, sexist bullshit. Abortion is a medical procedure, and like any other medical procedure it ought to be covered by insurance. If men like Nelson and Stupak want exclude abortion from insurance coverage, let them also exclude male impotence, or better yet, prostate cancer treatment. Why should only women suffer from this male-dominated freakshow we call Congress?

Abortion is a medical procedure, so I can see your logic in comparing it to male impotence or prostate cancer treatment, and your insistence that excluding abortion alone is sexist. However, abortion is also a human rights issue, and therein lies the controversy. That's where your analogy falls short.

The vast majority of Americans in both political parties are uncomfortable with subsidizing abortions via health care. Doing so would result in the largest expansion of abortions in American history since Roe v. Wade.

As I've said before:

you cannot "infringe on someone else's rights"

I'm a pro-life Democrat, and I'm pleased that the Stupak Amendment was included in the health care bill.

A pro-choicer on AlterNet (another liberal headlines e-newsletter) wrote:

Your rights end at the tip of my nose. In other words, we are free and have rights, but when your rights start to infringe on someone else's rights, those rights end.

That's precisely my point, and it's one I've made a long time ago: my right to swing my fist ends where someone else's face begins.

Recognizing the rights of another class of beings limits our freedoms and our choices, and requires a change in our personal lifestyle.

If the unborn have rights, then your freedom to kill is restricted: you cannot "infringe on someone else's rights."

If animals have rights, then your freedom to kill is (similarly) restricted: you cannot "infringe on someone else's rights."

Pro-life feminist Juli Loesch wrote back in the '70s: "Each woman has the right (to contraception)...But once a woman has conceived, she can no longer choose whether or not to become a mother. Biologically, she is already a mother...the woman’s rights are then limited, as every right is limited, by the existence of another human being who also has rights."

Do the unborn have rights? Do animals have rights? What sort of beings can have rights? What is our criterion for personhood? These are the issues we should be debating--not lame arguments about "freedom of choice."

The pro-choice rhetoric is almost as bad as conservative Christians unable to think through ethical issues without religion, and instead, like brainwashed zombies, saying things like, "so much," "you don't," "garbage," and repeating things in triplicate...as if that somehow resolves the secular, political debate.