WASHINGTON (AP) — The call came in from Rome, just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and top lieutenants in her Democratic Party were scrambling to round up scarce votes to pass their sweeping health overhaul legislation.
Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the former Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, was on the line for Pelosi, calling to discuss adding strict abortion restrictions to the bill.
It was just one element of an intensive lobbying effort orchestrated by the U.S. Catholic bishops, who have emerged as a formidable force in the health care negotiations. They used their influence with millions of American Catholics and worked behind the scenes in Congress to make sure the abortion curbs were included in the legislation; they are now pressing to keep them there.
They do not spend a dollar on what is legally defined as lobbying, but lawmakers and insiders recognize that the bishops' voices matter because they move votes. Representatives for the bishops were in Pelosi's Capitol suite negotiating with top officials for three hours last Friday night as they negotiated final terms of the agreement. That was just hours after Pelosi, a Catholic abortion rights supporter, took the call from McCarrick.
Boston's Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley personally appealed to President Barack Obama about the issue near the church altar at the early September funeral for Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, also an avid Catholic. Bishops quietly called their congressmen and senators to weigh in.
"The Catholic Church used their power — their clout, if you will — to influence this issue. They had to. It's a basic teaching of the religion," said Republican Rep. Bart Stupak, a leading abortion opponent and architect of the health measure's restrictions.
It was Stupak who told Pelosi last Friday that if she wanted a deal on the health bill, she would be well advised to invite the bishops' staff, who already were in his office, to her table. "I said, 'Well, they're here, and they're one of the key groups you want to have on your side, so why don't we just bring them in and work this out," Stupak said.
Pelosi did, and the result was a final measure that, much to the outrage of abortion rights supporters, bars a new government-run insurance plan from covering abortions, except in cases or rape, incest or the peril to the life of the mother. It also prohibits any health plan that receives federal subsidies in a new insurance marketplace from offering abortion coverage. If a woman wanted to buy abortion coverage through such plans, she would have to buy it separately, as a so-called rider on her insurance policy.
The outcome has put Obama and Democratic leaders — already struggling for consensus on the complex and politically tricky health measure — in a tough spot. Democratic abortion foes in the Senate vow they won't support health legislation that omits the strict restrictions approved by the House, while abortion rights champions say they can't possibly vote for a bill that contains them.
Pelosi herself abhors the provisions but said they were necessary to get anywhere near to a consensus.
Many abortion rights backers in Congress say they cannot vote for a bill that contains the curbs, and 90 of them signed a letter to Obama on Wednesday demanding a meeting next week to discuss the issue. The lawmakers called the limits "an unprecedented restriction on a woman's access to health insurance coverage of reproductive health services."
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the church's Washington-based advocacy organization, which is staffed by more than 350 lay people, derives its power in large part from the sheer number of Catholics in this country: 68 million, or more than one in five Americans.
The conference distributed fliers to every parish in the nation asking people to pray for abortion restrictions and to call their congressmen and senators asking them to "fix these bills with pro-life amendments."
Some have publicly pressured Catholic elected officials to fall in line with the church's position on abortion. Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence and Democratic Rep. Patrick Kennedy abruptly canceled a meeting they had planned for Thursday to calm a simmering feud over the issue.
Kennedy has criticized the church for threatening to block the health measure over abortion curbs, and Tobin has questioned whether Kennedy can call himself a Catholic given that he has opposed the strict abortion limits bishops were seeking to add.
