Safe, Legal and Rare. And Funded!

Pro-choice Democrat Rep. John Yarmuth was in a difficult position last night on Chris Matthews’ Hardball. This is interesting because it marks the first time a Democrat has felt uncomfortable on MSNBC since Bill Clinton said something negative about Barack Obama.

But last night Yarmuth was in the unfortunate position of stating categorically on national television (if anybody still counts MSNBC as national television anymore)that the healthcare bill does NOT (no how no way) include abortion funding. But then just three minutes later poor Yarmuth admitted that the Democrats can’t take abortion funding out of the bill because too many pro-choice Democrats would freak and threaten to filibuster it.

Huh? Chris Matthews, of course, didn’t call him on the discrepancy. Wouldn’t you love being a liberal who can say mutually exclusive things and all reporters do is smile and nod.

But to be fair Matthews, I must admit, did actually have an interesting idea. He suggested offering Obama’s own words as an amendment. Remember, Obama said “under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.”

But we know that Democrats can’t do that. Because the Democratic Party depends too heavily on Big Abortion to veer from the party line. So while they say they want abortion to be “safe, legal and rare” what they actually mean is “funded.”

The video is here. It’s kind of long but I’m too stupid to figure out how to just rip the highlights out. So here it is: