National Review has the text of a proposed Executive Order that would prohibit funding of abortion — a scheme necessary to get Bark Stupak and other pro-life Democrats on board with the Senate version of health care reform. (Yuval Levin doubts the EO’s language “possibly be a draft of actual executive order language” and therefore might only be symoblic.) I entirely endorse Kathryn Jean Lopez’s comments:
The reality of this or any other text, though is: It is meaningless legally. It has no binding effect. I don’t know a single lawyer with a working knowledge of the Constitution, Congress, and the Executive, who says otherwise.
And remember how fast the pro-abortion feminists went wild when they heard Pelosi was talking with Stupak about a legislative fix Friday night? I hear no shrieking this morning. There’s a reason for that. They know it’s meaningless and has no binding effect.
Democrats have 211 and need 216. There are 12 undecided or undeclareds, ten of whom voted for both the Stupak amendment and for the bill in November, and another who voted for Stupak and against the bill. Thus far Stupak is holding firm but negotiations are fast and furious. If Stupak accepts some bogus EO, only half of his pro-life allies would need to support the bill for it to pass. It is probably impossible to get to 216 without some gimmick to (supposedly) ban abortion funding.
Whatever the politics involved at this point, the EO, bogus or not, does suggest that pro-lifers were correct in charging the Senate version’s provisions against abortion funding to be insufficient. As Rep. Mike Pence (R, Ind.) said, “If the Democrats insist this isn’t an abortion bill, then why the need for an executive order?”
