How about we have them refuse to cover Viagra instead?

Very light blogging this week, folks. I am on a killer project which runs until mid-September, but right now I'm in full-bore crunch mode, which is why I was up doing work at 3:45 AM -- an ungodly hour that by all rights ought to have a Jamaican beach as its reward. But today this ungodly hour has a week with 20 hours of meetings after which I still have about 60 hours of actual work to do.

But this little find caught my eye and I simply had to pass on the news from ThinkProgress that Your Democratic Party is willing to sacrifice women's right to legal health care options on the altar of bipartisanship with Republican nutjobs:

As Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) prepares to unveil the Senate Finance Committee’s bipartisan health care reform legislation later this week, several blogs are reporting that Republicans on the Committee are pushing legislation that would require insurers operating within the new Exchange to to deny coverage for abortion services. From Raising Women’s Voices:

The Senate Finance Committee has been writing a health care reform bill and struggling to create legislation that will have bipartisan support. Chairman Max Baucus (pictured left) considered several compromises to win Republican support, so they can claim it is bipartisan legislation. One of these potential compromises comes in the form of an abortion exclusion, which would prevent abortion services from being covered by some or all insurance plans in the Health Insurance Exchange. We fear that members of the Senate Finance Committee are considering such a compromise.

Should it pass, the Senate Finance version would be the only bill that specifically prohibits a medical service. As the Wonk Room points out, “if denying abortion services to women is the price of bipartisanship, then perhaps winning those one or two Republican votes isn’t worth the price of jeopardizing women’s health and well-being.”

Max Baucus, who is owned lock, stock and barrel by health insurance companies, is holding a gun to women's heads and saying "You choose. You can have your right to have your health care covered, or you can have the right to abortion. You can't have both.

In case you had any doubts that Mr. Brilliant has been right all along; that the Democrats are simply there to make it LOOK like you have a choice, when in reality, BOTH parties serve only the moneyed and religious crazies, here's your proof.

You know, I'm working 60-80 hour weeks pretty routinely these days. At one point I was delusional enough to think that I, my letters to my elected officials, and by extension, this blog, could help make a difference. But here we are, in 2009, with our party having what should be a filibuster-proof majority, and on the social issues that have been important to us for decades, our party is falling on the side of, and sometimes to the right of, the Republicans. So why the hell do I even bother?

(h/t)