The latest twist on the long road to healthcare reform has me wondering how those people who don’t like the thought of Washington bureaucrats dictating our health care choices feel about a cabal of Washington religious fanatics doing it instead?

With the insertion of the Stupak Amendment, and it’s radical restrictions of the right for millions of women to choose an abortion, into the House version of the health care bill last weekend, we may soon have an answer. To avert that catastrophe, it’s now up to the Obama administration and majority of Democrats who don’t want healthcare reform held hostage by ideology to stick to their guns and make sure the Stupak Amendment, the worst back door assault on Roe v Wade in decades, does not make it into the final version of the bill. (For a full description of the amendment and what it will mean for women’s right to choose an abortion, I’ll defer to the experts: Planned Parenthood.)

Putting the abortion debate into the middle of healthcare reform could prove to be one the biggest bumps in the road to insuring millions of people who currently go without healthcare. The blame rests on the C Street Group of legislators – including the likes of famously philandering politicos Mark Sanford and John Ensign – of which Democrat Bart Stupak is a member. The gang gets this moniker because they all bunk at a house at 133 C Street, Washington, DC, owned by a conservative religious organization that many have labeled a cult. The location of the C Street house, right next door to the Capitol, embodies in a frighteningly literal way this group’s agenda of eliminating any and all space separating church and state. The house is owned by a cabal known as The Family, a shadowy religious organization founded by an evangelist determined to establish Washington DC as the capitol of God’s kingdom on earth – with members of his organization calling the shots from behind the scenes.

After the millions of women who will lose abortion coverage if they already have it, or those who will be denied it once they sign up for a plan subsidized by federal funds (a plan they will be obligated to join), the next victims of the Stupak Amendment are members of more rational, less Knights-of-the-Templar-esque, faith communities. I’m referring to the majority of Christians, of all stripes, who understand the pragmatic healthcare needs of the many outweigh the ideological fervor of the few. Stupak has left them scrambling to distance themselves from their anti-woman, anti-choice brethren. Here's a statement from Christian leaders who are standing up for health care reform and against the Stupak Amendment.

These are the people, many of whom belong to pro-life institutions like the Catholic Church, who recognize that the emotional depth charge of the abortion debate will only sink the effort to provide the basic right of healthcare to the 50 million of their fellow citizens who currently go without. They made a choice to put the health care first, and it’s a shame that a fringe claiming to speak for them should overshadow reason.

The long and short of it is this. The Obama administration has said it will fight to keep Stupak out of the health care bill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid need to hear that the forty-odd Dems who voted with the Republicans (all of them except Ohio rep Mary Jo Kilroy, who deserves some sort of award for standing up to fundamentalist ideology) can’t hold their party, and America’s health, hostage to their pre-1972 belief system. Here’s a link to a petition aimed at them. Sign it, let them know how you feel, then pass it on to everyone else you know.

fusewashington.org/page/s/stupak