Powerful Catholic quietly shapes abortion, health care debate

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/03/10/90162/powerful-catholic-quietly-shapes.html



Richard Doerflinger doesn't look the part of a high-powered political strategist. Bearded and bespectacled, he works in a small, cluttered office out of one of Washington's less-fashionable neighborhoods, far from the lobbying bastions of K Street.


Yet as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' point man on abortion, Doerflinger has emerged as a major player in the health care debate, one who's likely to play a pivotal role in the outcome.

It was Doerflinger who orchestrated the bishops' successful campaign late last year to add a tough anti-abortion provision to the House of Representatives' legislation. The Senate adopted less-stringent language.

Now, as President Barack Obama begins his last-ditch effort to pass final legislation, Doerflinger and his bosses are sending a clear message: If the Democrats want to succeed, they must include the House provision, or something equally restrictive, on abortion.

"The Senate may have to figure out whether it wants its abortion position or if it wants a health care bill," Doerflinger said in a recent interview. "That's the difficult decision (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi made, and she chose a health care bill. The Senate decided it could have its cake and eat it, too. That is no longer true. Something's going to have to give."

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The bishops' conference is headquartered in a neighborhood known as "Little Rome." Nearby is Catholic University and the largest Catholic church in the U.S., which has 65 million Catholics.

As the associate director of the conference's Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, Doerflinger cranks out reams of position papers, e-mails to congressional aides and letters from the bishops to lawmakers, not only on abortion but also on euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research and physician-assisted suicide.

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A self-described "policy wonk," Doerflinger leaves a lot of the schmoozing on Capitol Hill to colleagues, but he doesn't miss crucial meetings, including one in Pelosi's office the night before the House passed the health bill last year. He and John Carr, who also works for the bishops, were the lone outsiders, prompting criticism from abortion-rights supporters that Pelosi, who's Catholic but supports abortion rights, was taking her cues from Rome.

The two men helped craft the final wording of the anti-abortion amendment offered by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., that cleared the way for House passage of the health care bill by five votes.

"He's a real smart guy," Stupak said, referring to Doerflinger. "Pretty detailed guy who does his homework."
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puke on these men who think they have the right to stick their noses all up into women's wombs and business.

may they fall down and never get up

turn his energy to yet another priest child abuse scandal. I get a visceral reaction reading this. Ugh.

got it wrong, as Rachel Maddow noted.

live my life by their religious views. :mad: I left that church 35 years ago because of issues like choice and I have never looked back. We live in the United States of America where abortion is a legal right. Piss off, child fuckers.

Where do these yokels get off? Let them go to church and pray and believe what they want but leave me and the rest of enlightened Americans out of it!

It's time to tax any church that tries to force its dogma into civil law.

will see what a POS this child-molester-enabler is, or undrec, because he's a child-molester-unabler...still haven't figured out the rec/unrec thing completely.

they demand to control others.

They need to clean their own hearts before they try to control the hearts of others. What assboils.