More on the abortion lobby and the Democrats

“Nope. Zero,” the president said to the speaker. Mr. Boehner tried again. “Nope. Zero,” Mr. Obama repeated. “John, this is it.” A long silence followed, said one participant in the meeting. “It was just like an awkward, ‘O.K., well, what do you do now?’ ”
That meeting broke without an agreement. But while Mr. Obama may have held tough on the abortion provision, he and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, had already made a broader concession — agreeing to tens of billions of dollars in spending cuts

For many gray-haired feminists, of the baby boom generation or older, the abortion issue is emotionally important; “choice” is a proxy for the choices they have made in their personal and professional lives which are different from the choices they were expected to make when they were growing up. As Carney writes, these people want Planned Parenthood to have enough government money to keep performing lots of abortions, but I think that even more than that they want federal funding as an imprimatur of approval; they want not just money but honor for their cause. That’s why you have an experienced Democrat like former House Rules Committee Chairman Louise Slaughter saying the Republicans want to “kill women.”