The Stupak Amendment follows in the long, sad tradition of restricting abortion access by class:

Back when the debate over health care reform began — I believe it was a Tuesday, in the late Pleistocene — nobody expected that it would end up reviving the memory of Henry Hyde.

For those too young to remember, Hyde was a Republican Congressman whose career highlights included trying to impeach President Clinton over Monica Lewinsky at the same time as he was admitting to his own extramarital affair. Where his name will live on, though, is in the Hyde Amendment: Passed in 1977, when the paint was still wet on Roe v. Wade, it declared that though abortion might be legal, Congress wasn’t about to let Medicaid pay for any… [read more]