While many have hailed the passage of health care reform in the House (H.R. 3692), much anger remains after the passage of a last-minute amendment, the Stupak Amendment. Pushed for heavily by Catholic bishops, this amendment greatly restricts the use of federal funding for abortion.

While one obviously does not have to be Catholic or even religious to oppose abortion, Catholics, other Christians (including this Lutheran) and many other religious people were concerned that they may end up funding abortions with their taxes in flagrant contradiction of their religious beliefs.

While current legislation covered this to some extent through the Hyde Amendment, concerns on how the Hyde Amendment would or would not apply to health care reform led to the Stupak Amendment. Opponents have accused the Stupak Amendment of being even stricter than the Hyde Amendment, but regardless of their semantic differences, both have the same principle.

No public funding for abortion has long been the status quo, the middle ground that neither side likes completely but both have learned to tolerate. For advocates of separation of church and state, this compromise maintains that separation in both directions. The church may not impose its beliefs on abortions on everyone, but the government may not impose on the church either by forcing its members to fund abortions.

While the Stupak Amendment does not change the principles of funding abortion, it does more strictly enforce them. The Congressional Budget Office projects the cost of H.R. 3692 to be nearly $900 billion over the next 10 years. With that much money in play, people would certainly pay more attention to how it is being used now.

The Stupak Amendment, among other things, makes abortion coverage supplemental to make companies demonstrate that they did not use federal funding at all for abortion. After all, if abortion was solely paid for with individual premiums, making this separation more explicit would not change anything, right? Without spending half my column on the details, there are ways to circumvent the principle of no public funding using the specific language of the Hyde Amendment.

Nonetheless, many have accused Catholic bishops, Stupak and their supporters of decreasing the availability of abortion, especially for the poor. While passing H.R. 3692 would have that effect, it would be a mistake to blame it on the Stupak Amendment. Indeed, if that amendment merely preserves the status quo (aside from closing potential loopholes in the Hyde Amendment), then how it can change anything by itself?

Conservatives have long rallied against the public option. They fear that private options funded solely by the market will lose out to an inferior public option that only succeeds because it is backed by federal dollars. In the long term, this could cause an unnatural monopoly, as individuals with great private insurance end up with mediocre public insurance when private companies are either forced out of the market or have their market share significantly reduced.

Now read The New York Times editorial criticizing the lack of abortion coverage. It noted that women could lose insurance if smaller employers or even in the future large employers switch over to new insurance exchanges that would include these federal funding restrictions. Women never lost their abortion coverage until the switch to a new option funded by federal dollars.

Since federal funding cannot be used for abortion, abortion rights advocates have relied on the private market to provide them healthcare plans with abortion coverage. Through private employer-provided plans, many who could not afford such coverage received it through their employer.

On the other side, if an individual or a private company ever morally objected to health insurance companies covering abortion, the free market allowed them to take their business elsewhere. Regardless of whether or not they pursued this option, they at least had a choice.

Since public health care options cannot provide abortion coverage, if liberals in the long term manage to eliminate the entire private market, replacing it with one government-run public program, they will also eliminate the coverage of abortion in any health care plan, public or private. Even if restrictions on abortion funding were not as strict, they still would fall well short of what liberals would need to make abortion truly available to all socioeconomic classes.

To accomplish both goals, you would have to both add a strong public option and significantly weaken existing restrictions on public funding of abortion. Aside from all the objections I have raised earlier to the latter option, I have a hard time seeing how a bill with both options could manage to pass both the House and Senate. Practically, the health care debate has introduced an unavoidable tradeoff between public healthcare and public accessibility to abortion.

Furthermore, since Democrats have both a commanding majority in the House and a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate (including the two independents who caucus with them), they cannot blame others for the tasks they fail to accomplish.

The dialogue of health care as a universal right ignores one key distinction. For health care or any other program, private options will be funded by some individuals by their own choice, and public options will be funded by all individuals without any choice. Even if the public option can solve all our woes, this solution will come with two costs: first, compulsory taxes to fund the solution and, second, inherent limits on what legislators and voters consider acceptable uses for public money.

These Catholic bishops are simply calling for reasonable restrictions on how America uses taxes that their church members also have to pay. They do not care whether there is public option or not, so long as any public funds do not touch abortion. And although I object to universal health care as a conservative, the religious side of me is indifferent to public health care so long as my taxes do not fund abortion.

Decreased access to abortion is a state issue caused by the public option and government intervention in the private market. It is not a church issue. After all, I am just trying to keep the church and state separate here.

Mike Wacker, a senior in the College of Engineering, is a former Sun Assistant Web Editor. He may be reached at mwacker@cornellsun.com. Wack Attack appears alternate Wednesdays this semester.