Sen. Cardin: Senate Hopes to ‘Calm Down,’ Stay ‘Neutral’ on Abortion

November 10, 2009 2:13 PM

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: As the House grapples with the fallout of a controversial compromise, Senate Democratic leaders are vowing to keep out provisions from the health care bill that abortion-rights advocates say would limit access to abortion.

On ABCNews.com’s “Top Line” today, Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., said senators hope to be “neutral” on the issue of abortion in the health care bill -- using a standard similar to the one laid out by President Obama in an interview with ABC’s Jake Tapper yesterday.

“We wanted to take up health care reform and not take sides on the abortion [issue],” Cardin told us. “Unfortunately, the Stupak amendment [in the House] does advance the pro-life position beyond where it is today, and that is something that I disagree with. I think a lot of my colleagues will be opposed to the Stupak amendment. Hopefully we’ll be able to resolve this in the Senate.”

Cardin, who served 20 years in the House before being elected to the Senate in 2006, applauded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer for cutting a deal that allowed the bill to move forward. But he made clear that the deal shouldn’t stand in the Senate.

“I think the speaker made a judgment that’s the only way she could get this bill moving. Now, on the floor of the Senate I hope that we can change that,” Cardin said. “Hopefully we’ll come out of conference with a bill that accomplishes the goal of health care reform, and can just ask people to calm down. This is not an abortion bill, as the president said. This is a bill on health care -- let’s stick to health care.”

Cardin said also warned that President Obama won’t be able to count on automatic support from Democrats on his new strategy for Afghanistan.

“I think that there is a great deal of reluctance to committing any more combat troops in Afghanistan,” he said. “We’re going to wait for the president to give us his recommendations. But the circumstances in Afghanistan are such that I think most members of the Democratic caucus believe it’s up to the Afghans to take responsibility for the internal security within their own country -- that we should be focusing on the war against terror, against the terrorists organizations, most of which are now in the Pakistan area, not Afghanistan. And that needs to be where we concentrate.”

Watch the full interview with Sen. Ben Cardin HERE.

Republican strategist Kevin Madden said that Democrats created a new distraction for themselves in how they handled the abortion issue on the House floor.

“This is one of those cases where when you map out the first five steps in front of you without looking at the next five miles, [and] you put yourself in a very tough predicament,” Madden said.

Watch the discussion with Kevin Madden HERE.