After airing what she described as a "hard-hitting" ad by the Center for Reproductive Rights which ominously warned, "Don't let Congress ban abortion coverage millions of women already have," MSNBC's Dr. Nancy Snyderman today lamented to Politico's Jeanne Cummings that with Sen. Ted Kennedy gone, Democrats lack a unifying figure who could defuse an abortion battle that could mar Democratic unity on health care reform.
Snyderman praised the late pro-choice politician as a "man of his church and of his faith" (MP3 audio here):
Well, now the Catholic Church is lobbying hard to get House language into the Senate bill and then hopefully get it passed. Politico's assistant managing editor Jeanne Cummings wrote about this. And she joins me now.
Jeanne, I've said and I will continue to say there is no more divisive issue where I think people on either side can't expect to get people to cross over to their views. But nonetheless, we are now looking at pro-choice or abortion language, however you want to couch it, as part of [the] health care issue.
And I can’t help but think about someone like Ted Kennedy who walked a very, very, very narrow line and still was so much a man of his Church and of his faith. So that raises the question, is there someone who is going to pick up sort of, his voice, and continue to walk that fine line?
Snyderman, you may recall, admitted last Monday that she found the pro-life Stupak-Pitts Amendment "infuriating" and practically lobbied on-air last Thursday for the IRS to launch an investigation into the Catholic Church.
