Last Thursday, the House defeated SB 987, the “International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act of 2010″ sometimes referred to as the “Child Protection Marriage Act.” The bill had passed the Senate on December 14 with unanimous consent (i.e., no-one present objected, so no vote was taken). The bill garnered 245 votes, but was brought up under special rules requiring a 2/3 majority, or 290 votes. Nevertheless, the bills backers were stunned. The blog at Foreign Policy contains a detailed description of the political maneuvering.
The bill was killed by a last minute push by the GOP leadership, citing cost (disputing the CBO analysis of the bill) and linking the bill to potential funding for abortions. Can someone explain this? The logic seems tortured, especially since the bill was cosponsored in the Senate by Sam Brownback, who is strongly pro-life. I searched the web for close to an hour but could not find any cogent explanation. My gut reaction is that this is either hyper-partisanship, or “pro-life as paranoia”, but I would be interested in something more substantive.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In