Oddly, this makes our work even more important. Because it means the only the Stupak/Pitts amendment remains. And that means the only thing standing in it’s way is US. We need to redouble our efforts.

Please sign up to go to one of our phone banks. And if you don’t see one in your area, please go to http://www.onevoiceforchoice.com to learn how you set up yourself.

Mr. Ben Nelson just got his bluff to filibuster the final health care bill called by his Democratic leadership…

Take a well-deserved bow, and give yourselves a pat on the back, One Voice For Choice phone-bankers. The Senate’s Nelson abortion amendment, at least, is no more.

Just now, Harry Reid finished some remarks on the health care legislation by saying that he would not let anything get in the way of this ‘historic’ legislation, and then yielded the floor. Whereupon Barbara Boxer immediately propounded a Unanimous Consent Request to shortly vote on a McCain motion to commit, requiring it to receive 60 votes to pass, which was agreed to, and then Boxer moved to table the Nelson amendment.

The vote on the motion to table (rather than on the Nelson amendment itself) is now underway.

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN2_rm.aspx

And Pitts’ opponent, Lois Herr, is a stalwart progressive pro-choice activist! She’s the one having the phonebank in Elizabethtown, of course.

According to a statement that’s been posted on-screen by C-SPAN for awhile (but not based on anything I myself have witnessed on the Senate floor), the Nelson/Hatch/Casey abortion amendment will be privileged to receive a simple-majority vote – as either a form of test vote, or else in an effort to “dispose of it” (in Harry Reid’s parlance) – instead of a 60-vote-margin for passage as all other roll-call amendment votes on this bill (even those with simple-majority Democratic support) have thus far been subject to by unanimous consent.

The whiplash part is that the quite-drastic Party-power-exerting method of a motion to table (meaning to kill, without an up-or-down vote) the amendment – a motion that needs only a simple-majority vote to succeed, or fail – is (again, according to C-SPAN) the chosen approach to achieve this – an approach generally used to kill, along Party-lines, proposed amendments without requiring Senators to take a vote on the actual amendment itself.

Chris Dodd also stated on the floor within the last hour or two, that the Nelson abortion amendment will be a “conscience” vote – not a “caucus” vote whipped by the Party – for which he thanked the leadership (yet motions to table, as a rule, I think, would be considered “caucus” votes).

I’m assuming, though prepared to be whip-lashed back in the other direction if this assumption is shown to be wrong, that this was necessary for those behind the scenes either in favor of this amendment, or just wondering how much support it’s going to get and/or wishing to see the back of it, perhaps because Unanimous Consent from all Democrats was finally (privately) refused, with regard to agreeing to a 60-vote-margin for passage of the Nelson amendment (presumably by Nelson and/or others), and a simple majority up-or-down floor vote also couldn’t be obtained without delay (also due presumably to private anti-Nelson Democratic objections).

Motions to table have precedence over Senate action to amend, as here listed in highest-to-lowest order in Rule 22 of the Standing Rules of the Senate:

1. When a question is pending, no motion shall be received but

To adjourn.

To adjourn to a day certain, or that when the Senate adjourn it shall be to a day certain.

To take a recess.

To proceed to the consideration of executive business.

To lay on the table.

To postpone indefinitely.

To postpone to a day certain.

To commit.

To amend.

Furthermore, such motions are undebatable, and therefore may not be filibustered, like an amendment can be:

Which several motions shall have precedence as they stand arranged; and the motions relating to adjournment, to take a recess, to proceed to the consideration of executive business, to lay on the table, shall be decided without debate.