UPDATE I: Politico has a story out this morning (12/23) saying that the timeline to get a bill to Obama now looks to be early to mid-February instead of before the State of the Union. More time to get a hold of your legislators to tell them no on abortion funding. Also, CNS News.com has an interview out today quoting Rep. Bart Stupak about the pressure he is recieving from the White House to stay quiet on abortion.

Back in May and June, when the healthcare debate was just starting to heat up, there was hardly any mention of abortion. It just wasn’t an issue. When dozens of pro-life leaders, under the name of Stop the Abortion Mandate, got together in late July to host a webcast talking about how healthcare reform would be the “largest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade”, did the media pick up on the fact that hey, maybe abortion is an issue.

And what an issue it is. Thanks to the hard work of many pro-life groups and a couple courageous Congressmen, Americans now know that healthcare reform, unless the Stupak language (named after Rep. Bart Stupak, a pro-life Democrat from Michigan whose amendment makes sure the government doesn’t fund abortion) is in the final healthcare bill, the government will certainly be funding abortion.

This is wildly unpopular with the American people. Yet another national poll (I think we’re on #4 or 5) came out today, this time from the respected pollsters at Quinnipiac, which said 72-73% are against “using any public money in the health care overhaul to pay for abortions.”

So what happens next?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has to find some way to reconcile Stupak’s language with the coalition of pro-abortion members who say they won’t vote for anything that restricts abortion funding. And Stupak is sticking to his guns after Sen. Nelson caved over the weekend by selling out the unborn in exchange for the government to pick up Nebraska’s Medicaid payments.

David Brody at CBN said today on this blog post “The Dirty Little Secret on Abortion and Healthcare Reform” that the healthcare vote could very well come down to what pro-abortion legislators are willing to give up over making you and I pay for abortion:

 Pro-life House Democrat Bart Stupak has publicly said his pro-life abortion language must stay in the final bill. He could take roughly 10 pro-life Democrats with him and vote AGAINST the final healthcare bill if his language is changed. That would sink the bill. At that point, pro-choicers would be pretty much forced into swallowing hard and accepting Stupak’s language into the final bill so healthcare reform can pass with Stupak’s gang of 10 OR they pro-choicers may say forget it. They may tell Pelosi that while they want healthcare reform in the worst way they want to protect women’s rights to abortion even more. Seriously, it really could come down to this.

 The New York Times also had a front page story today that laid out some of the issues facing the Democrats on the abortion issue as well. On any compromise on abortion,

 Ms. Pelosi’s room for maneuvering is limited because any changes to the language in the Senate bill could unravel the deal that provided Democrats with the 60 votes they need to get the legislation through the Senate.

  Here’s the timeline as best we can tell (it’s changing rapidly so we will probably update again soon):

•  December 24^th – 8am vote in the Senate on cloture to close the debate on the healthcare bill and move it out of the Senate.
•  The first week of January – The House and Senate will have to convene in conference to merge the House & Senate bills. A couple things can happen here. One is that the conference committee can just adopt the Senate version of the bill, which including government funding of abortion, and let the House vote on that. Second is that they can hash out a new bill that merges them both together and the Senate and House will have to vote on that bill. Either way, abortion is going to be a big issue.
• Mid-late January – Obama is desperate for a healthcare bill to be signed before the State of the Union address, currently scheduled for January 19^th, so he’s going to do everything in his power to make sure that happens.

 Don’t give up now. We have to redouble our efforts. As we have heard, the Stop the Abortion Mandate people are being deluged with emails from grassroots people saying that they can’t reach their Senators and Congressmen because the lines have been shut down and emails are bouncing back.

How about going to visit your Representatives at their district offices? Go here to find your local office: http://www.congressmerge.com/onlinedb/. Yesterday, the Family Research Council led a group of 150 concerned citizens to Senator Mary Landrieu’s district office in Louisiana because they couldn’t reach her by phone. They were met by a federal marshal telling them her offices were closed for the holidays!

So your Senators can vote on a massive government takeover of healthcare at 1am the morning of Christmas week and then tell you their offices are closed?!

Again, don’t give up. Remember, in the end, the fight has already been won.