House and Senate Republicans repeated the call to remove the family planning provisions, which were a small part of the stimulus package in the first place. They can make all the objections they want, the family planning provision would have helped balance state and local budgets (which generally can't deficit spend); increase funding to programs that already exist, which would have created jobs more quickly than entirely new programs do; and provided funding to help fund contraception for the increasing number of low-income women in the US.

It should have been an all-around winner, since it's contraception, not abortion. The anti-contraception crowd is the fringe-of-the-fringe, and we've already given the anti-abortion crowd a resounding repudiation.

But Obama's still pulling strings for the anti-contraception crowd:

House Democrats are likely to jettison family planning funds for the low-income from an $825 billion economic stimulus bill, officials said late Monday, following a personal appeal from President Barack Obama at a time the administration is courting Republican critics of the legislation.[...]

Several Democrats said Monday night that Obama had spoken personally with Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., about removing the provision. Waxman is chairman of the committee with jurisdiction over Medicaid and a close ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

The Democrats who described the likely reversal did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to disclose developments not yet made public.

Obama's request to House Democrats underscores the administration's desire to signal a spirit of bipartisanship, a recurring theme for the president in his first week in office.

"Spirit of bipartisanship," remember, means that not only do low-income women get screwed over by the government, but LGBT folks, working class folks, and pretty much everyone else who isn't a Republicans constituency gets screwed over as well.

And caving on this issue to get Republican support for a bill that doesn't need Republican support and that will never get Republican support because Republicans have zero political reason to support it makes no sense at all. They've already been given around $250 billion in tax cuts, many directed only to the wealthy, in the package under the spirit of bipartisanship, and Republicans are still rallying each other to oppose the stimulus package.

And lest we think Obama caved on this one because it's just the right thing to do, let's remember to whom he caved:

Today on his radio show, Rush Limbaugh said that if Pelosi "wants fewer births, I have the way to do this and it won't require any contraception: You simply put pictures of Nancy Pelosi...in every cheap motel room. ... That will keep birthrates down because that picture will keep a lot of things down."

The leading moral authority of our time, I'm sure. But he does have more power to determine what medical services women have access to than most of the rest of us do.

Update: Yeah, it's gone.