The senator has yet to announce a date, but with the health reform debate likely to occupy the upper chamber for most of December, scheduling the hearing this year would be a tricky proposition.

Last week, 22 senators representing both sides of the aisle had written to Harkin and Sen. Michael Enzi (Wyo.), the senior Republican on the HELP panel, urging the committee to examine the new mammogram guidelines, which recommend that women get screenings less frequently and later in life — an overhaul of existing protocols.

In the House, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), who heads the Energy and Commerce health subcommittee, has already announced his intention to hold a December hearing on the new mammogram recommendations. From a scheduling standpoint, Pallone has the advantage: the House has already passed its version of the health reform bill.

“These recommendations, which have been widely criticized by patients and doctors alike, could prove devastating for women at risk of breast cancer,” the lawmakers wrote to Sens. Tom Harkin (D- Iowa) and Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.), the leaders of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Breast cancer screenings and advances in technology have reduced the mortality rate of patients who develop this devastating disease, but early detection of breast cancer is absolutely critical. To alter these recommendations, and to contradict the advice provided by countless doctors, will only serve to cause confusion and alter the behavior of patients, may (sic) of whom may be at a high risk of contracting breast cancer.

Spearheaded by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the Nov. 20 letter was also signed by GOP Sens. Olympia Snowe (Maine), David Vitter (La.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Mike Crapo (Idaho), Jim Risch (Idaho), Jim Inhofe (Okla.), John Thune (R-S.D.), Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas), John Ensign (Nev.), Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Pat Roberts (Ks.) and John Barrasso (Wyo.); the Democratic co-signers were Sens. Barbara Mikulski (Md.), Ben Cardin (Md.),  Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Arlen Specter (Pa.), Charles Schumer (N.Y.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) and Patrick Leahy (Vt.).

No word yet about Harkin’s plans, but Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce health subpanel, has already said that he’ll hold a hearing on the topic early next month.

“These are very disturbing recommendations,” Wasserman Schultz told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer yesterday.

As someone who found my own breast cancer through a breast self-exam and had a mammogram — and knowing that there are tens of thousands of women from 40 to 49 years old in this country that are diagnosed with breast cancer every year and that it’s often diagnosed at a later stage and is more aggressive — to say that women in that 10 year age gap should not get mammograms is just totally inappropriate….

The bottom line is that instead of making things more clear for women, this task force’s recommendations are making things clear as mud — totally confusing women.

The new recommendations, released Monday by the United States Preventive Services Task Force, suggest that women don’t begin getting mammograms until they hit 50 — 10 years later than the same panel recommended in 2002.

Wasserman Schultz has a reason to be indignant. Her cancer was diagnosed when she was 41.

Last week, it was liberal Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) predicting that anti-abortion lawmakers in the upper chamber wouldn’t be able to rally the 60 votes needed to pass an amendment to health reform legislation restricting abortion. This week, it’s an influential moderate Democrat warning that the health bill won’t pass without such a provision. Roll Call reports:

“What is clear is that for this bill to be successful, there can be no taxpayer funding for abortion,” Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said, appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Conrad said he did not know whether the Senate would ultimately adopt the restrictive language that the House passed last week, which dictated that any new government-funded health insurance option cannot pay for abortions. But he said that some kind of abortion restriction is necessary for a bill to get through Congress.

The debate in the House is following a similar storyline, with conservative Democrats insisting that the abortion restrictions be included, and no small number of liberal Democrats hinging their support on their absence. With neither side appearing ready to back down, you can look for Democratic leaders to perform a very delicate scalpel job during conference negotiations to reconcile the two bills — something that would allow both sides to claim victory.

In an interview with Detroit News, the 57-year-old Catholic warned that “the other side is playing with fire,” if they try to remove his amendment during later negotiations with the Senate.

If they are going to summarily dismiss us by taking the pen to that language, there will be hell to pay. I don’t say it as a threat, but if they double-cross us, there will be 40 people who won’t vote with them the next time they need us—and that could be the final version of this bill.

Of course, there are about 40 abortion-rights supporters in the House who are vowing to kill the bill if the Stupak language stays.

There are countless perks that come with being part of the congressional leadership. Resolving stalemates like this is not one of them.

“If someone wants to offer this very radical amendment, which would really tear apart [a decades-long] compromise, then I think at that point they would need to have 60 votes to do it,” Boxer said. “And I believe in our Senate we can hold it.”

“It is a much more pro-choice Senate than it has been in a long time,” she added. “And it is much more pro-choice than the House.”

She’s not really going out on a limb here. In the Senate, it’s almost always tougher to alter a bill than to preserve it as it arrived on the floor. With that in mind, the fear among abortion-rights advocates is not so much about what happens as the Senate takes up its own bill, but what will happen during the Senate/House conference afterward. Just as it would be tough for abortion foes to find the 60 votes to add the House amendment during the Senate debate, it would be equally tough for abortion-rights lawmakers to find the 60 votes to remove it if comes out of conference intact.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the Democrats’ chief deputy whip in the House, said that she and other pro-abortion rights lawmakers would work to strip the amendment included in the House health bill that bars federal funding from subsidizing abortions.

“I am confident that when it comes back from the conference committee that that language won’t be there,” Wasserman Schultz said during an appearance on MSNBC. “And I think we’re all going to be working very hard, particularly the pro-choice members, to make sure that’s the case.”

House Democrats put themselves into a pickle over the weekend when they accepted an amendment, sponsored by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), prohibiting abortion coverage, not only in the public plan being proposed in the House health reform bill, but also in the subsidized private plans found on the newly proposed insurance exchange. Stupak and other moderate Democrats want assurances that no federal funds will go to provide abortions, and they’ve hinged their support for the overall bill on the inclusion of that ban.

Liberal lawmakers in support of abortion rights, however, are also vowing to kill the overall bill unless the Stupak language is removed. One side will have to give, or the entire health reform effort goes up in flames.

While the state is coming down from its second temporary shut down in two years, ever increasing unemployment and unresolved budget issues, Michigan House Republicans this week introduced legislation to amend the state constitution to define life as beginning at fertilization.

The resolution to amend the constitution was introduced by Democratic Rep. Jim Slezak of Davison and Republican Rep. Paul Scott of Grand Blanc. There were a total of 23 co-sponsors for the bill.

“That’s why people need to continue to go to the town halls, continue to melt the phone lines of their liberal members of Congress,” said Bachmann, “and let them know, under no certain circumstances will I give the government control over my body and my health care decisions.” [Emphasis added.]

Somebody call Planned Parenthood. Looks like they’ve got a surprising new spokesperson.

Senators also hammered Sotomayor about her ethnic identification and whether she could rule fairly without undue influence from her gender or political preferences. Wait, let me guess, you’re white guys! Are we to infer that men of European descent are never unduly influenced by their own ethnicity, gender or political preferences? Can anyone affirm this assertion with a straight face?

After a few centuries dominating Washington’s political landscape, the white guys can be forgiven their instinctive resistance to those who view the contours of life through a different lens. Forgiven, at least, by those who empathize with them.