By Louis Jacobson
Special to PoliticsPA

WASHINGTON – Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) is not one of the most high-profile lawmakers in Congress – or even in the Pennylvania Congressional delegation. He’s served seven terms in the U.S. House, representing a district that includes all of Lancaster County and part of Berks and Chester counties, as well as 24 years in the state House, yet he’s a cipher to most Pennsylvania voters and relatively obscure even to many political insiders.

But even though Keystone State Democrats and Republicans agree that Pitts has been neither a powerhouse in the Congressional delegation nor a bigfoot in statewide politics, his national clout has grown steadily in social-conservative circles. And in the past few weeks, that influence has crested, as Pitts – despite being in the minority in a chamber where power tilts heavily toward the majority — has profoundly influenced the biggest Congressional issue of the year, the Democratic health care reform bill.

Pitts, working closely with anti-abortion Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, helped strategize and pass an amendment to curb federal abortion funding under the new regime set up by the health care bill. That amendment has vastly complicated the politics of getting a health care bill passed and sent to President Barack Obama.

Supporters and critics alike agree that the Stupak-Pitts amendment was more stringent than the language in the original floor version of the bill. But from there, the sides diverge. Supporters say it merely extends the ban on federal funding of abortions that already existed under the longstanding Hyde Amendment. Critics counter that Stupak-Pitts goes further in its restrictions on access to abortion.

Even securing a vote for the amendment was far from a foregone conclusion, and those who followed the bill say it happened only because Stupak and Pitts muscled support for the amendment among anti-abortion lawmakers from both parties.

Given the stringent Republican opposition to the overall health care measure and the modest Democratic margin in the chamber, passage of the amendment became crucial to passage of the bill as a whole. Many moderate Democrats in conservative districts decided they could not support the underlying bill without the inclusion of the Stupak-Pitts amendment – even though most of their colleagues in the Democratic Caucus opposed the amendment.

Ultimately, the Stupak-Pitts amendment passed the House on a 240-194 vote, winning the support of 64 mostly anti-abortion Democrats.

“I was really not sure we could win,” Pitts told PoliticsPA. “It was an uphill battle the whole way, so winning by as large a margin as we did was a real surprise to me. It was a huge victory, and very, very bipartisan.”

The amendment’s success in the House laid down a marker for the Senate, where the Democratic majority also includes a number of conservative Democrats whose preference for a provision modeled on Stupak-Pitts could prove pivotal.

On Dec. 8, a Senate amendment similar to Stupak-Pitts fell short of the required 60 votes, complicating prospects for passage of the health care bill in that chamber. In the 54-45 vote, seven Democrats broke ranks to support the amendment, with two Republicans siding with Democrats. In the complex task of assembling 60 Senate votes in favor of the bill, the abortion issue now looms as a potential spoiler in the Senate, just as it did the House.

How did someone as low-key as Pitts manage to become such a player in the fate of a health care bill that he – and the rest of his party – staunchly oppose? The simple answer is that abortion has been Pitts’ legislative passion for years.

Writing in Salon.com shortly after the House vote, Jeff Sharlet, an investigative reporter who has extensively followed the religious right, called Pitts “a driving force in the antiabortion fight for more than three decades.” Sharlet pegs Pitts as a “core” member of “the Family,” an evangelical organization that has become influential in an under-the-radar way in Washington over the past three decades. The group has recently attracted attention for its links to the “C Street” house and prayer group whose members have included South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, Nevada Sen. John Ensign and former Mississippi Rep. Chip Pickering — each of whom revealed an extramarital affair this year. (Stupak reportedly lives at the house.)

A Pitts spokesman confirmed that the Congressman has been involved with the National Prayer Breakfast “for many years” – a group that Sharlet and many others link to the Family. But Pitts’ spokesman portrayed the prayer breakfast “a mainstream, bipartisan, interfaith event that brings together people of all ideologies and backgrounds,” adding that “there have been some accusations made recently that the prayer breakfast has a political agenda, which simply aren’t true.”

In his interview with PoliticsPA, Pitts specifically distanced himself from the C Street house. “I’m not involved in any way,” he said, adding “I have not lived there or attended any of their meetings. Frankly I don’t even know for sure who lives there.”

But setting aside any links to the Family, Pitts’ longstanding interest in opposing abortion is hardly a secret.

Pitts, whose parents were missionaries, helped found the Values Action Team – a group that links lawmakers with activist groups in the social conservative sphere — a decade ago. The idea, Pitts said, “was to help encourage involvement to get good information to their constituents so they could be involved in public policy advocacy.”

Jeff Coleman, a Republican consultant in Pennsylvania, said that the Values Action Team model is actually one that he initially developed as a state legislator. “It’s a model he developed in the Pennsylvania House, and something he replicated in D.C.,” Coleman said.

Pitts said that, in his view, the group has grown significantly in clout since its founding. “It’s very influential on our side of the aisle,” he said. “I don’t want to overinflate it, but people look to us for input.”

Leaders in the anti-abortion movement agree that Pitts has played a significant role in the abortion debate.

Pitts “is very influential on right-to-life issues because he brings both deep convictions and consistent command of the substance of each issue,” said Douglas Johnson, the legislative director at the National Right to Life Committee. “His style is neither polarizing nor abrasive — he interacts with colleagues all persuasions with respect and integrity.”

Johnson noted that the Stupak-Pitts amendment won the support of seven of the 12 Democrats in the Pennsylvania House delegation. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) voted for the Senate equivalent.

While abortion-rights advocates vehemently disagree with Pitts’ positions, they concur that he has been a player in the abortion debate.

“It came as no surprise to us that Mr. Pitts injected anti-choice politics in the health-reform debate,” said Ted Miller, the director of communications for NARAL Pro-Choice America. “The anti-choice side seems to rely on him to carry their water at every turn. We work with many pro-life members of Congress on issues such as improving women’s access to contraception or ensuring our teens receive accurate sex education. Unfortunately, Mr. Pitts refuses to support these commonsense ideas.”

Pitts bristles at the idea that he’s averse to working with Democrats, citing not just the Democratic support for Stupak-Pitts but also a long record of collaborating with lawmakers in the opposite party.

Pitts has joined House Small Business Chairwoman Nydia Velazquez (D-N.Y.) in co-sponsoring a bill that seeks to expand health care coverage among small businesses by proposing a risk-pooling mechanism as well as incentives for small companies to offer health coverage.

Meanwhile, Pitts – a member of the influential House Energy and Commerce Committee — is working with Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.) on legislation that would streamline the permitting and approval process for new nuclear power plants.

Pitts has also been a leading advocate for human rights and political and religious freedom around the world, efforts that sometimes bring him to collaborate with Democrats. He founded the Religious Prisoners’ Congressional Task Force, and in 2008, he advocated boycotting the Beijing Olympics unless China improved its human-rights record.

He has advocated for more traditional Republican fare, as well, introducing legislation to repeal the estate tax and supporting then-President George W. Bush’s tax cuts and his proposal to introduce private accounts into Social Security.

“Rep. Pitts is a dedicated legislator who has been deeply involved in many of the pressing issues the House has been dealing with this year,” House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told PoliticsPA through a spokesman.

Pitts also appears to have the respect of his fellow Pennsylvania lawmakers. “You don’t hear the others complaining about him,” said David Patti, the president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Business Council. Coleman, the Republican consultant, described his style as that of “a kindly uncle.”

Pitts appears unlikely to face serious hurdles to winning an eighth term. His increasing profile as an abortion opponent should not be a liability in his conservative district, which, among other things, includes many socially conservative Amish constituents. In 2006 – a bad year for Republicans nationally and in Pennsylvania – Pitts won by the lowest percentage of his Congressional career. But his margin was still 56 percent – 39 percent margin, and the Cook Political Report rates his contest Solid Republican.

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Louis Jacobson is a staff writer with PolitiFact.com and a contributing editor with National Journal. He writes frequently on the Pennsylvania Congressional delegation for PoliticsPA.