According to this post at USA Today’s Faith & Reason blog, that could be the depressing reality following the interim appointment of Paul Kirk to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by the death of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, until a special election is held next January.

Kirk was appointed yesterday by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and was sworn into the Senate today by Vice President Joe Biden.  But as USA Today notes, while Kirk is Catholic (in fact, he’s the grandnephew of Cardinal William O’Connell, who served as archbishop of Boston from 1907-1944), Kirk also has a political history of supporting abortion rights when he served as Democratic National Committee chairman in 1988.

Given this political history, USA Today predicts Kirk would not vote in favor of the inclusion of pro-life language into the health-care reform bill now before Congress, to exclude any funding for abortion.

Says the Faith & Reason entry, “So, Kirk will likely be, as expected, a Kennedy on this matter—a Catholic politician social progressives will like and traditionalists despise—until he’s replaced in January.”