The Associated Press reports that Americans may be getting more than they bargained for from healthcare legislation that is now making its way through Congress.
“Health care legislation before Congress would allow a new government-sponsored insurance plan to cover abortions, a decision that would affect millions of women and recast federal policy on the divisive issue. . .
“Advocates on both sides are preparing for a renewed battle over abortion, which could jeopardize political support for President Barack Obama’s health care initiative aimed at covering nearly 50 million uninsured and restraining medical costs. The dispute could come to a head with House and Senate floor votes on abortion this fall, a prospect that many lawmakers would like to avoid.”
The article also mentions a “compromise” measure that would disallow government subsidies for abortion but would allow only money from beneficiary premiums to cover the procedure. In my view, such a “compromise” is just book-keeping sophistry. The only money that the government has is money that comes from tax-payers. How would the government propose to separate pro-life premiums from pro-choice premiums? This makes no sense to me, and I hardly think it to be a compromise.
For me, the bottom line is this. If a government-funded healthcare plan funds abortion, then it amounts to government-funded infanticide. No consistently pro-life person can support healthcare reform that includes coverage for abortions. Beware of those who argue otherwise.
9 Comments
Don Johnson
The people for allowing abortion want to treat it as any other medical procedure. However, death is a sharp dividing line.
Ryan K.
The irony is that many extreme right-wing folks were last week spreading nasty lies that Obama wanted to round up old me and have them terminated as part of his health care plan. Turns out they just were mistaken; it is the unborn that Obama is approving to be terminated under this plan.
Nathan
Don’t kid yourself Ryan. Obama and his new government-funded plan would kill the infirmed and elderly, because they will ration care. If the overwhelming cost of health-care expenses occur in the last six months of life (I don’t have a link for that figure, but I have heard it multiple times and from my own father’s last six months know it to be true) and the government can’t afford a Trillion-plus dollar a year program (and it can’t), then health-care WILL BE rationed.
Europe and Canada are already doing it. And the old will be told to die or worse they will euthanize them like they do in the Netherlands where old people refuse to go into the hospital because once there the doctors (a.k.a. the government) choose whether they live or die.
Ryan K.
Not sure what you mean but not kidding myself Nathan, but the argument that Obama is going to directly kill elderly people, and that his plan will ration health care, are not akin.
Let us think more clearly than that and be more civil with those we politically disagree with.
Nathan
So Ryan, so you don’t think that rationing health-care will disproportionately affect the elderly, or do you believe that health care won’t be rationed? If the former you are kidding yourself, if the latter then you really are not paying attention to all the other countries of the world that have socialized their medicine.
By the way, it is perfectly civil to yell “get out of here” if a bomb is about ready to go off.
Ryan K.
Hey Nathan, maybe we are simply misunderstanding each other. I am simply saying that rationing something is not equal with rounding people up to kill them. I do not think this is a sensational statement.
Are you thinking I am “kidding myself” by stating this?
Darius T
Ryan, you are correct in the same way that Hutus saying that Tutsis are cockroaches not deserving of life was not equal to a Hutu picking up a machete and chopping his Tutsi neighbor to death… but the former certainly led to the latter.
Dropping a bowling ball off of a ten story building isn’t in itself an immoral act, but if it is likely that that ball will crush some random passerby, then dropping it becomes wrong.
Nathan
Ryan,
I do because if someone else is doing the rationing and as I stated in an earlier post that the overwhelming use of health-care comes in a person’s last six months of life, who do you think will be the group that gets the short end of the straw.
As I said, it is already happening in Europe and Canada, so why would you think it wouldn’t happen here?
Darius’ illustration about the bowling ball is accurate. The government has already alluded that rationing will occur, so somebody will be pooched. Also, the government has already had to come out and said abortions will be part of their “health-care” plan, so the unborn will not be eliminated by all of our health-care dollars should the government take over.
I guess to sum it up. Our founders believed government was moral only when the people controlled it. That is why they said should a time come when the government takes away the rights of the people to govern themselves, it might be time for a change.
So this is not “Change I can believe in” and I personally believe we all (including me) kid ourselves far too often in life.
Nathan
Typo “Unborn WILL be eliminated by all of our tax dollars”