Quote of the Day
November 30, 2009 13 Comments
From Megan McArdle:
“And no, you cannot get around this by arguing that the Catholic Church/evangelical liberals should care as much about the people who die from lack of health care as the fetuses killed by abortions. Last time I looked, there were over 1 million abortions a year in the United States. The most methodologically shoddy, activist-induced statistics on the number who die from lack of health insurance is 44,000, and the real number is much lower. The abortion statistics, on the other hand, are carefully collected numbers from a pro-choice group. Even if you only value a fetus as 1/20th of a person, the fetuses win.”
The whole objection, as I see it, from the Catholic Church is that health care shouldn’t allow for killing of the unborn. It’s a simple compromise, if you ask me, that can be made by the Democratic Party on this issue. I imagine the Church would be equally up in arms if a provision for assisted-suicide was included in this bill so they’re not being inconsistent.
I agree. As the Archbishop of Denver said,
Yeah but . . .
There’s huge difference bewteen ADVOCATING for abortion – which I’m not aware of any liberal or Democratic group doing – and saying that if a woman makes the extremely difficult choice to have an abortion her medical needs will be covered so she doesn’t endanger herself by making that choice. And no, lack of coverage won’t stop abortions – they have occured since humans figured out how to do it.
This is like the “death panel” canard so many conservative bought off on – except death panels were really all about increasing the incentives for doctors and patients to have open and honest discussions about end of life care. Try again please.
Philip, so lack of coverage won’t stop abortions … so what?
The/Your argument that people are going to have abortions in back alleys is baloney. They aren’t having them now like that, and if health coverage doesn’t pay for abortions then nothing has changed in regards to this procedure.
Try again please.
I’m not suggesting they are having them in back alleys now – but I am suggesting that if we look at history as our guide, and use the health care “reform” buill to deny coverage, we have a fairly high chance of people going to back alleys because its cheaper, thus returning us to a state where women’s health was also imperiled. Mike razzes us liberals for not always thinking thing through to their “logical” consequences, and I think this is a huge one that conservatives are missing.
I’d also add that abortion opponents had 6 years of a supposedly willing President and Congress under Mr. Bush, and intriduced not a single bill outlawing or restricting abortions domestically. Not one. An dif this is THE major social justice issue as the Church makes it out to be, they should have. Scores of them. But not one. And now that a Democrat is in power and a Democratic Congresss is voting on a major piece of national legislation, abortion bans all of a sudden become a requirement. The hipocracy is dripping . . . .
Phillip,
I believe the Partial Birth Abortion Ban was passed in 2003.
The McArdle piece discusses the exact topic you and Tom are covering:
The point of course is that there isn’t suddenly going to be this big group of women who used to be able to get abortions and now they can’t because the government isn’t going to pay for them with a public plan. They aren’t getting them now with medicare in most states. What liberals are really complaining about is that the government isn’t going to supply funds to increase access to abortion. The cynical response from me is that abortions have always been an important part of liberal social planning because less mouths to feed = more funds for others. The measured response from me is that if liberals added money for adoption assistance and also made the process easier, conservative support would be there for that part of the bill. I am positive that John McCain would voice his support because adoption is a pet issue of his.
Philip, you said: I am suggesting that if we look at history as our guide, and use the health care “reform” buill to deny coverage, we have a fairly high chance of people going to back alleys because its cheaper …
I think Mike just covered this. Medicare is already denying coverage for abortions, so if abortion services are cut from the health care reform, the status quo will be preserved in regards to abortions. Absolutely no one is wronged, absolutely no one loses coverage. The only way women start going to back alleys is if health care reform is a total mess and rates increase dramatically. However I thought that the Democratic Party swore that wasn’t going to happen.
Woman will go to back alleys when doctors stop performing abortions in legal, safe clinics, and doctors will stop performing abortions in legal, safe clinics when they no longer get compensated for them. Its simple economics. And while Medicare deosn’t do so now, some health plans do, and if the reform bill passes as amended, noe will be allowed to.
I also don’t buy the “Liberals need to put more money into adoption” red herring – again Conservatives who oppose aborton have had plenty of opportunities to do so, and chosen not to. Liberals don’t need to better fund adoptions because we aren’t taking abortion off the table.
You know what my real problem with adding abortion to the healthcare bill is? This is a significant legal matter, in as much as to change how and whether abortions are performed in the U.S. requires changes to statutes and probably legal challenges to Roe V. Wade (of which there have been few, and none successful).
Health care legislation (where the abortion funding ban is a rider) is a dishonest, intellectually bankrupt way to approach it. Yes, the partial birth abortion ban was passed in 2003, yet to hear many conservatives tell it, that was a defeat. So lets debate abortion on its own merits – and with all the emphasis that healthcare is now getting. Let’s not go trying to sneak it in on the back of something else, while no one is suppisedly looking.
And Mike,
be careful what you go accusing liberals of. the Republican Party, afterall, wants all those impoverished people to continue to be deined health care coverage that is affordable, all the while trying to destroy the federal safety net in the name of reducing the size of government. There’s no social justice in that approach either, and it’s no less social engineering then what you just accused us of.
Phillip – you’re saying that the bill will prevent private plans from covering abortion? That is news to me. I find that incredibly hard to believe. As Tom and I (and Megan) point out, the bill would really just maintain the status quo. Liberals are proposing an expansion of abortion funding. We’re simply saying, no, you can’t.
“Liberals don’t need to better fund adoptions because we aren’t taking abortion off the table.”
There’s so much wrong with that statement on a moral level that I’m just going to let it stand alone. If we weren’t buddies it would have to be my quote of the year. I’m hoping that was just an unfortunate choice of words. Just as an FYI though, increased funding for adoptions and streamlining the process was part of John McCains’s platform last year. Obama didn’t even mention the word ‘adoption’ in his.
Also, ‘impoverished’ people are not being denied healthcare in large numbers. They have medicare and s-chip. S-chip was recently just expanded to include several million more people. When we talk about lack-of-healthcare we’re mostly talking the self-employed and lower middle class….certainly not the poor.
Mike, I read your adoption funding statement as a requriement for liberals, since if we funded more adoptions and adoption services, abortions might well drop. Fundamentally I agree with that concept, but when ever I’ve tried to point out to conservatives that Pro-life should mean exactly that, I get told repeatedly that there’s no need for more funds, or that they are focused on abortion, not adoption. Thus, over the years I’ve come to see most anti-abortion folks as not interested in what else can be done (besides repealing Roe V. Wade).
Based on that, I don’t think liberals have an onus to add to adoption funding, because we’re not (generally) trying to replace abortion with adoption which might well drive a need for more funds. And as to it being a part of the McCain platform – that’s great, but what major piece of federal legislation has Mr. McCain introduced in the last year to do that? If its an issue that is important to him, he can lead on it even though he isn’t President. He hasn’t.
McCain has co-sponsored adoption legislation in the past and he’s a major part of the Congressgional Caucus on Adoption. Adoption groups across the country regularly point to him as a leader on the topic. Just Google it and you’ll see what I am talking about.
I don’t know what conservatives you are talking to but in my experience most conservatives support doing whatever it takes to limit abortions, including adoption. But we’re also realists that know the best way of limiting abortion is to revise the law which allows it so frequently.
Mike,
How well did that approach work with alcohol and prohibition?
Or carbon emissions, or smoking, or obesity…etc. Both sides have tried changing people’s behaviors at various times. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t consider abortion to be a vice like alcohol. Are you saying people just can’t resist the lure of abortion?