Political Hay
Playing for Keeps
How we know abortion coverage is in the health care plan.
When President Obama was asked about whether abortion was in his health care plan, he answered elliptically. He didn’t say it was or wasn’t. He said there was a “tradition in this town of not paying for abortion.” But isn’t he the One elected on a platform of hope and change? Isn’t he the One who wants to re-found the American experiment?
Liberals would never have supported him for President if he said — as Sen. Al Gore once said — that abortion should not be federally-funded. Gore was running for President in 1988. He faced a buzzsaw of criticism from New York’s powerful liberal fundraiser, Harold Ickes, Jr. His opposition to federal funding of abortion effectively ended Gore’s quest for the White House twenty-one years ago.
Obama would make no such mistakes in his triumphal march to the Presidency. Now, as we enter the crucial weeks of the nation’s long and drawn-out health care debate, we get confirmation that abortion is in the health care takeover plan.
No less a source than the reliably left-wing National Public Radio (NPR) confirmed federal funding of abortion for us. Julie Rovner explained that the reason the abortion issue has loomed so large in this year’s health care debate is that “this time they’re playing for keeps.” All other abortion funding restrictions are annual amendments, Rovner pointed out on “Weekend Edition,” but the Obamacare plan will become “permanent law.” Both sides of the abortion debate, she reported, know that “there’s a lot at stake here.”
NPR quoted liberal Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). Schakowsky said: “Comprehensive health care does include reproductive health care, prenatal and maternity care, screening for breast, cervical and other cancers or [sexually transmitted infections] abortion, contraceptive services. That these are basic health care for women [emphasis added] that we have a right to by virtue of our reproductive organs and our right to control our own bodies.”
Thank you, Rep. Schakowsky. You have dispelled most admirably the fog of confusion emanating from the White House fog machine. For liberals, life or death for unborn children is simply a matter of choice. Rights come not from God, but from our reproductive organs. Notice, it’s rights squared — we all have a right to health care and we have a right to say what health care is. Our right to control our bodies implies a right to make taxpayers pay for whatever we decide to do with our bodies.
When the Department of Veterans Affairs last summer dredged up a rejected pamphlet for wounded warriors titled “Your Life, Your Choices,” liberals cried foul as conservatives charged the pamphlet was opening the door to suicide for depressed and suffering vets.
But given Rep. Schakowsky’s definition of rights — including the right to “control our bodies” — why was the conservatives’ charge wrong? How could the government deny you the right to control your body by ending your life if it is your life and your choice?
I’d like to thank the pro-life Democrats for bravely fighting against this inclusion of federally-funded abortions in the national health care plan. Many of them favor some form of federal health care takeover — with which I strongly disagree. But these pro-life Democrats are sacrificing greatly to stand on principle. Right now, they are the best hope we have for stopping this historic power grab.
Yes, Julie Rovner is right: A lot is at stake here. If Obamacare goes through, if it has a hidden abortion funding mandate in it (if, for example, it requires health insurance plans to cover abortions), we will even more deeply divide our wounded country over abortion.
“What they seek is that we shall cease calling it wrong.” That’s what Lincoln said at Cooper Union in 1860. He knew that the extreme advocates of slavery could not accept any settlement of the slavery debate that cast human bondage as morally unacceptable.
For more than thirty years, the ban on federal funding of abortion first carried by the late Henry Hyde has carried with it a presumption that we call abortion wrong. That is why liberals rallied to Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton once, and only once, called it wrong. (Newsweek, October 31, 1994.) But she never acted as if it was wrong. Obama never even called abortion wrong.
If he wins on his health care plan, all Americans will be forced to pay for abortion. All Americans will have to treat what Ronald Reagan called “the slaughter of innocents” as if it is right. No wonder President Reagan said that abortion was “a wound in our national soul.” If Obamacare passes, the wound will be mortal.
About the Author
Ken Blackwell, the former mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio is Vice Chairman of the Republican National Committee’s Platform Committee. He also serves on the boards of the Club For Growth and the National Taxpayers Union.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (43) | Leave a comment
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Darin| 10.28.09 @ 7:20AM
So at what point does the unborn baby have the right to live? At what point are they a human being and not just the "property" of the mother?
Abortion denies the baby their right to life. Like slavery, an unborn baby is defined as "property" to be used (or discarded) at the owners whim.
Ken (Old Texican)| 10.28.09 @ 11:02AM
Darin
Ask any woman who has had an inadvertant miscarriage. Seriously, ask any number you can find. We would be interested in what you hear.
democratsarefascists| 10.28.09 @ 1:49PM
This is the Democrat's very definition of a fetus.
It is a slave to the state, just like the mother.
At any time before or after birth, just like the mother, it can be killed by the state.
It is nothing but tissue during its entire lifespan.
Just ask Holdren.
Pingback| 10.28.09 @ 8:46AM
Headlines 10.28.2009 — ExposeTheMedia.com links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
2Anglico| 10.28.09 @ 8:57AM
The reason they scream so loud is because some of us are still willing to say it is wrong. And they know it is wrong too. That is why they gnash their teeth so.
JohnD| 10.28.09 @ 9:17AM
If health care passes, what happens when, in the name of "bending the cost curve," pregnant women are told by the omnipotent Government, "well Ma'am, 9 months of prenatal care and delivering your baby is too expensive, so, we'll pay for you to terminate your pregnancy, but not to carry and deliver your child. If you want to carry and deliver your child you have to go outside our national health care system but then you are done getting any more health care from us for life; you'll still pay though."
How is that for "choice?" Does my scenario sound far fetched given the nature of what the Democrats have proposed?
KyMouse| 10.28.09 @ 10:15AM
Not far-fetched at all, JohnD; in fact, I think it will be much worse. Amniocentesis, which is just about mandatory for older expectant mothers, will be used to even more to ferret out which unborn babies have birth defects that would make them too expensive to carry on government-controlled health care plans.
Even today, approximately 9 out of 10 babies who are so much as suspected of having Down syndrome are aborted (eugenics in action). Sometimes the diagnosis of such problems is flat-out wrong: I know a couple who were told that their baby would be born without a brain, and were advised to abort her. The doctor was wrong, and the girl is now an honor student in high school.
How many babies will be killed before birth because of a "defect" that the government says makes them "unworthy of life"?
JohnD| 10.28.09 @ 10:33AM
I have a long-time female colleague who was pregnant some 17 years ago, and her water broke one afternoon at work when she was only 4 months along. She was rushed to the hospital, and she delivered a very, very premature male child. Her private insurer, (an HMO) spent several hundred thousand dollars providing weeks of care for the child in a preemie ward at a world class hospital in Washington, DC, where they underook heroic efforts to provide the necessary life saving and preserving care of a child that was about the size of a banana. (or was he just a "fetus").
I am proud to say that the child in question, is now a handsome, tall, and happy high school senior, popular with the ladies and very much a fine young man who is every bit as healthy and "normal" as any other 17 year old boy. I have watched that young man grow up. I remember seeing his picture in his first first little league uniform, and recently his prom photo.
How much is his life worth? Would the U.S. Government have allowed this wonderful vibrant young man to hit his first single, or dance with his prom date? What is that worth to Uncle Sam? To our society in general? To his loving parents and grandparents?
When I think of this young man, having seen him grow to a young adult all these years after being given virtually no chance to survive at birth, I remind myself that miracles do occur, if you let them.
But if you let a Washington budget analyst put a price on a human life, any human life, you will find that it isn't worth a dime. Not your life, nor mine.
DaveS| 10.28.09 @ 6:24PM
Good comment. If you are following the 'earlier than previously known' viability argument, you'd be reasonable. Here's another tack: how many full-term infants are 'viable' without their mothers (or another giver of care?) How many 1-year olds? See, the viability argument extends to BOTH sides of the expected date.
Jim| 10.29.09 @ 10:00PM
How many members of the democrat party's ever-expanding coalition of "victims" would be "viable" without Federal and State welfare checks? They've never learned to work, instead, they've learned helplessness.
Goodgrief| 10.28.09 @ 1:38PM
Once the government controls health care, they will incrementally (over time) decide what is allowed and what is not. This will most certainly include how many children a woman can have. I can just see the national debate now and how selfish people are that want more than one or two children. China move over, there are many who hate children.
Pingback| 10.28.09 @ 10:25AM
Political Wisdom: Lieberman in the Cross Hairs - Capital Journal - WSJ links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
cuban pete| 10.28.09 @ 10:26AM
Is Schakowsky's husband out of jail now?
Pingback| 10.28.09 @ 10:53AM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : Playing for Keeps [spectator.org] on links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
leber12| 10.28.09 @ 12:07PM
This does not surprise me. It only reinforces the fact that Obama has been lying about they content of the bill while at the same time accusing critics of the bill of spreading false information.
Speak Up at http://www.QuestionObama.com
tj| 10.28.09 @ 12:08PM
Want to do something constructive... VOTE EM ALL OUT 2010/2012. I just donated to Marko Rubio of Florida, Doug Hoffman of NY, and David Harmer of California. "We the People" can win this if we all take up the mantle against corruption and take back our country. I will never send the GOP any money evuh again until or when they return to conservative values....they just don't get it!!! Duh! What part of you lost the last 2 elections does the GOP NOT UNDERSTAND???
bill carson| 10.28.09 @ 12:16PM
Most Democrats are evil beyond measure due to their embrace of abortion. Now, they want to drag everyone else down the hole with them. If we don't wake up and fight, that is exactly what will happen.
DaveS| 10.28.09 @ 6:27PM
With respect to abortion facilitators in the party, yes. Democrats who are pro-life, so-to-speak, also are bit players because they are not effective opponents. There is no haven for pro-life Dems.
Mybandy| 10.28.09 @ 2:40PM
Isn't Blackwell the 2004 ohio version of Katherine Harris in Florida who was the Secretary of the State AND a Bush campaigner? I'm sure this is VERY "OBJECTIVE" analysis from THAT guy!
edwards| 10.28.09 @ 7:01PM
Black women represent 13% of the female population but they have 40% of all abortions. Planned Parenthood has set up shop in the inner cities..
Barack Obama is a useful idiot in the war of eugenics. He's enabling the murdering of his "own" people.
2Anglico| 10.29.09 @ 9:32AM
Mybandy why don't you name 1 or 2 facts you disagree with and state your position. Trying to discredit the author is a child's game.
Pingback| 10.29.09 @ 11:41AM
Did Rep. Schakowsky Just Shout “You’re a Liar” at Pres. Obama? | Chicago Daily Observ links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Rapnsum| 10.29.09 @ 1:23PM
Everyone needs to see the film: Maafa21 to understand how evil this Eugenic Health Care bill really is. Abortion is Eugenics targeted at the weak and especially Blacks- WAKE UP! Get a clue and watch this 2 hour fully documented film - see a short preview here: www.maafa21.com
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