Genius Idea of the Month: Reparations for Planned Parenthood
Did you know that Planned Parenthood was deeply wronged when CBS chose to air the pro-life Super Bowl ad featuring Tim Tebow and his mom? That’s what one editor at The Nation thinks.
From my article at NewsReal earlier this week:
Incensed by the completely innocuous Tim Tebow Super Bowl commercial, sports editor Dave Zirin blogged his fury at The Nation yesterday. He admits the ad was “about as vanilla as an Andy Williams Christmas Special.” But it’s not the actual content of the ad that angers Zirin.
It’s the pesky free speech.
He’s infuriated that CBS would even consider offering a platform to Focus on the Family, an organization Zirin says has “shadowy connections to to open hate groups.” He believes allowing Focus on the Family to pay for “this kind of a mammoth public forum is an absolute disgrace.”
So what’s his solution?
Zirin insists CBS execs should have to make amends for their complicity in advancing the pro-life agenda. “They should offer free commercial time to Planned Parenthood,” he proposes.
Please visit NewsReal to read the rest.
Keep Government Out of Health Care, Say … Liberals?
Want a clear indication that the federal government has no business getting into the health insurance industry? Look no further than the Stupak amendment, the measure that attached tight abortion funding restrictions to the House health care bill.
Democratic consultant Karen Finney called the Stupak amendment “an attack on our personal freedom and liberty as guaranteed by the constitution.” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) said the amendment “attempts to dictate to women how to spend their own money.” And liberal columnist Michelle Goldberg lamented, “Health-insurance reform was supposed to end the sort of hideous cruelties our system inflicts on patients, not create them.”
To call Finney, Lee, and Goldberg tone deaf would be a grand understatement.
The only reason the abortion restrictions in the Stupak amendment are so intrusive is because health care reform is so intrusive. When we increase the role of government in health care, our freedoms and choices become more vulnerable to politics. Period.
Funding for every aspect of the doctor-patient relationship, every medical test and procedure, and every health care guideline becomes susceptible to pressure from special interest groups and moral scrutiny by taxpayers. If guys who can’t get it up have enough money to throw around, erectile dysfunction drugs make the cut. If taxpayers think acupuncturists are predatory quacks, no reimbursement for them. And after the reconciled bill is signed by the president, an unelected body will make these decisions for all of us.
Liberals cheered when President Obama appointed an executive pay czar, reasoning that companies like AIG have no right to determine pay packages if taxpayers are footing the bill. But somehow they missed the obvious lesson. There are always strings attached to government handouts.
Welcome, liberals, to the hazards of government subsidy. Either private insurance is restricted by health care reform, as with the Stupak provisions, or abortion receives some form of federal funding, thus changing the status quo. There’s no in between.
Objectionable restrictions abound when we seek increased state participation in our lives through regulation or subsidy. Just ask members of a United Methodist Church group that refused to make a beachfront pavilion available to a lesbian couple for a civil union ceremony. The group lost its state property tax exemption for failing to make the venue available to everyone on an equal basis. But that’s how it works: if you want state subsidies, you have to play by the state’s rules.
We’ve seen the impact on coverage in states that are experimenting with models of universal health care. In Massachusetts, legal immigrants no longer have state-subsidized coverage for dental, hospice, and skilled nursing care. And if you’re a Medicaid patient, prisoner, or public employee in Washington state, don’t expect your government to cough up the cash for knee arthroscopy for osteoarthritis – it’s one of several treatments no longer covered.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that “the power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited.” Do liberals really believe that those regulations will exist to make their wildest dreams come true, now and forever?
When you invite the government to become more deeply involved in health care, you’re also inviting greater government interference in personal choice. Medical decisions become political decisions. That’s how it works, and it’s why philosophical opposition to the growth of government isn’t the crazy-eyed wingnuttery progressives make it out to be.
Proponents of liberal health care reform deliberately lured a bloodthirsty vampire over their thresholds, and now they’re shocked – SHOCKED – to find they have fangs buried deep in their necks. I’m not one to blame the victim, but it sounds like they might be getting exactly what they were asking for.
Two Thumbs Up, Social Cons!
Media reports have hailed Saturday’s passage of the Stupak amendment – a measure to impose tight restrictions on federally subsidized abortions – as a great triumph for pro-life Republicans.
What a crock.
The bipartisan vote was not a Republican coup. It was the final bit of lubrication needed to help the House health reform bill squeak through in a 220-215 vote. Without the passage of the Stupak amendment, Nancy Pelosi would not have had enough pro-life Democrats on board to pass her bill. So at best, the Stupak amendment was a Pyrrhic victory for pro-life Republicans. But more accurately, it was a demonstration that House Republicans are hopeless marks, skillfully manipulated into providing political cover for pro-life Democrats.
Even with the passage of the amendment, this pro-life “triumph” is destined to be short-lived should the bill make it to conference committee. More than 40 pro-choice Democrats are threatening to sink the final bill if it contains the abortion funding restrictions, and President Obama wants the amendment language nixed as well. With weeks or months for House Majority Whip James Clyburn to bargain with pro-life Democrats, there’s a good chance he’ll gather enough votes to pass a final reconciled bill without the Stupak language. Few Democrats will want to block History in the Making™.
Republicans had just one opportunity to derail Nancy Pelosi’s bill on Saturday: all they needed to do was hold their noses and vote “present” on the Stupak amendment. But only Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) had the stones to do so. The rest voted “aye” and now the Democrats have momentum, courtesy of the House GOP.
Votes in favor of the Stupak amendment amounted to nothing more than pro-life window dressing. No unborn lives will be saved by this vote, and in the end, all House Republicans will have to show for their “courage” are their pro-life bona fides. The vote was devoid of any true value to the pro-life cause, and if the reconciled bill passes, abortion will no longer be just a right women can choose to exercise; it will be an entitlement.
If a meaningless political gesture is enough to let these politicians sleep at night, it’s time to find new representatives.
Mandating Late-Term Abortion Training for OB/GYNs?
A few months ago, I wrote about the movement to apply a pro-choice litmus test to OB/GYN residency applicants. The theory is that there aren’t enough doctors willing to perform abortions because Americans are too tolerant of conscientious objection in the medical field. Conscience protections ought to be thrown out the window to make way for practitioners who are more accommodating of women seeking to terminate their pregnancies.
This week, following the assassination of late-term abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, comes the disturbing suggestion from Hilzoy (via Megan McArdle) that we “[r]equire training in late-term abortion techniques for Ob/Gyn certification.” The idea is to mitigate the risk of violent action against late-term abortion doctors by increasing their numbers, “ensuring that no one person has to take on him- or herself the risks that militant anti-abortionists want to subject them to.”
Hey, while we’re at it, why not launch an Inquisition to purge pro-life doctors from the medical profession?
It’s essential that we continue to train doctors who identify as pro-life, as well as those who are passionately pro-choice. Here’s what I wrote in my original piece on the subject:
A woman should be able to choose a doctor whose moral compass points in the same direction as hers. Families should know that their doctor shares their values and will remain faithful to them, especially in a life or death situation. Revoking conscience protections would revoke patient choice, a violation that would offend more pro-choice liberals if they were, at the very least, concerned with being consistent.
Most liberal feminists would balk at receiving gynecological care from a dedicated pro-lifer. Shouldn’t pro-life women be able to choose a doctor who doesn’t engage in professional practices they find morally objectionable?
There is, without a doubt, a demand for abortion providers in America. There is also a demand for doctors whose work is informed by a pro-life perspective on abortion, contraception, sterilization, and end-of-life decisions. It is not the government’s role to decide that one of these categories of professionals should be phased out because it is less valuable than the other.
When did it become acceptable to ask the government to facilitate the subordination of a pro-life patient’s dignity to a pro-choice patient’s dignity?
Mandating that OB/GYNs be able to provide late-term abortions would be a frightening assault on patient choice and dignity. It’s doubtful that it would save the lives of abortion doctors, but it would most certainly leave millions of pro-life women (and the many pro-choice women who find late-term abortions appalling) without access to medical care that meets their psychological and moral needs.
Choice For Me, But Not For Thee
Health care provider conscience laws began to appear on the federal books shortly after the United States Supreme Court decided Roe v Wade in 1973. These statutory provisions protect health care professionals from discrimination if they refuse to participate in abortion and sterilization services on the basis of religious or moral objections.
In 2008, the Bush administration issued a rule strengthening the requirements for compliance with the conscience protections set forth in the Public Health Service Act, the Church Amendments, and the Weldon Amendment. Widely criticized as a nose-thumbing anti-abortion swan song for President Bush, the eleventh hour ruling was actually in the works for most of 2008.
Mike Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services at the time, pushed for the regulation in response to a move by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ABOG) to require pro-life physicians to provide abortion referrals as a condition of board certification. Concerned that the ACOG and ABOG policies violated freedom of conscience and non-discrimination laws, HHS issued the final interpretive rule in December 2008.
The new administration moved swiftly to begin the rescission process when President Obama took office. But, as Tabitha Hale points out, while the interpretation of conscience laws may change significantly under the Obama administration, it is highly unlikely that pro-life doctors will be forced to perform abortions any time soon.
And that just doesn’t sit well with Jacob Appel. He’s a storytelling bioethicist with a fever, and the only cure is more abortionists.
You may remember Jacob Appel from his recent call for an abortion pride movement. His latest lament is that the number of abortion providers has steadily decreased, and yet pro-life medical practitioners are still permitted to take up valuable slots in OB/GYN training programs. He proposes that medical programs help abortion providers increase their ranks by using a pro-choice litmus test to screen OB/GYN residency applicants.
Using religious and moral objections to abortion to bar qualified doctors from receiving training in obstetrics and gynecology is a clear violation of conscience protection laws, but Appel has an answer for that.
In the case of abortion, the current shortage of providers justifies a limited waiver of conscience exemptions as applied to the training of new OBGYNs. If we do not act, women may find themselves in a position similar to that of the criminal defendant who in theory has the legal right to counsel, but cannot find any lawyer willing to take her case.
Appel does not bother to address why a doctor who intends to specialize in geriatric gynecology, for example, would need to perform abortions. He also neglects to consider that pro-life doctors are not the only ones who refuse to terminate pregnancies. Indeed, there are many pro-choice physicians who are just as unwilling to provide abortion services.
But the greatest flaw in Appel’s argument is his contention that he is a champion of patient choice and access. Appel is only interested in ensuring choice and access for women seeking abortion doctors, not for women seeking doctors who respect their beliefs because they share them.
A woman should be able to choose a doctor whose moral compass points in the same direction as hers. Families should know that their doctor shares their values and will remain faithful to them, especially in a life or death situation. Revoking conscience protections would revoke patient choice, a violation that would offend more pro-choice liberals if they were, at the very least, concerned with being consistent.
Most liberal feminists would balk at receiving gynecological care from a dedicated pro-lifer. Shouldn’t pro-life women be able to choose a doctor who doesn’t engage in professional practices they find morally objectionable?
Appel’s essay is not a harmless, isolated intellectual exercise. His views are shared by many of the liberal feminist chatterati, including some in the medical community.
Dr. Julie Cantor, for instance, feels conscientious objection in medicine has gone awry, and that we, as a society, are far too tolerant of individual conscience. Like Appel, she believes that “physicians and other health care providers have an obligation to choose specialties that are not moral minefields for them. Qualms about abortion, sterilization, and birth control? Do not practice women’s health.” She feigns passionate support for putting patients’ interests first, but not so shockingly, that support does not extend to choosing a doctor one doesn’t consider an agent of death.
A doctor’s conscientious refusal to perform an abortion does not strip a patient of her constitutionally protected right to seek an abortion, not even if she has to get an advance on her paycheck and shimmy across the frozen tundra on her pregnant belly to reach the closest abortion provider. The government is not your mom, your BFF, and your knight in shining armor all rolled into one convenient, omnipresent package.
There is, without a doubt, a demand for abortion providers in America. There is also a demand for doctors whose work is informed by a pro-life perspective on abortion, contraception, sterilization, and end-of-life decisions. It is not the government’s role to decide that one of these categories of professionals should be phased out because it is less valuable than the other.
When did it become acceptable to ask the government to facilitate the subordination of a pro-life patient’s dignity to a pro-choice patient’s dignity?
Seeking Clarity in the Abortion Debate
This weekend on Secular Right, John Derbyshire proposed pruning some of the language we use to frame the abortion debate:
Isn’t there any way to wean people off the silly, prissy, dishonest terminology of “pro-life” and “pro-choice”? What’s wrong with “anti-abortion” and “pro-abortion”? That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it?
I sympathize with his frustrations about intellectual dishonesty in the abortion debate, and agree that semantic chicanery is rampant on both sides of the issue. However, the four terms in question – pro-life, pro-choice, pro-abortion, and anti-abortion – constitute a set of distinctly meaningful positions that are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
For example, in the absence of a belief in automatic ensoulment, can’t one be anti-abortion because the idea of snuffing out a potential life is offensive, but pro-choice in the recognition that medical professionals and clergy are better qualified than the government to help women and couples make family planning decisions?
I realize “pro-choice” and “pro-life” entered common parlance thanks to savvy pollsters engaged in propagandist wordplay, but they now serve a purpose in helping people define their viewpoints. Positions on abortion are not binary and the language we have reflects that, so devising a simplified linguistic framework would actually impede clarity in the debate.
Finally, while I understand where John is coming from, trimming the language is a little Newspeakish for my taste, even if suppression of free discourse isn’t the intention. I think I like the Oldspeak just fine, warts and all.