Let women keep their abortion coverage
Success in any long-running campaign breeds complacency; first euphoria, then relief, later forgetfulness. Whether the campaign for universal suffrage or the crusade to curb childhood disease through immunizations, success leads to historical amnesia.
That’s certainly true of the decades-long battle for reproductive rights, another chapter in women’s never-ending struggle to achieve full personhood. Because the U.S. Supreme Court granted women the right to control their own reproduction in a 1973 ruling, Roe v Wade, forty-something Americans have no first-hand knowledge of back alley abortions. It’s likely they haven’t even heard second-hand stories of women who died from infections caused by coat-hanger terminations.
That helps explain why advocates for reproductive rights weren’t prepared for an all-out battle just to allow women to retain their health insurance coverage. It also helps explain why pro-choice Democrats found themselves outmaneuvered by U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Michigan), who sponsored an amendment to health care reform legislation which would sharply limit abortions.
“I think quite honestly it’s the complacency of having a pro-choice president and the perception of a pro-choice majority in Congress,” NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan said in an interview last week.
“But I think that complacency was rocked to its core” by Stupak’s restrictions, she added, on her way to Capitol Hill to lobby against the restrictions. “It was a wake-up call that there is a constant attack on women’s reproductive rights.”
Stupak contends that his amendment, which was included in the health care legislation the House adopted two weeks ago, only maintains the status quo, a prohibition against federal funding for abortions. In reality, his amendment goes much further, discouraging private insurance companies from offering coverage for abortions, even if women want to purchase those policies with their own funds.
According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive issues, coverage for abortions is common-place in the private health insurance market. So Stupak and his colleagues would do what they promised not to do: They would prevent consumers from keeping insurance with which they are satisfied.
Keenan’s organization has already sent a petition with more than 97,000 signatures to the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, warning against adopting Stupak’s highly restrictive language in the Senate bill. It’s no surprise that those signatures materialized so quickly. Women and their advocates are highly motivated and well-organized, as evidenced by the uproar over new guidelines for mammograms.
But unlike the advocates for breast cancer treatment, proponents of reproductive rights battle a problem of perception. No one argues that breast cancer is a disease requiring treatment. Pregnancy, however, provokes a wide range of reactions — and the decision to end one stirs controversy, sometimes among family and friends. Despite the fact that abortion remains a legal medical procedure, its opponents would argue that it doesn’t constitute legitimate health care.
That view springs from ignorance or callousness (or both). Let’s say a 40-year-old mother of three finds herself unexpectedly pregnant again. Since she suffers severe hypertension, her physician advises her against taking the pregnancy to term because she’d risk a stroke or worse. That’s not medical care?
Keenan points out that women need a full range of reproductive services — including pre-natal care, contraception and abortion services. Indeed, an emphasis on contraception would reduce unintended pregnancies, thereby curbing abortions.
Recession-strapped families are wary of having additional children, according to the Guttmacher Institute, but many women have lost employer-provided insurance and are having to skip purchasing contraceptives because they are short of cash. Those families that simply can’t afford additional children are likely to scrape up the cash for an abortion, if it comes to that.
That’s why health insurance reform which supports a wide range of reproductive services is sensible policy. Stupak, who is firmly anti-abortion, may not agree with that, but a lot of more moderate voices will.
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239 comments Add your comment
Ray Pugh
November 20th, 2009
6:20 pm
First!
El Jefe
November 20th, 2009
6:21 pm
Being pro-adoption, I find your reasoning to be very narrow minded. Abortion is the only option???
Imagine if those aborted children were allowed to be adopted – we may have had another George Washington Carver, Gandhi, Pope John Paul II or Margaret Thacher.
But, alas we will never know, those poor souls were discarded on the trash heap of progressivism.
Scott Evans
November 20th, 2009
6:53 pm
Um…are women too stupid to know what causes pregnancy or what? Yes, women have reproductive rights. They have the right to keep their legs together. And if they cannot control themselves for whatever reason, then they have choices which are: 1. The choice to keep the baby or 2. The choice to adopt the baby. The unborn are babies and it’s never right to kill a baby.
Just because
November 20th, 2009
7:10 pm
This discussion wouldn’t even be happening if the demos were so hell bent and determination to push health care down our throats!!!!
William Wilberforce
November 20th, 2009
8:02 pm
Women won’t achieve personhood unless I pay for the to kill their children?
Seriously! Why the heck do you mean by personhood.
George Orwell couldn’t have written better newspeak.
I have a different defenition of personhood. How about this one, all human beings are persons, period. There are no 3/5 persons, no potential persons, no vegetative persons, no subpersons. ALL HUMAN BEINGS ARE PERSONS!
jt
November 20th, 2009
8:09 pm
“It was a wake-up call that there is a constant attack on women’s reproductive rights.”
Why is it that a progressive will get all hot and bothered about the State’s infringement upon their body concerning abortions, but,
that same progressive would not hesitate one minute to use the police power of the State to prevent one from smoking a cigarette or eating a satuated-fat bar.?
The American People
November 20th, 2009
8:30 pm
Write an article about the SEIU 1000 members beating up Ken Hamidi for trying to exercising his right for free speech at their public meeting
ck hall
November 20th, 2009
8:53 pm
What an idiot you are! NO murdering of babies!!!
Peadawg
November 20th, 2009
9:36 pm
Let God decide who lives and who dies.
Common Sense
November 20th, 2009
9:42 pm
Ms. Tucker:
I am for “reproductive rights” also but that happens before you get pregnant. May I remind you that woman who are pregnant have already reproduced !
You mean you want them to keep their “delivery rights”.
Do you know if the new health bill has coverage for the unborn child? You know, if it needs treatment in the womb (some have even had heart surgery in the womb)? Absolutely incomprehensible how we can operate on a child, have insurance pay for that operation and then kill it later if we want.
Talk about callous……………………..
May God help us ……………………..
Common Sense
November 20th, 2009
9:49 pm
P.S. Food for thought ……………..
For millions of people, protecting our unborn children is just like getting rid of slavery before the Civil War. The Supreme Court and those supporting slavery were wrong then and abortionists are wrong now. Prior to 1865, slaves received death for striking owners but owners were exempt if slaves died from beatings as they were “property”. Today, it’s legal to kill unborn “property”.
“When you see a friend who is pregnant which of these do you say:
a) How is the “fetus” doing?
b) How is the “baby” doing?
TnGelding
November 20th, 2009
10:36 pm
I’ll leave this discussion to the females.
mmm, mmm, mmm, Barack the LIAR Obama
November 20th, 2009
11:16 pm
Fine, just don’t use taxpayer money for it, period.
mmm, mmm, mmm, Barack the LIAR Obama
November 20th, 2009
11:20 pm
BROKEN campaign promises and bringing change to Washington
• Obama entered office, vowing he would do what George W. Bush had not: lead the world to a global climate accord.
• Pass the stimulus bill and unemployment won’t go above 9.2%, it’s now 10.2%
• Recipients of federal stimulus dollars have overstated the number of jobs created or saved in GA by more than 1,500, according to an AJC analysis of public records
• Quote: “I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war….You can take that to the bank!”
• Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac need $30 BILLION more taxpayer dollars
• Health Care reform by Labor Day, Oct, Christmas, end of the year, NOT
• the White House is NOT for sale
• Transparency
• bipartisan support
• close Gitmo
• Timmy the TAX CHEAT Geitner
• ACORN
• find Osama bin Laden
• NO lobbyist on the White House staff
• all bills put on line so the public can read them first
• no tax increase for anyone making less than $250K
• and on, and on, and on……let’s say it again, mmm, mmm, mmm Barack the LIAR Obama
Azazel
November 20th, 2009
11:54 pm
El Jefe
You left out: another Charles Manson or Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer or Pol Pot or Ihr Adoplh
vince neil
November 21st, 2009
12:04 am
first of all pay for your own ()*)(&%$#@ abortion leeches…second i guess we can be glad that most of them have been and are performed on liberals and democrats thereby limiting their precsence and ability to multiply…..
Common Sense
November 21st, 2009
12:12 am
To TnGelding:
Does that include unborn females ?
I saw a bumper sticker once: “Equal Rights for Unborn Women”
ledbetter
November 21st, 2009
1:29 am
The ignorance in these comments already, just hours after this piece’s posting, is astounding.
Jetro Bubby
November 21st, 2009
2:24 am
Margrat Sanger and the liberals wanted to reduce the population of certain Americans, especially African Americans so they came up with an organization which evolved into planned parenthood. Sanger stated the Negro was inferior to the white race, and she got the black clergy to do her dirty work in the slums of Harlem and other places.
Keeping the abortion part of the public option is a best way to ensure rule this great country and achieve Sanger’s objective.
Shaye
November 21st, 2009
3:17 am
I see someone invented the time machine after all… and then taught Neanderthals how to type.
If I am paying for my own insurance, then I am paying for my own abortion. And those of you who thinks it’s so easy to give a child up for adoption should try it. Come on, I dare you.
shepherdess
November 21st, 2009
6:48 am
it is a woman’s right to choose. the right of choice. that’s the deal. you men are out of it.
JOEL PARTAIN
November 21st, 2009
7:12 am
The shame to me is that with intensive education, readily available contraception and societal disapproval (not legislation) a large, large portion of abortions could be prevented.Guess what? The idiots that want to control everything in your life are against those measures, too.
An irony is that people who want to take women’s abortion rights away very often are for capital punishment. Maybe trying to keep two diametrically opposing viewpoints in a brain that is already overtaxed is what makes them so testy?
Grumpy
November 21st, 2009
7:37 am
“reproductive rights”, now that’s funny. Sucking a fetus out via vacuum, paid for with government cash = “reproductive rights”
I love how liberals can make even the most disgusting things sound so pure and innocent.
deborahinAthens
November 21st, 2009
7:46 am
El Jefe, as the world becomes more and more overpopulated and as the quality of life continues to spiral down into the trough we are looking at today, it is most unlikely that the next unaborted child will be a Beethoven! For women that live in poverty that don’t have access to cheap, affordable birth control, or whom, out of sheer ignorance get pregnant, that child is not raised in a nurturing atmosphere that fosters learning. We seem to have a lot more dysfunctional adults that we did just fifty years ago. And the other side of the coin is more troubling. We now have the science to detect genetic diseases in the womb. What good does it serve the human race to bring a child into the world that has Tey-Sachs, or Downs Syndrome? In the “old” days, when I was a child, a Down’s syndrome child rarely lived past puberty. Today, with science, they live well into their fifties or sixties. After the parents of the Down’s Syndrome child dies, who takes care of them? For we can be as politically correct as we like, but these people cannot take care of themselves without help. Where is that help going to come from? Why not abort the fetus (notice I did not say child).
Del
November 21st, 2009
8:00 am
“Reproductive rights”, “control of reproduction”, “personhood”? What kind of nonsense is this? Life begins in the womb and no one has the right to destroy it male or female. The exception being when a mother’s life is at risk by continuing the pregnancy. Elective abortions only because someone doesn’t want the baby is murder. There are many adoption options for unwanted children. Many where the cost of pre-natal care and delivery are fully paid for along with providing care for the mother. These options include special needs children.
War Jacket
November 21st, 2009
8:01 am
Look at this way. The cost of an abortion is much less than the cost of delivering a baby, much less the cost of raising a child into adulthood (and many times, these children are scared for life since they weren’t wanted in the first place.
On the other hand, abortion should not become a defacto form of birth control, so a woman should only be granted one federally subsidized elective abortion.
CJ
November 21st, 2009
8:01 am
Funny how the “pro-choice” people always want to tell US what we can do with our bodies, like what kind of health care we need to receive, what doctors we’re allowed to see and when, what we’re supposed to eat, how we’re supposed to talk and what we’re supposed to say, esle we’re “intolerant”.
Yet, when we stick up for the rights of a little one who cannot speak for themselves, we’re telling THEM what they can do with their bodies. Funny also how this little “non-person” suddenly becomes a person if there’s an accident liability check to cash.
ken
November 21st, 2009
8:21 am
Baby for a vote. SICK
Bob
November 21st, 2009
8:30 am
Many lib opine writers have now jumped this skewed reasoning that if an insurance program that starts in four years does not pay for abortions that women will be forced into back alley coathanger abortions. Don’t worry about rationing like the new mammagram guidelines that are the shape of things to come, after all, no women have ever died from breast cancer under 50 right. Lets just concern ourselves with paying for abortions.
Jack
November 21st, 2009
8:32 am
I know many women that have acquired “personhood” without having babies. I even know some men that have acquired “personhood” without having babies.
Bob
November 21st, 2009
8:33 am
Joel, thats a tired argument. The flip side is you want to end a life that has not had a chance but save the lives of killers. Kill babies, save Manson and KSM.
dmac
November 21st, 2009
8:36 am
I’m glad that abortion has become part of the debate over health care reform. The more the nutty right-wingers rant about killing babies, the more the rational majority of Americans realize that a woman should have the right to end her pregnancy.
Why would anyone want to force someone to have a baby that is not wanted?
3rd Party Guy
November 21st, 2009
8:39 am
I love the extremes in this world of ours. Here, a woman can kill a baby virtually at will. In Somalia, a woman gets stoned to death for adultery.
CJ
November 21st, 2009
8:54 am
dmac–control what goes INTO your body, and you can then control the little lives it produces!!!
connie
November 21st, 2009
9:00 am
As a woman, I want you to know you do not speak for me. The following person speaks for me.
We Shall Not Weary, We Shall Not Rest
By Richard John Neuhaus
Once again this year, the National Right to Life convention is partly a reunion of veterans from battles past and partly a youth rally of those recruited for the battles to come. And that is just what it should be. The pro-life movement that began in the twentieth century laid the foundation for the pro-life movement of the twenty-first century. We have been at this a long time, and we are just getting started. All that has been and all that will be is prelude to, and anticipation of, an indomitable hope. All that has been and all that will be is premised upon the promise of Our Lord’s return in glory when, as we read in the Book of Revelation, “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be sorrow nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.” And all things will be new.
That is the horizon of hope that, from generation to generation, sustains the great human rights cause of our time and all times—the cause of life. We contend, and we contend relentlessly, for the dignity of the human person, of every human person, created in the image and likeness of God, destined from eternity for eternity—every human person, no matter how weak or how strong, no matter how young or how old, no matter how productive or how burdensome, no matter how welcome or how inconvenient. Nobody is a nobody; nobody is unwanted. All are wanted by God, and therefore to be respected, protected, and cherished by us.
We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until every unborn child is protected in law and welcomed in life. We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until all the elderly who have run life’s course are protected against despair and abandonment, protected by the rule of law and the bonds of love. We shall not weary, we shall not rest, until every young woman is given the help she needs to recognize the problem of pregnancy as the gift of life. We shall not weary, we shall not rest, as we stand guard at the entrance gates and the exit gates of life, and at every step along way of life, bearing witness in word and deed to the dignity of the human person—of every human person.
Against the encroaching shadows of the culture of death, against forces commanding immense power and wealth, against the perverse doctrine that a woman’s dignity depends upon her right to destroy her child, against what St. Paul calls the principalities and powers of the present time, this convention renews our resolve that we shall not weary, we shall not rest, until the culture of life is reflected in the rule of law and lived in the law of love.
It has been a long journey, and there are still miles and miles to go. Some say it started with the notorious Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 when, by what Justice Byron White called an act of raw judicial power, the Supreme Court wiped from the books of all fifty states every law protecting the unborn child. But it goes back long before that. Some say it started with the agitation for “liberalized abortion law” in the 1960s when the novel doctrine was proposed that a woman cannot be fulfilled unless she has the right to destroy her child. But it goes back long before that. It goes back to the movements for eugenics and racial and ideological cleansing of the last century.
Whether led by enlightened liberals, such as Margaret Sanger, or brutal totalitarians, whose names live in infamy, the doctrine and the practice was that some people stood in the way of progress and were therefore non-persons, living, as it was said, “lives unworthy of life.” But it goes back even before that. It goes back to the institution of slavery in which human beings were declared to be chattel property to be bought and sold and used and discarded at the whim of their masters. It goes way on back.
As Pope John Paul the Great wrote in his historic message Evangelium Vitae (the Gospel of Life) the culture of death goes all the way back to that fateful afternoon when Cain struck down his brother Abel, and the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” And Cain answered, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” And the Lord said to Cain, “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground.” The voice of the blood of brothers and sisters beyond numbering cry out from the slave ships and battlegrounds and concentration camps and torture chambers of the past and the present. The voice of the blood of the innocents cries out from the abortuaries and sophisticated biotech laboratories of this beloved country today. Contending for the culture of life has been a very long journey, and there are still miles and miles to go.
The culture of death is an idea before it is a deed. I expect many of us here, perhaps most of us here, can remember when we were first encountered by the idea. For me, it was in the 1960s when I was pastor of a very poor, very black, inner city parish in Brooklyn, New York. I had read that week an article by Ashley Montagu of Princeton University on what he called “A Life Worth Living.” He listed the qualifications for a life worth living: good health, a stable family, economic security, educational opportunity, the prospect of a satisfying career to realize the fullness of one’s potential. These were among the measures of what was called “a life worth living.”
And I remember vividly, as though it were yesterday, looking out the next Sunday morning at the congregation of St. John the Evangelist and seeing all those older faces creased by hardship endured and injustice afflicted, and yet radiating hope undimmed and love unconquered. And I saw that day the younger faces of children deprived of most, if not all, of those qualifications on Prof. Montagu’s list. And it struck me then, like a bolt of lightning, a bolt of lightning that illuminated our moral and cultural moment, that Prof. Montagu and those of like mind believed that the people of St. John the Evangelist—people whom I knew and had come to love as people of faith and kindness and endurance and, by the grace of God, hope unvanquished—it struck me then that, by the criteria of the privileged and enlightened, none of these my people had a life worth living. In that moment, I knew that a great evil was afoot. The culture of death is an idea before it is a deed.
In that moment, I knew that I had been recruited to the cause of the culture of life. To be recruited to the cause of the culture of life is to be recruited for the duration; and there is no end in sight, except to the eyes of faith.
Perhaps you, too, can specify such a moment when you knew you were recruited. At that moment you could have said, “Yes, it’s terrible that in this country alone 4,000 innocent children are killed every day, but then so many terrible things are happening in the world. Am I my infant brother’s keeper? Am I my infant sister’s keeper?” You could have said that, but you didn’t. You could have said, “Yes, the nation that I love is betraying its founding principles—that every human being is endowed by God with inalienable rights, including, and most foundationally, the right to life. But,” you could have said, “the Supreme Court has spoken and its word is the law of the land. What can I do about it?” You could have said that, but you didn’t. That horror, that betrayal, would not let you go. You knew, you knew there and then, that you were recruited to contend for the culture of life, and that you were recruited for the duration.
The contention between the culture of life and the culture of death is not a battle of our own choosing. We are not the ones who imposed upon the nation the lethal logic that human beings have no rights we are bound to respect if they are too small, too weak, too dependent, too burdensome. That lethal logic, backed by the force of law, was imposed by an arrogant elite that for almost forty years has been telling us to get over it, to get used to it.
But “We the People,” who are the political sovereign in this constitutional democracy, have not gotten over it, we have not gotten used to it, and we will never, we will never ever, agree that the culture of death is the unchangeable law of the land.
“We the People” have not and will not ratify the lethal logic of Roe v. Wade. That notorious decision of 1973 is the most consequential moral and political event of the last half century of our nation’s history. It has produced a dramatic realignment of moral and political forces, led by evangelicals and Catholics together, and joined by citizens beyond numbering who know that how we respond to this horror defines who we are as individuals and as a people. Our opponents, once so confident, are now on the defensive. Having lost the argument with the American people, they desperately cling to the dictates of the courts. No longer able to present themselves as the wave of the future, they watch in dismay as a younger generation recoils in horror from the bloodletting of an abortion industry so arrogantly imposed by judges beyond the rule of law.
We do not know, we do not need to know, how the battle for the dignity of the human person will be resolved. God knows, and that is enough. As Mother Teresa of Calcutta and saints beyond numbering have taught us, our task is not to be successful but to be faithful. Yet in that faithfulness is the lively hope of success. We are the stronger because we are unburdened by delusions. We know that in a sinful world, far short of the promised Kingdom of God, there will always be great evils. The principalities and powers will continue to rage, but they will not prevail.
In the midst of the encroaching darkness of the culture of death, we have heard the voice of him who said, “In the world you will have trouble. But fear not, I have overcome the world.” Because he has overcome, we shall overcome. We do not know when; we do not know how. God knows, and that is enough. We know the justice of our cause, we trust in the faithfulness of his promise, and therefore we shall not weary, we shall not rest.
Whether, in this great contest between the culture of life and the culture of death, we were recruited many years ago or whether we were recruited only yesterday, we have been recruited for the duration. We go from this convention refreshed in our resolve to fight the good fight. We go from this convention trusting in the words of the prophet Isaiah that “they who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength, they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not be weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
The journey has been long, and there are miles and miles to go. But from this convention the word is carried to every neighborhood, every house of worship, every congressional office, every state house, every precinct of this our beloved country—from this convention the word is carried that, until every human being created in the image and likeness of God—no matter how small or how weak, no matter how old or how burdensome—until every human being created in the image and likeness of God is protected in law and cared for in life, we shall not weary, we shall not rest. And, in this the great human rights struggle of our time and all times, we shall overcome.
CJ
November 21st, 2009
9:01 am
dmac–welcome to the real world: the so-called “nutty right-wingers” are just a fraction of those opposed to this brutality, and yes, the majority of Americans are appalled at the prospect of taking an innocent life unless in cases of rape and incest.
If ultrasounds were given for every abortion, or at least the option was there, more would be against it, as they would see a living baby, that pulls away when the probe is inserted. One planned parenthood clinician recently resigned after seeing the little baby react to the probe.
You and Cynthia are the ones who are out of touch with the issues.
DAVID
November 21st, 2009
9:05 am
Ms. T…………Why in h@ll should my TAXes pay for your dam@ abortion….
jconservative
November 21st, 2009
9:08 am
El Jefe. Common Sense.
Looking for common ground. I do not care for abortion. I do not care for millions of babies & kids dying for lack of proper medical care.
I will sign your No Abortion bill if you will sign my Medicare for Kids
bill.
Do we have common ground?
Del
November 21st, 2009
9:10 am
dmac,
You’re off in far-left la la land about the rational majority of Americans realizing woman should have the right to end their pregnancies. The majority of Americans don’t agree with that at all, many for their Christian beliefs and others because of the documented horror of an abortion procedure itself. There are many options for unwanted children through adoptive services. No one other than the ideology driven hard-left agree with unfettered abortion on demand at the expense of tax payers.
jconservative
November 21st, 2009
9:15 am
Nope: Abortion is murder and “Medicare for Kids” is a sick political ploy to try to justify the former.
Note to pro-choice women:
25% of the 58,000 names on the Vietnam Wall were men (women can’t be drafted) who DID NOT WANT the state to CONTROL their bodies. They lost that argument with their lives and t’s still the law of the land.
Del
November 21st, 2009
9:16 am
jconservative,
We have Medicaid and SCHIP. There is no reason why a child has to die in this country due to lack of healthcare.
Bob
November 21st, 2009
9:25 am
jconservative, Do we really have millions of sick and dying kids in America. Can you go back through the obits in any Georgia newspaper and find one dead kid because of no healthcare. We have had s-chip for years for kids, why do you make crazy things up ? Millions of dead kids ?
CJ
November 21st, 2009
9:27 am
“…until every human being created in the image and likeness of God—no matter how small or how weak, no matter how old or how burdensome—until every human being created in the image and likeness of God is protected in law and cared for in life, we shall not weary, we shall not rest. And, in this the great human rights struggle of our time and all times, we shall overcome…”
Well said.
Liberals want to punish the feeble and weak, which is why they want to CONTROL the health care system, so they can ration out the people who they think are a burden to society. It’s called “survival of the fittest”, which is the driving force of Darwinism.
Darwinism is RACISM/EUGENICS at it’s finest, which makes it hard for me to understand minorities like Cynthia would be for it.
Levity
November 21st, 2009
9:49 am
I have no problem allowing abortion in cases of incest, rape, or when a doctor determines the baby is not healthy.
My main issue is that people like Barack Obama will use abortion for birth control.
Remember this speech, “I’ve got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old, I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby,” – Barack gave this speech in Pennsylvania on March 31, 2008 during the campaign, it was widely broadcast on the networks. Look it up and read for yourself if you don’t believe me….
CJ
November 21st, 2009
9:57 am
Levity–now you know what he thinks about little babies. Makes you feel really hopeful of how this new takeover of healthcare is going to affect your little ones, both born and unborn?
He may think a baby is a punishment, but some people think they’re a blessing from God.
I have a problem with someone aborting their child if it has deformities or health issues, as doctors have been wrong on so many cases in diagnosing things like this…many have been operated in the womb, and have done just fine…this devaluing of human life deeply concerns me for the future of this country. If we don’t value the weak and feeble, who and what DO we value? Money? Success?
Societies that treat the feeble with disdain tend to crumble, look back through history.
The problem is, people making judgments such as these refuse to learn from history.
Hitler had certain “criteria” that a human had to pass before they were considered viable as a person.
Blond hair, blue eyes, light skin, etc. We are heading path when we decide who should live and who should die.
jconservative
November 21st, 2009
11:02 am
jconservative
November 21st, 2009
9:15 am
Who was the jerk who entered a comment at this time using my handle?
jconservative
November 21st, 2009
11:16 am
Data for United States in 2006
Number of deaths: 2,426,264
Death rate: 810.4 deaths per 100,000 population
Life expectancy: 77.7 years
Infant Mortality rate: 6.69 deaths per 1,000 live births
Source: CDC
Common Sense
November 21st, 2009
11:42 am
I’m the “jerk” that mistakenly put in your handle instead of “to” you at the 9:15 post.
Now that said, would you like to debate what I said? Specifically, why the law of the land per the U.S. Constitution/Supreme Court says the state can control a man’s body for two years and send him to be killed against his will but can’t control a woman’s body for nine months to protect another human life ……………..
El Jefe
November 21st, 2009
11:42 am
jconservative,
Medicaid for Kids – sound like something out of “Brave New World” Shall the government also raise the kids – to keep them safe from bad parents?
To all the progressives – it is okay to kill unborn babies, but killers tried and convicted should live – that is twisted and sick.
With Social Security broke, like all the other government funded programs, maybe they should have been allowed to be born so they could add their taxes to the government coffers.
jconservative – you stats from the CDC – check the methodology for counting live births v. the way most European countries count live births.
deborahinAthens – I guess we will never know now will we. Killing off the unborn will greatly limit the future.
Progressives, there are large number of people willing to adopt your unwanted burdens, your “trash”. Personally, if you are too stupid not to understand what makes a baby, maybe you should turn yourself in for a late life abortion.
Joey
November 21st, 2009
11:49 am
I am pro-Abortion. However, if opposition to abortion is what it takes to kill the Democrat National Health Care Bill(s), I will convert to Pro-Life whatever length of time it takes to accomplish that.
El Jefe
November 21st, 2009
11:50 am
Just as a side note.
Yes, abortion is a medical procedure that can be used to actually save the life of the mother.
However, the progressives feel it should also be used as a form of birth control. A woman goes and bumps uglies (archaic term, but I’m old) gets the next day regrets and goes for plan B – I guess she should have thought of that first. Don’t be that woman that can’t or won’t say no. take responsibility and give another couple a chance to be good parents.
dw
November 21st, 2009
11:51 am
CT, since it is your own reproductive choice, then you pay for it. Funny how “progressives” want their own choices, but want everyone else to pay for it.
Snafu
November 21st, 2009
12:06 pm
Its funny how people will argue prolife but against abortion but are for the death penalty. Men, its not your body not your decision. Until you can have babies its not your choice. A person will have an abortion regardless of what anyone thinks. its up to her and she has to live with the consequences. People die everyday fact of life. Truly, i don’t see how anyone wants to bring a child in this effen world at this time.
Dave
November 21st, 2009
12:13 pm
War Jacket – “Look it this way…” your logic has been used for almost every evil deed since the beginning of time. Reproductive Rights? Keep your Hands off my body? No, this is about you using my (tax) money for something I feel is morally wrong. If you want an abortion, use your own money, but remember a majority of women who do, regret it.
SouthernGal
November 21st, 2009
12:21 pm
Be careful what you wish for. Government subsidized abortion could lead to population control.
Why does a woman’s right to control her body only extend to abortion?
Common Sense
November 21st, 2009
12:23 pm
To Anyone:
Since jconservative seem to be gone for now, would any of you “progressive/liberals” like to debate my 11:42. I said “debate” as opposed to juvenile name calling.
dmac
November 21st, 2009
12:42 pm
Medicare for everyone would be great!
As the Radio Onion reported earlier this week. “Fire hot. Fire very hot. Water comes from sky. Rock comes from earth but no one knows where fire comes from…”
The far right-wingers and their anti-abortion absolutist attitudes remind me of that Radio Onion skit.
ron
November 21st, 2009
12:43 pm
If a woman wants to kill her baby, let her do it with her own money….not with my tax dollars or with her insurance, because my premiums pay for her “choice”.
CJ
November 21st, 2009
1:00 pm
I’m a female and my initials are not CT!
Southern Gal–population control is right. Once you treat one classs of people as less than, it snowballs from there…look at how some of these little high schoolers on here talk about babies: like they are a blob of tissue and not a precious life.
snafu said: “…People die everyday fact of life. Truly, i don’t see how anyone wants to bring a child in this effen world at this time…”
see what I mean? Someone raised by the public school system to be spoiled and narcissitic should NEVER run for public office! No value of life at all….
Just because
November 21st, 2009
1:04 pm
Shaye, let me see . . give up a child for adoption or abort it . . oh what to do? I think it is clear. Give that child a chance in life even if you have to give it up for adoption . . . seems very clear to me that would be far easier than aborting it. A real no brainer.
CJ
November 21st, 2009
1:07 pm
Snafu: so you want the government to determine whether YOUR quality of life is of value to society?
What rule book do you live by that lets you trust the government to do the “right thing” in making life decisions about your body, your health and your life? I’m assuming you have parents and maybe grandparents.
How would you feel if your elders were denied healthcare because they were sick? Is this the kind of world you are choosing/voting to live in?
I’m thinking that you are probably too young to remember anything about history and tyrants.
Hitler did population control and tried to eliminate the “undesirables” from Germany and other countries.
Is that what you want? Once you hand over your freedoms to a dictator, The future will soon repeat itself and bring a tyrant who will take all of your rights away. It has happened time and time again, when people refuse to learn the lessons of history and govern themselves.
dmac
November 21st, 2009
1:17 pm
Yo, biblical scholars…and the beast (aka Glen Beck) and the lamb (any decent woman) will lie together. If I got pregant by some gross nasty Glen Beck I wouldn’t hesitate to have an abortion.
Perhaps we should decide the future of man instead of deciding the future of women.
dmac
November 21st, 2009
1:18 pm
Perhaps we should decide on lunch.
Snafu
November 21st, 2009
1:34 pm
CJ, its about abortion, if a person wants to do it she will and there is not a damn thing you or anyone can do about it. She has to live by that decision. You pay for the death penalty and incarceration of prisoners yet you are trying to find a way to justify pushing your ideology on others. And to use Hitler in this context is just typical of southern who are ignorant. Abortion is legal now how many people are standing around the curb to have the procedure done?
And where did I say in my post that I trust government? You are making as ASSumption on information not posted.That is typical of those who want everyone to bask in the field of Lillies! A person has a choice and the last time I look its still their choice. You can rant and get your jockeys in a wad people will make their own choices. Like it or not.
banana_republican
November 21st, 2009
2:01 pm
Cynthia,
I came here to post a comment critical of you abortion views, thinkiing all your readers would be writing in to support you. To my suprise, vitually NONE of the readers agree with you and they’ve already said it all.
So I’ll just say – I won’t attempt to prevent anyone from having an abortion, I JUST DON’T WANT TO HELP PAY FOR IT.
Dave
November 21st, 2009
2:15 pm
Darn, Ms. Tucker this one went over like lead ballon. I don’t think I’ve your blog so one sided, especially on the right! Better luck tomorrow.
M
November 21st, 2009
2:44 pm
The stupidity in these posts…it burns. IT BURNS
Sacy Chitty
November 21st, 2009
2:46 pm
You can’t reason with an absolute idiot. Something in Tucker’s past I guess causes her to be this radical, but I don’t really care. When it comes to a baby, I’m especially sensitive. I hope I see the day, when the public completely turns on the Tucker’s of this country and world.
M
November 21st, 2009
2:47 pm
So am I right in my understanding that you anti-abortion types are saying that the babies of rapists are not precious?
tanya debuff
November 21st, 2009
2:49 pm
No surprise most of these comments are from men. Scott Evans, it takes 2 to make a baby, and often the sperm donor skips out on the responsibility. Often. Probably like you. You don’t have a uterus, so here are your options: 1. Stop attempting reproduction. For the love of the flying spaghetti monster, just stop. One of you is definitely enough. 2. Go adopt a baby.
What, you don’t want to do either of these things? Thought so. Now shut up.
Joan
November 21st, 2009
2:49 pm
As a conservative, I would rather pay the small amount it takes to abort, than the larger amount it takes to raise, house and keep in jail for life, those unwanted babies. But, this sort of begs the question. Why is it if women have the right to abort, that I have to pay for it??? Why don’t they have to pay for it. And I am for restrictions on late term and abusive recidivist abortions. If people can’t learn they should be sterilized. I think we can all go for that one.
Sacy Chitty
November 21st, 2009
2:50 pm
M, where does that comment come from. You’re an idiot too,
M
November 21st, 2009
2:51 pm
I’m simply saying that if you’re gonna say that abortion is murder, be consistent. Force women to carry rape and incest babies to term, too.
And thanks for the ad hominem.
Sacy Chitty
November 21st, 2009
2:52 pm
Then, Joan you have no morals either. All you care about is money.
Sacy Chitty
November 21st, 2009
2:54 pm
I’ve never forced someone to kill another, and that goes for women carrying a unwanted baby. All babies should be carried to term, unless for the health and life of the Mother.
M
November 21st, 2009
2:55 pm
Sacy, how do you feel about your tax dollars (a LOT of them) being spent on weapons that have no other purpose but to kill people?
Audrey in Georgia
November 21st, 2009
2:57 pm
Only women get pregnant. Only women ultimately decide the fate of their fetus.
In this country we will always have 3 choices: 1. carry the fetus to delivery of a baby to
keep, 2. carry the fetus to delivery of a baby to adopt, and 3. abort the fetus. Your
tax dollars are used for war, abortions, public education and other contentious
issues.
Sacy Chitty
November 21st, 2009
3:00 pm
M, my tax dollars are used to defend this nation against evil brutes that want to kill innocent people. There is good and evil in this world. That’s what you liberals will never understand.
M
November 21st, 2009
3:02 pm
Thou shalt not kill*
*unless Sacy says it’s OK
Sacy Chitty
November 21st, 2009
3:16 pm
M, go back to Kindergarten. Obviously you don’t understand that there’s a difference between murder and defense. What would you do or where would you be had you not had American soldiers and other American Patriots defend our country at all cost?????
M
November 21st, 2009
3:18 pm
Wherever I’d be, I’d still say that women have the right to choose whether they have a baby or not.
Del
November 21st, 2009
3:28 pm
M,
Unfortunately, the Roe vs. Wade ruling provides that choice. It made no provision,however, that tax payer dollars had to pay for abortions.
Sacy Chitty
November 21st, 2009
3:29 pm
Because, at the core, you’re a selfish individual. It’s all about you, isn’t it? It’s never about the child. Why not give the baby the benefit of the doubt/argument?
CJ
November 21st, 2009
3:35 pm
Joan, Audrey and Tanya;
Guess what? I have a uterus, too!! And I think it is wrong to use my body to murder the unborn!
Not only that, it is wrong again to expect people to pay for YOUR mistakes!
Children are a heritage from the Lord, not a unloved, pollutant, waste on society like you girls think it is.
CJ
November 21st, 2009
3:37 pm
slavery and the Jim Crow laws were legal, so I guess that Frederick Douglas, the abolitionists and Martin Luther King, Jr. should have just accepted it and put up with it? NO WAY!
THOU SHALT NOT KILL is written in stone, and nothing you can do can change that!
Tom Middleton
November 21st, 2009
3:47 pm
It’s amazing to me, Cynthia, how conservatives on this blog love to talk about freedom and getting government “off the backs of the people,” yet can’t manage to keep themselves out of everyone else’s bedrooms and family-planning decisions.
As we all know, mistakes do happen, domestic circumstances do change, the health of the mother (who may already have children) can come into play, and all people can change their minds for other important reasons.
Pro-choice folks understand these things, but pro-lifers don’t have a clue and apparently aren’t going to be getting one anytime soon. What a shame that so many conservatives love to talk about freedom, but don’t want to give it to anyone else.
America was born in opposition to all those who love to tell the rest of us what to do – as our conservative brethren seem to enjoy so often – and it’s up to the rest of us as freedom-loving individuals to make sure they don’t succeed – ever.
Our Founders gave us the precious gift of a political system favoring the supremacy of the individual (on this issue – the mother), and when it comes to whether or not to carry a fetus to term, American citizens (including conservatives) need to remember who we’re supposed to be as true believers in our constitutional democracy and butt the f–K out!
Skip
November 21st, 2009
3:56 pm
We need to save all the children we can, we need them to fight wars.
Tom Middleton
November 21st, 2009
4:06 pm
Skip@3:56
Yeah, but wasn’t that also Adolf Hitler’s logic for being pro-life?
Sacy Chitty
November 21st, 2009
4:11 pm
Now we have another idiot, Tom Middleton. Now I have to take the time to explain this to him too. Tom you’ve got it all right, except for one major flaw (and your bad filthy mouth). Freedom to do whatever you want, EXCEPT, kill other innocent humans. There are restrictions on your freedoms Tom and mine. I can’t do lots of things as a free man in America. I certainly can’t murder. I also can’t run red lights, carry a gun anywhere I want, yell fire in a crowded theatre. I also can’t drive drunk, I can’t set someone’s car on fire, steal, cheat, vote more than once per election (like your friends at ACORN), and I can’t hit you in the mouth for being an idiot, unless in self defense. Neither should you or anyone else be allowed to kill a baby. However, I do realize some people, those like you, will never understand that. It’s perplexing, but fact.
Common Sense
November 21st, 2009
5:00 pm
Two Questions (for liberals only):
1) When you see a friend who is pregnant which of these do you say:
a) How is the “fetus” doing?
b) How is the “baby” doing?
2) I realize the “draft” is not being used at this time (although men still have to register) but why does the current law of the land (per the U.S. Constitution/Supreme Court rulings) say the state can control a man’s body for two years and send him to be killed against his will but the state can’t control a woman’s body for nine months to protect another innocent human life ……………..
william
November 21st, 2009
5:15 pm
Insurance is the pooling of money to cover the cost of something, in this case health care. If abortion is in a plan that takes public funds then public funds will go to pay for it. At least some in congress understood that. NARAL, etc.are either don’t understand how insurance works or they are just trying to hide their agenda.
Abortion can still be covered it is just that those who want it will have to pay extra for it in a rider. Those who say a rider is no good because abortions are not plan do not understand insurance. Riders are not to cover planned events. They just cover things beyond the basic package. Ms. Tucker what you and others want is not just to have the right to an abortion you want the rest us to help pay for the cost.
CJ
November 21st, 2009
5:16 pm
Hitler wasn’t pro-life: his soldiers impregnated women, ripped them open and tortured the fetuses (babies). I found the article, and it sickened me so much that I had to destroy it immediately.
The Devil and his imps love to kill, steal and destroy, so now you know who really is behind this.
Grown men can choose to go to war–there is no draft now. A little baby, on the other hand has NO CHOICE, so stop preaching that you are pro-choice: you are pro-SELFishness, ME, ME, ME, and to heck with the whole world.
Common Sense
November 21st, 2009
5:28 pm
To CJ:
I hope you understood my point in the second part of my 5:00 pm post. I am 100% against abortions. My point was, yes there is no “draft” per se right now but it is still the law of the land if we ever got into a big one. The state could “compel” men to take their bodies to go be killed in a war they don’t support but the law says the state cannont “compel” a woman to use her body to protect another innocent person.
That is what is so ludicrous about those two different rulings. And the Supreme Court has also ruled that women can’t be drafted. Whatever happened to “equal protection under the law”?
M
November 21st, 2009
5:44 pm
Again…are rape babies a “heritage from the Lord?”
Audrey in Georgia
November 21st, 2009
6:20 pm
CJ, that is your opinion, your body and your uterus. What is wrong for you is obviously not wrong
to some one else.
Tom Middleton
November 21st, 2009
6:54 pm
Sacy Chitty: Now we have another idiot – Tom Middleton.
Yeah, yeah, yeah to all that stuff you said, but there’s one fatal flaw in what your post, Sacy: Abortion is legal!
If you disagree with that, you have the right to try and persuade our lawmakers to change the law in any of the various ways our Constitution allows. If that had already happened, you would have an OK argument, as obviously you believe you do.
But as it stands in reality, you’re absolutely wrong. So now who’s the idiot, idiot? YOU! But have a nice day…
Common Sense
November 21st, 2009
6:55 pm
To M:
No more than the rape was from the Lord. I suppose you have heard of sin and the devil.
Common Sense
November 21st, 2009
6:58 pm
P.S. to M:
How about answering my 5:00pm
To Tom Middleton:
You too if you like. By the way ………. slavery used to also be legal, Constitutional and upheld by the Supreme Court. But well learned to amend our ways ………… take the high ground !
E
November 21st, 2009
6:58 pm
Might be time to close the comments on this one. Nobody’s gonna change any minds on this topic.
Common Sense
November 21st, 2009
7:16 pm
To E:
I don’t know what your position is but people used to say the same thing about slavery. I predict that one day ……….. our Constitution and/or Surpeme Court will change a lot of minds. As science evolves and new life is know for what it really is ……….. hearts will change.