I’m a little crazy these days on the subject of health care reform. I’m not sure that I can write coherently about it — and especially on the way that it’s being covered. So the following is a somewhat disconnected collection of excerpts from the past couple of days. Maybe somebody can make some sense of them in the comments.
Ross Douthat writes about Kennedy, Catholics, and health care reform, and abortion:
[I]t’s entirely fitting, given his record, that Kennedy’s immediate legacy is a draft of health-care legislation that pursues an eminently Catholic goal — expanding access to medical care — through a system that seems likely, in its present design, to subsidize abortion.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has been lobbying for three decades for the federal government to provide universal health insurance, especially for the poor. Now, as President Obama tries to rally Roman Catholics and other religious voters around his proposals to do just that, a growing number of bishops are speaking out against it. … in the last two weeks some leaders of the conference, like Cardinal Justin Rigali, have concluded that Democrats’ efforts to carve out abortion coverage are so inadequate that lawmakers should block the entire effort.
Archbishop John Vlazny writes in The Catholic Sentinel:
As a church, we support efforts to provide health care for all people. Bishop William Murphy, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, recently stated, “Genuine health care reform that protects the life and dignity of all is a moral imperative and a vital national obligation.” I share those sentiments and I would say they are the sentiments of all my brother bishops as well.
…
For Catholics, all of this discussion becomes counterproductive when we focus more on the problems than on the persons involved. For us it is a matter of dealing with the dignity and respect that must rightfully be attributed to all our sisters and brothers. The sacredness of every human person is at stake. When we are more mindful of the dignity of all human life, we will certainly be much better disposed to extend health care, really any care, to all people, and to propose violence, whether it be abortion, euthanasia or war as a solution to nobody.
Frank Schaeffer writes in the LA Times:
Crazy ‘death panel’ claims? Thank Roe vs. Wade
The anti-healthcare reform backlash from what might be called the Sarah Palin wing of the Republican Party is once again proof that the way abortion was legalized by the Supreme Court in 1973 was foolish. Roe vs. Wade is the root of our culture wars, and it is partly why healthcare reform is threatened by antiabortion activists who have joined forces with self-interested insurance companies.Roe was a winner-take-all act of extremism that wasn’t even necessary. At the time, abortion was being legalized state by state, with New York and California leading the way. But in an act of judicial activism that many observers on all sides of the abortion debate found disturbingly sweeping, the Supreme Court aborted all discussion of the issue and “solved” the problem by forcing the most permissive abortion law in the Western world onto an American public, which was very far from ready to accept such a thing.
Planned Parenthood writes:
Planned Parenthood supports comprehensive sexuality education — a medically accurate curriculum and classroom experience that
- provides young people with positive messages about sex and sexuality as natural, normal, healthy parts of life
- Includes information about abstinence as the best way to avoid sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancy
- Teaches that condoms reduce the risk of getting an infection, including HIV, and that other forms of birth control also reduce the risk of unintended pregnancy for young people who are sexually active
- Provides opportunities to help young people develop relationship and communications skills to help them explore their own values, goals, and options as well as the values of their families and communities
- Covers human development, human reproduction, sexual health, masturbation and other sexual behaviors, all options for unintended pregnancies, sexual expression, sexual identity, and sexual orientation
Lessons in the SexEdLibrary may be used within a comprehensive sexuality education program to address a particular topic or topics.
And I always like to turn to the Alan Guttmacher Institute for a coda of sanity:
Notwithstanding a widespread misinformation campaign, none of the health care reform proposals pending in Congress would mandate abortion coverage. Rather, they would maintain the legal status quo — under which insurance companies decide whether abortion will be covered in the plans they offer. This raises the question of how extensively abortion is currently covered.
The best available evidence from two studies — conducted by the Guttmacher Institute and the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) — suggests that most Americans with employer-based insurance currently have coverage for abortion. The Guttmacher Institute’s federally supported study, assessing levels of insurance coverage for a wide range of reproductive health services, found that 87% of typical employer-based insurance policies in 2002 covered medically necessary or appropriate abortions.
