The picture on the left is a 3D ultrasound image of Grayson at 30 weeks gestation. The one on the right is him now, at 6 years old. If you are a pro-life Republican who is vocal about passing legislation that would protect the sanctity of life of the baby on the left, but are silent regarding legislation that will strip healthcare benefits for the child on the right, you are not pro-life.
If you are willing to accept a law that will make a C-section a pre-existing condition (and thus make future health care harder to get and more expensive), then morally demand that a woman carry a baby who is incompatible with life to term, you are not pro-life.
If you want a woman to be legally obligated to bring a baby into the world who is diagnosed in utero with profound medical needs, but then won’t accept any responsibility as a member of society to care for those needs, you are not pro-life.
If you clutch your pearls at the mention of comprehensive sex education or get riled up about “paying for someone else’s birth control” because your moral code is abstinence, you are part of the abortion problem. It has been shown over and over again that abstinence-only programs do not work in preventing unwanted pregnancies. Contraception works. You are not pro-life.
If you support the latest version of the AHCA, you are literally incentivizing abortion. There are women who will now abort for fear of themselves or their child being considered a “preexisting condition” and unable to get insurance. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t call yourself pro-life and stand by idly while millions of people are stripped of their healthcare benefits. If you think the right to be born is a basic human right, but access to healthcare is not, you are not pro-life.
If you are truly pro-life (womb to tomb), please call your senators today and demand that they vote NO on the ACHA. It takes just a few minutes. Please. There’s too much at stake to be apathetic about this issue.
A New Version of Me 
Stands up. Slow claps.
Yes. Yes. YES. YEEEES!
I hope you are sharing this on social media. I would if I were on it. 😉
This this this. Truth. Thank you
I don't know many people as absolutely painfully qualified to speak on this matter as you are. This entire healthcare nightmare terrifies me. I would volunteer to always pay a higher premium with the reassurance that it is going to help people who really need it. People like your sweet son. And also with the confidence that if it's my family that needs healthcare one day in the future, that it will be available. We are human beings. Part of our responsibility as an intelligent species is that we care for one another.
This is the truth. Stand up for all the way or not at all!
Oh look another post by someone ignorant of what the ACHA does. Did you even read it or are you just listening to the false Democratic talking points. Please do your research before posting.
Yep, read it. The bill includes an $880 billion cut to Medicaid, the program my child relies on to SURVIVE. That is not pro-life. Thanks for commenting- have a great day!
Why not be against abortion (except in special cases) AND in favour of universal tax-funded healthcare?
Bravo Elizabeth, and I hope this terrible bill can be stopped in its tracks. I'm so sorry it affects your family so personally, as your wonderful son, and all like him that would potentially loose healthcare services, deserves a full life.
Or you could research the false GOP talking points
You could be. But a) a lot of the legislation now makes no provision for special cases and b) you could be against abortion for your ownself (I would have been) but why should you impose this on others? Pro choice advocates are not pro abortion. They are pro CHOICE. But universal health care, including access to contraception, would go a long way to avoid the NEED for anyone to have to make the choice.
So…abortion is okay with you then? You just want to be the one who approves whether it's a 'special case' or not?
Why not just leave that up to the woman and her doctor to decide?
If all the worries that both liberal AND conservative media have been discussing are simply Democrat talking points, then why did they exempt themselves from the bill?
Thank you! I have been saying this for ages. Not only are they not pro life, they are not real Christians!
It just goes to show how much white trash inbred morons are out there! Why not leave it to us women & our doctors! This is not a Christian nation! I am one of the many who are so tired of a few crazy nut jobs trying to keep us from detrmining our ownn health care. Please have your bogus rapture & get the hell off my planet where you can't harm anyone anymore!
So, so, so well written. I'm a 41 year old woman with at least 6 preexisting conditions on that list if you include my CSection. The rest are being managed pretty well by several doctors and my own holistic “food as medicine” strategy. However, without access to routine blood testing and medication that keeps my autoimmune disorders at bay, I could end up in the hospital or dead. I certainly wouldn't be working and paying taxes and caring for my family.
I wish every “pro-life” person could duck-tape their mouths for a day and sit in on a few counseling sessions w between women seeking abortions and their doctors. Then you could understand. This is not a decision women make for kicks. For many women it is the hardest, most wrenching choice of their lives-' and yet, if you would listen, for the women who choose to terminate a pregnancy, it is the best, and really only, decision they can make.
If you really are concerned about abortion, put your money where your mouth is and fund comprehensive,scientifically accurate sex ed, and everyone who doesn't want to be pregnant (men and women) should have access to free birth control through their schooling and affordable birth control thereafter.
I am personally against having an abortion, for myself. But I grew up in a stable, loving, non-judgmental family on whom I could have relied, had I gotten pregnant. I'm now a married mother of three, and I still have a safe and loving family to support me. I have a job and my husband has a job, we have a house, we have food, we have transportation and access to health care through insurance. I'm lucky. If I get pregnant, I can care for the resulting baby. My insurance could help us to afford it.
Not everyone is blessed to have such an easy go of it. Many people come from judgmental families who would make any decision worse. Many women are on their own, without any help, and could not bear to give up a baby to an unknown fate. Some women struggle with illness or chronic pain, and could not work to support themselves through a pregnancy. Some women, and I'm sorry that you have to hear this, don't want to be mothers, don't want to be pregnant, want to have their own lives without being responsible for a needy dependent.
None of those circumstances are my business or yours. If you want to drastically reduce the number of abortions, address the reasons women feel they are necessary. Address the needs. But don't insert yourself in somebody else's business. That's not just rude, it's offensive and dangerous.
Jan Hoyle that was the most racist comment I've seen all day.
The key word here is “volunteer”.. when you volunteer someone else's money that is called theft. If you want to volunteer your money, you can support non-profits who take care of sick people not forcing the government to take it from every individual and threaten them with jail time if they don't pay.
You can say someone should not be killed and also say you can't afford to pay for them at the same time. For example, I would be horrified if someone shot a homeless person even if I wan't personally able to let him come live with me. These are two separate issues.
I agree there's a lot wrong with our healthcare system but this is because the government is TOO involved, not because we need more regulations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XebGuqD5R0
Joy, obviously you have led a very charmed life and have never had to deal with a devastating illness or disability. YOU are exactly who is being talked about in this article!!!
Brava, Rebecca!
Joy, do you support our military? It's full of brave men and women signing up to risk their lives, with salaries paid for by taxpayers. Even private military contracts are paid for by taxpayers. Why? Because it's a SOCIALIST PROGRAM, meaning funded by and redistributed through public funds. Roads, police, fire dept = socialist programs. All paid for by tax dollars. But we don't look at those programs as theft, do we? Because our tax dollars are an INVESTMENT. The best investments are in our fellow humans, or Americans, if you will. We have every right to fight against our tax dollars being squandered, but investment in the lives of your compatriots is not squander. When we ensure the health of our neighbors, we're in fact ensuring it fit ourselves as well, because we are a connected community and only prospering as much as the least of us.
Phantomspots: thank you. It could not have been said better. Taxes are to support our society, to make things better for all of us. I never complain about paying taxes because they are what helped my mom buy her first home, helped pay for a good portion of my university education, enabled me to become a Peace Corp Volunteer. Taxes pay for public school for everyone (mandatory education); even if you never have children that benefit from that education you are still paying for it. Healthcare should be the same. We should support each other to live healthy, fulfilling, contributing lives.
It's called taxes, Joy. I'm pretty sure if you asked Tamir Rice's mom if she wants her taxes used to pay the salary of the cops that killed her child, or pay for any part of the system that allowed them to get away with it, she might have some objections. However, we don't. If you asked a pacifist if they want their taxes to finance the military, they'd definitely have some words. Because we understand, and they probably do too, that there is a higher purpose here. And their feelings about the matter don't acquit us, or them, from doing our bit for the greater good. We all benefit from policing, and we would all benefit from better health care. Therefore, we are all obligated to be a party of the effort, whatever our feelings about it are.
My understanding is Obama care shut down health markets and choices. The plans in process widen the availability while reducing costs. There is massive disinformation in this propaganda.
Thank you for urging sex education and birth control. As I see it, the problem is not abortion per se but unintended pregnancy. Prevent the pregnancy and abortion becomes a non-issue…
Pretty selfish and flimsy excuses for taking someone else's life. Can “not bear to give up a baby to an unknown fate”, but OK with terminating it's life??? Really???
Maybe someone would take you and your purported argument more seriously if you had the guts to use your own name, not “unknown.”
They hypocricy is astounding. If you are all passionate about legislation that makes sure he has free access to all the care he needs from doctors to survive at 6 years old, why and how the hell arent you passionate about defending his life at 30 weeks from doctors that could poison his lungs, saw through his skull, slice off his arms and legs, and vaccuum out his now lifeless corpse? Pro choice? You think Grayson would have chosen that?
You misunderstand. Obamacare/ACA created health care markets where they didn't exist before. They created pools to force insurers to accept all people, regardless of pre-existing conditions, with the trade-off being that all Americans who were wealthy enough to be disqualified from Medicare had to get insurance. This trade-off meant that the young and healthy were essentially subsidizing the sick and old, meaning overall costs went down while individually some costs went up. That's the compromise of Obamacare. It didn't limit choices.
I am insured through the healthcare marketplaces set up by Obamacare/ACA. I had over 30 possible plans to choose from through nearly a dozen insurers. As a freelance camera operator, this was the first time I could afford insurance since I don't get it through my job.
Trumpcare/ACHA is a massive cut to Medicare and removes the compulsory pools of insured people. This means Trumpcare will likely reduce costs for young and healthy people, but the sick and elderly will see a massive spike in costs. Furthermore, the removal of protection for people with pre-existing conditions (the most broadly supported provision of Obamacare, well loved by conservatives and liberals alike) will mean millions of Americans simply cannot get insurance any more.
There is massive disinformation, you're right, but the source of this disinformation is the White House and Paul Ryan's House GOP.
The only reason abortions happen this late in pregnancy is for medical reasons, meaning the pregnancy was wanted but cannot be supported. How DARE you put that kind of guilt on a woman for having to end a wanted pregnancy? Perhaps the mother's life would be risked if she were to carry the baby to term? Pregnancies such as these are often terminated because the fetus would not live a true life, but only a life of pain. What mother could choose that for her child? Who are you to criticize a mother going through unimaginable pain?
Joy I completely agree. Our government wastes so much money. If we could get healthcare controlled at the state level that would be a good start as it would allow more control & it's easier to talk with our reps. I read about book called Primal Perscription by a doctor & economist that went through the history of gov & healthcare. Very frustrating how gov made it worse & continues to do so! I will gladly help out a neighbor in need, but I'd rather I decide who & how to help not some politician that thinks they can spend my money better than me.
So is the author saying that Grayson is the same person as when he was a fetus, that it was completely acceptable to end his life because he has a disorder? Is she saying it's okay to kill a human because of their disability?
Yes it's true, our government wastes so much money… the F35 incredible cost overruns. Bailing out banks.. not a good investment. An awful lot of our taxes pay the interest on loans the government take out from the Fed…. a shadow banking cartel that will not even reveal the names of the people who run it. So you want to talk about shady situations, we're all being financed by a banking carte that is run in the shadows, and the government has run up enough debt with them to require huge outlays of our taxes to pay the interest. Then there's healthcare. Those who think people who can't pay for healthcare, which is usually because of a decision by the insurance company… who think they are stealing… look at it like this. There's stealing… and there's stealing. The uninsured who if they were insured would help the overall health of the country, are like pocketing a pack of gum from a concession at a government building once a month the Pentagon. The other kind of stealing is well, you know. Wells Fargo creating millions of fake accounts to raise their stock… then when they get caught shareholders lose money. Or the giant banks taking the bailout money that we paid for… and almost immediately posting gigantic profits as lots of people still haven't fully recovered from the Great Recession. So the question is will keeping people insured crash the global monetary system? If you don't think so, then shut up about people not losing their healthcare “stealing”.
I believe Joy has invested in Insurance companies, who control this mess not the government. I also believe she did not read this article. She is also quite willing for MY money to be stolen and used to fund her endless wars. Anyone who can type out this message of .”they deserve to die if they don't have enough money for treatment”, is just another example of how vile and spiteful humanity has become in this country.
THIIIIS ^^^
Rebecca so why is it just the woman's life what about her babies life . They did not choose to be born or conceived . And if she did not want to be a mother then she should have kept her legs closed . I am fine paying for the poor child of the world . And by the way you have to pay taxed no matter what why have a cow about helping your fellow human . The tax money is not yours to do with as you wish . Thank god because people are to selfish to help others.
O I seen women who have had abortions just because it was a hassle to them . Or they tried tricking a guy into marrying them and when would not having a abortion . Hell one went and partied the same night. Most women who have abortion besides rape are just selfish . they could give it to a loving family but no can not waste a minute of there time.
Thats not always the case.
In what way was that “racist”? Can you explain?
Are you saying that anyone who experiences pain shouldn't be alive? I'm a mother. My oldest lives with often crippling anxiety, and she's only 6. It breaks my heart to watch her suffer, especially as I see it getting continually worse. But it has never once occurred to me that it would have been better to kill her before she had to experience pain. She's an imperfect human being in an imperfect world, as are we all. It doesn't make her life any less of a life. Would you also tell someone who's disabled that it would have been better for them never to have been born? I'm not trying to be argumentative – I have genuinely spent years trying to understand the disconnect between vehemently fighting for the rights of those whose lives are made more difficult for any number of reasons, while at the same time fighting for the right to kill anyone whose life may be difficult without their consent. Adversity doesn't change the inherent value of an individual, does it? This is probably somewhat incoherent because I'm really tired, but hopefully my meaning comes through.
I agree with Joy. Pregnancy is God's punishment for sluts who have premarital sex. Also sluts who are married and have sex. Either way, God's punishment for sex is to have women forced to carry a baby to term who is a precious angel while in the womb, but once born is a parasite on the state who must be euthanized immediately because we can't afford to care for these welfare cases.
I'm just saying: fetuses are priceless creatures who must be protected at all costs. We must maintain the laws that assure they live long enough to die from preventable causes. This is the only way to make poor people feel bad enough to get their shit together and decide to be extremely wealthy like the great Americans who run Fox News and such!
Dear Unknown,
I have had an abortion. It was a difficult decision – but it was the right decision, for me and the life growing inside me. I had the abortion at about 5 weeks – the “baby” was still a tiny embryo. I am 100% sure that this embryo didn't suffer – it was still not developed enough to have had any capacity to feel pain. For me, it was a painful decision, because I wanted a baby – but the circumstances were really really bad. I wouldn't have been able to cope, the father was a horrible man. My potential child and I would have suffered immensely, if we would have had to deal with that man for the rest of our lives. And I wouldn't have had the strength to battle him im court. Now you probably will say that I could have put the baby up for adoption – but that would have literally destroyed me, I could have never given the baby away. So I chose: to live, to wait for a better time. I said good bye to the baby I never met – and I grieved after the process. But there was never a moment of doubt in me that I made the right decision. The only one who suffered at that point was me. Now my life is much better. I have two beautiful children. They wouldn't exist if I hadn't had that abortion. It is a choice that only the pregnant woman can make – it is the first decision I ever made as a parent. Nobody has the right to take that away.
Excuse me, who are you to try and condemn and judge someone else for their decisions. You have no idea what that women has gone through, so shame on you for judging and degrading them. Don't think for one minute you live a perfect sinless life unless you are delusional. Regardless your opinion does not matter, only God's does and He is a forgiving God! I pray your heart softens because you must be a bitter person! 😦
Quit being so judgmental. The fact that you say “IT'S life” says it all. You have no idea what someone else has to endure to reach the decision they have to make. Your option means nothing!! God forgives and that's all that matters!!!
Selfish child. Please pay the taxpayers back for all supports your have received in your highly privileged life, put down the tax leaching Ayn Rand (she received Social Security and health care, as did Paul Ryan), and kindly STFU about things you don't understand.
You have seen unicorns and leprechauns too? Perhaps you need to see a doctor about your belief in things that you imagine to be true.
I agree that healthcare should cover all these things, but Obamscare has to be replaced. As a pediatric occupational therapist, I have never had so many families walk away from therapy as I have since the institution of Obamscare due to extremely high deductible and copays. A lot of them choose to private pay rather than use their insurance because it is cheaper… and these are kids just like the one pictured above, so both systems are failing him, and something needs to be done.
Joy Paris, If you went to public school, drive on federally funded highways or have ever flown in a plane, cruised on a ship or taken a train please reimburse me for my tax dollars. A plane is private you say? Well yes but they are dependent on the National Weather Service which is part of the The National transportation Authority to know when it is safe to fly and Federal Aviation Authority to keep air travel safe. Have you or a loved one ever benefitted from a vaccine or medical procedure that was developed with federal grants or at the NIH? Then pay me back. Don't even get me started if you are part of, married to or the child of military. Those are my tax dollars as well.
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thank you ^^^^
It is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt this plan will do only 2 things : take health care choices away from women, sick children, those with preexisting conditions and so so so many more 24 million people – and it will line the pockets of the richest and the insurers. That is all.
I feel sorry for you – so dense. No one hear is debating Grayson's life. She is saying if you – yes YOU are prolife than it is HYPOCRITOCAL to support the AHCA – no one is asking for free healthcare for life – geez – she's saying her son deserves healthcare – any at all – which will be unobtainable under the AHCA.
Clearly you need a hand here. I'll use small words. She's saying if you support pro life – than you can't also support AHCA. She's saying if all children deserve life than they also should be capable of purchasing healthcare. The AHCA makes that impossible for millions of sick and disabled children – and people. She's not saying it should be free – just that it should be obtainable , which it won't be.
Lots of folk who are prolife, are pro-life womb to tomb and believe in affordable healthcare for all. Lot's of folk who are pro-choice may also be libetarian (every man for himself). There's not one type of person that ticks all boxes
@Kathleen. You're misunderstanding the point of the post. This isn't about abortion per se–it's about the fact that many people are perfectly fine with passing legislation that forces the mother to have the baby no matter what, but once that child is born, any help, medical or financial, is withdrawn or never offered in the first place. That is the difference between pro birth (child should be born, no matter what) and pro life (all people deserve to have financial and healthcare aid when they cannot afford it on their own).
Thank you, Tarquin. Yes, I am pro-abortion. I was fortunate in that the sexual assaults I had (and yes, I tried to keep my legs shut) did not result in a pregnancy. I was fortunate that I live in a country where birth control is readily available and free to those that cannot afford it. I was fortunate that when my twins died in my uterus at 14 gestation, I was able to have a D&C to remove the remains rather than die of sepsis hoping they would deliver on their own. Abortion is an important option. No one is telling people they must have one, nor that you need to approve my decisions or those of my doctor. I don't approve of many of the things that other people decide to do, nor would I make those choices for myself, but I will defend those choices being available, and I will gladly pay to make sure stories like Tarquin's have happy endings. Whether a person has sex is as much a choice as whether they take any risk for an activity they enjoy. Giving people the choice to make sure they are as safe as possible and covered for any consequence of that activity is a social responsibility I am happy to cover, whether an abortion, a broken bone, or cancer. Because all of us engage in behaviours that can be risky, just by living.
Amy Kienutske, perhaps you should look at the rates of domestic adoption demand versus the supply of infants and children for adoption, and it might occur to you that the supply of infants and children who are up for adoption FAR outpaces the demand in the U.S. People wanting to grow a family overall, are more interested in having their own biological offspring (be it by sex or spending money on IVF under a microscope in a lab) compared with adopting children who do not share their genetic information (The demand is even less if the child has developmental or physical issues). So by your argument, those people are clearly selfish as well for not wanting to adopt viable children.
That's not to say that there are no women out there who are like the ones you mentioned (I too have seen them), but they are not the majority by a long stretch.
I work a company that makes drugs for rare diseases like Grayson's (Lysomal storage disorders, not mitochondrial) Despite efforts, our drugs are about 200,000 a year. They think even with competition, the cost will maybe go down to 180,000 a year. (we have been off patent for about 10 years with our oldest drugs, but replicating the technology has been challenging for other companies.)
The little 7 year boy who was our first clinical trial patient is now in his 40's worrying about paying for college for his kids and still doing infusions every other week. He probably wouldn't have made it to 13 years old without the drug.
The new law would re-allow life-time limits. So we save him, but he hits his limit and bye-bye. Sure there are private foundations that can help him, but that would divert money from finding a cure instead of a treatment or a treatment for the 40 other related diseases that kill kids now.
The cost of our drugs are cheaper somewhat in socialized medicine because one central government has more bargaining power then lots of individual insurance companies.
For anyone who says government should stay out of healthcare, don't complain about the $500 epi-pens or the shyster who up the price on a drug 800% for only greed reasons. The government regulations also make it illegal for multiple pharma companies to get together and up the prices on a needed drug, price gouging they call it. What if they upped the prices of anti-biotics during a e-coli outbreak, also government control. Be careful what you wish for. Getting government out of healthcare may not be nirvana.
I'm a senior editor at HuffPost, and we'd love to republish this on our site. If you're interested, please email me at sahaj.kohli@huffingtonpost.com! Thanks!
“If she did not want to be a mother, she should have kept her legs closed.”
Because sex is a pleasurable act that only men can enjoy casually and with no risk of consequence and women really should just avoid it completely and never enjoy anything, lest they might have to become a mother when they don't want to. Except for, of course, all those women out there that men want to casually have sex with…OH NO, now all the women are being good girls and keeping their legs closed so the men can't casually have sex…what shall they do? OH YEAH, this is where rape comes in. But CRAP, the woman who was keeping her legs closed got raped and then got pregnant ANYWAY. We must protect the fetus! Baby is born – “screw that little bastard, no one wanted it anyway.” Oh, and mom and baby both can't get covered because sexual assault is a “pre-existing condition.”
Go America.
-___-
No, I don't think she was saying that disabled people shouldn't live. She was saying, I think, that she couldn't force her child to be born only to live in such physical pain for its entire life.
And that is a valid argument. Yes, many of us us live with disabling chronic pain but if we had the choice, would we? Yes, suicide is technically a choice but not a very good one once you are in the world and would cause more pain to those that love you, so you suck it up and live with the pain if there is no good treatment, rather than cause pain to anyone else.
But an embryo, who is destined for a life of pain, that is a very difficult choice for a parent to make. Watch your future child suffer for however long it might live, or let it go back to wherever pre-life goes and not suffer.
This is not the same as killing off anyone who has a disability, either from birth or later in life. This is a matter of compassion for a future life.
Amy what about the families who find out the fetus in the mothers womb is NON VIABLE aka will not survive labor. Why shoukd a woman be forced to carry this doomed fetus when a abortio will allow her to attempt to conceive a healthy child?
I want to preface this response to the article you link to by saying that I do not like the AHCA very much at all…but I think it is better than the ACA. Here are some rebuttals to this article:
Health insurance must be had by a person before it is needed, otherwise by definition it is not insurance. That is why it is necessary to purchase insurance before you have a condition. A C-section or rape is not a preexisting condition. You can purchase health insurance to cover medical costs that result from rape or birth (i.e. maternity coverage). If you are having sex, regardless of if you are married or not, or trying to have children or not, you should have maternity coverage because you are protecting yourself against the maternity costs. This is about personal responsibility. It is a non-sequitur to say that if I want to mandate that people not kill infants and then say that because I don’t want to adopt or take care of that infant that I am a bad person or that somehow, I am not pro-life. If you think that abortion is the murder of an infant and you want to stop those murders, that has no relation to how the child is cared for after it is born. Murder is wrong regardless. Do I want that baby cared for? Of course, but to conflate those two issues is dishonest. I will say again that insurance needs to be bought before you need it otherwise it is not insurance. I think this addresses the second and third paragraphs.
The fourth paragraph is almost not worth addressing. I typically don’t have a problem with sex education, however it should not be mandatory especially if parents don’t want it for their children. Just because you don’t want to expose your children to this subject by a teacher at a school has no bearing on whether murdering and infant is wrong. Again, murder is wrong regardless of your stance on sex education. The way one chooses to educate their children regarding sex education has no bearing on whether they are pro-life.
The fifth paragraph gets back to personal responsibility. Children are not preexisting conditions, if you have maternity coverage your child is covered. The AHCA even has pools for people who don’t have insurance like Obamacare. It is so illogical to demand health insurance after you find out you have a condition. A similar analogy would be to try and buy life insurance after a family member dies, or to buy car insurance after a car accident, it makes no sense.
Gregor are you serious? I've never said this to anyone, but I hope you get some untreatable ailment, and kick the bucket. You make me sick. What are you then, cuz I'm pretty sure you came out of one of those “sluts” vaginas.
Joy, if you dont want to be part of an American society..you are freaking free to leave..I hear North Korea is looking for people like you.
Dude… that doesn't happen at 30 weeks. Over 90% of abortion care happens in the first trimester (0-11 weeks). Federal law cuts off elective abortion care at 26 weeks. Stop peddling misinformation to make your point more emotionally pleading and learn the truth. Also, Grandpa, not your decision what other people do with their bodies and their families.
Making abortion illegal because of the people you seen (how about I “have” seen) abuse it is like taking away a life saving drug from someone who needs it because others are abusing the drug. For those people you obviously know, and maybe even hang out with, who have had abortions out of selfishness, God will judge them. For the women who have been raped; have a terminally ill baby inside of them; or could die themselves if they take the pregnancy to term (often women who have other children who need them), they should have the choice…and if it means God will judge them too (which I truly believe He does not), that is their cross to bear…not to mention, in any of these cases, should they decide to terminate the pregnancy, they have to go through the rest of their lives with this burden. A women should have the right to choose what is best for her unborn baby, her family and herself. Comparing women who were raped or who wanted desperately to have a baby, but problems arose during the pregnancy, to women who use abortion as a form of contraceptive is so unfair…likewise, one group's right to choose should not be taken away because of another group's selfishness. Amy, you should spend more time learning how to spell and how to speak and write proper English than judging good people faced with the hardest decision of their lives.
For the record, Grayson's mom's point was not about making abortion legal, it was simply to show the hypocrisies of those Holier than Thou people who say abortion is wrong…all while they are not willing to protect the living child.
Thank you, Rebecca for putting it into fair terms. Just because you personally don't support abortion doesn't mean you have the right to dictate that for other women.
And THANK YOU, Tarquin. This is something that is SO ignored and a lot of people would like to just blame the women as usual and tell them to “shut their legs”, as if it's our fault 100% of the time with no bearing on men or their part in the process. NEWSFLASH, life is not always easy for everyone. Not every one gets to grow up with a white picket fences and a black and white, cut and dry world. Things get complicated… horribly complicated and dark, and decisions have to be made.
Stop acting like women are some second rate species that has no bodily autonomy.
Stop pretending we don't have a population problem.
Stop convincing yourselves that a fetus is worth more than an already living human being.
Mind your own business, because you have NO idea what other people have gone through.
Kathleen, I think the point here is that no one should tell you what to do where your child is concerned and therefore, the same applies to you. Don't judge others for their choices.
Amy Kienutske, do you know approximately how many children are waiting to be adopted? There's a whole long process for people to go through when they want to adopt a child. Not every person can just knock on their neighbor's door and hand over a baby, and tell them to love it. There's so many logical fallacies in your comment. You want the person to have a baby, even if they can't raise it themselves. Imagine what the life of the child would be like: out of the womb, cleaned up, sent to an adoption facility. Kept there for a couple months (or possibly years, depending on uncontrollable traits (example: born black, or blind in one eye, or deaf)). Finally has a visit from a potential adopter, and they don't like the kid. Gets sent to a foster home, and grows up not trusting adults, not having a stable home.
Well said, CFord! And whether it's “God forgives” or “God judges”…it is God, our creator, who has this right, not us! And Grandpa is going to love me for saying this, but I believe that a fetus becomes a child only when it breathes its own air, not that of its mother. I don't remember being a fetus and if my mother had not given birth to me, I wouldn't remember that either. That said, maybe an aborted fetus becomes a child when it breathes heaven's air…and in so many cases when the poor mother had to make the agonizing decision to abort her pregnancy, she truly hads done the best possible thing for that child. There are many more reasons I wouldn't have an abortion than reasons I would have an abortion, but God gave me a brain and a heart and I believe He would want me to use them in the best possible way, even if I believed abortion was the best decision for me, my family and the fetus.
God had a plan for you, Tarquin. Your two children are the result of His plan for you. You had to make a difficult decision and years later, this decision is still with you…for this I know God does not judge you or anyone else who had to make an agonizing decision like you had to do. Abortion as a form of contraception is wrong and I believe God will judge those quite differently. It was YOUR right to choose what was best for you and that embryo…and God gave you two beautiful children to show you that He does not judge you for your decision to have an abortion. The “Unknown” who responded (at 8:50) said “I am fine paying for the poor child of the world” (is it just me or are so many pro-life people unable to construct a proper sentence)…I'd be very curious to see proof if “Unknown” does anything more to “pay for the poor child” than pay his/her taxes. If I had to put money on it, I'd bet Unknown hasn't donated a dime to anyone or any cause…let alone volunteers. I could be wrong, but usually those who judge, are the worst offenders themselves.
There are worse things than death. I am not talking about Grayson. I'm talking about the baby who is born addicted to drugs who goes home with a mother who didn't want her in the first place. The child whose dad molests her every day until she runs away at 14 years old. The kid whose mom puts him up for adoption but the father didn't sign his rights away and takes custody and beats him every day. I'm talking about the girl whose mom has 4 more unwanted babies and makes the girl skip school to care for them while she goes out to do drugs.
Yup, there are many worse things than death.
Not everyone who opposes Trumpcare wants FREE healthcare. Most want to pay reasonable prices.
The point is it is hypocritical to force a baby to be born and then refuse to assist with care for that child. Or to force the child to be born and then approve a program that makes him suffer without appropriate care because he happened to be born to someone who isn't independently wealthy.
Feel free to let Joy's followers know how much like Jesus she really is: http://joyparismusic.com/
Not at all… (over generalizing to make a point)
Many Christian voters justified their vote for Trump as a “pro life” vote in spite of his antics and behavior. The argument being a vote for trump is a vote for the unborn. The author is asking those voters to consider “the born” like Greyson that are having their rights threatened by these actions.
Amy Kienutske: 1) If the above is true, you obviously need a better class of people in your life. 2) However, along with mlmO, I believe you are actually delusional and none of this is true. 3) Before you post online, I would consider seeking the help of someone who understands grammar, spelling, and the conjugation of verbs. It's sad that the pure idiocy and ignorance of your thoughts are overshadowed by your poor writing skills.
Crickets from Joy…. go figure!
Not at all. If you read the first paragraph, she is saying that if you are vocal about the value of the life of a 30-week old fetus, yet are silent about/not protesting the health care being stripped away that is needed to keep the same child alive at the age of six, you are not pro-life, because life doesn't stop at birth.
Obamacare needs to be fixed, not replaced…
If you plant a seed and then dig it back up you aren't cutting down a tree.
If you plant a seed and then dig it back up you aren't cutting down a tree.
To pro life individuals:
If you plant a seed and then dig it back up you aren't cutting down a tree.
Not at all. In the first paragraph, she says if you believe the life of the 30-week fetus is worth protecting, if you are silent about or agree with stripping the health coverage needed to keep that same child alive at six, you are not pro-life; the value of life does not end at birth.
“And if she did not want to be a mother then she should have kept her legs closed”
Whoomp, there it is. Everybody needs to live by fundamentalist Christian moral code in your world, right?
Fun fact: NO woman gets pregnant on her own. Why aren't the men keeping their legs closed?
Thank you. This is the explanation I use.
@CFord: The answer to your question is “NO.” The author of the article is saying that being anti-abortion is not the same as being pro-life. Those that are are anti-abortion that support stripping medical coverage for disabled children (because their disability is a pre-existing condition that isn't covered) are NOT pro-life. They don't care about the lives of children once they're born. If they did, they would stand up and demand that all children have access to health care, regardless of pre-existing conditions (as well as a whole slew of other things).
Blame the insurance companies and the GOP who refused to pass anything else. Obama wanted universal care, this was the best we could get.
Ummm, no. That is NOT what the author is saying. Not at all. She's saying that if you (as a pro-life person) are telling her she *should* have this baby, and then once it's born, bitch about your tax money going to his healthcare, not only are you NOT pro-life, but you're a damned hypocrite.
Dear Tarquin, You made a hard decision after careful thought. Your comment is well put. Two things stand out: You would not have been “literally destroyed” had you adopted. As it stands, the embryo's life was “literally destroyed.” You were not the only one who suffered. The life you carried suffered the ultimate.
Religion and race are two different things you twit!
Joy, your campaign should be against corporate welfare, faux war, and the pensions the federal government gives themselves. Attacking the little man makes you a smuck. Trump is ready to send and spend more in the 15 year, unwinnable war in Afghanistan. Talk about theft. Probably so Afghanistan can sell heroin to Russia and Russia sells them AK47's to shoot at our soldiers fighting an unwinnable war. Where is Trump in all of that? People like you are a stooge to the allegory of the cave.
And nparks, that's exactly the problem. If you decide who to help and really, who deserves your help, then we end up exactly where we were before the ACA. I'm willing to bet you'd turn your back on someone who needs medical help, but oh…they're a drug user so they don't deserve it. Or how about someone you decide wasn't worthy of your time and money. The thing about politicians deciding is that they're supposed to decide rationally without making morality a part of the decision. I don't want you to decide who does and does not get healthcare because I don't trust you to see me, someone with a preexisting condition, as worth your time and money.
Thank you for your on-point post, Elizabeth. My lovely stepson, who is now 16, also has mitochondrial disorder. We worry about whether there will be adequate resources for him in the coming years, and whether he'll be forgotten when new healthcare laws are passed (which I suppose they inevitably will be). Having grown up in England and lived with the (admittedly flawed, but still very functional) NHS, I'd take universal healthcare over what we have here any day. I've been here for 12 years now, and have had several very difficult encounters with the bureaucracy-riddled insurance system.
There are innumerable reasons why the rest of the developed world has universal healthcare and really only one reason why we don't: greed — people (insurance executives, large-scale shareholders et al) want to make as much money as possible off the general public, and especially off sick people. It's clearly immoral and the prices we pay here for healthcare-related services and products (which are many times higher than prices paid across the border in Canada, or in Mexico, or in Australia, or anywhere in Europe) are outrageous. Perhaps one day this country will make human rights a priority, but for now, we live in uncertain times.
Joy, the reason why the healthcare system is messed up is because the government is not involved enough. We've let insurance companies drive up the prices in their greed so that none of us can afford it. They have to be stopped. Believe it or not the most efficiently run insurance in this country is Medicare/Medicaid.
And just to point out something. When you pay taxes you aren't paying for someone else you are paying for your ability to live in your community and use its resources. Your paying for the privilege in being able to ride on the streets, have access to emergency systems, and have the representatives of the law help you safeguard your property. It's no different with insurance. When you pay for your insurance you are paying for the ability to have access to resources to help you if you have a horrendous accident or a devastating illness. Despite what those Republican Corporate servants tell you the healthiest people in the world can still get cancer. They can still be made paraplegic by a drunk driver. The money you put into insurance eventually comes back to you over time in payments made to doctors, hospitals, and clinics.
Think about this. Paying your own way requires you to pay into the community that you live in. No one is volunteering your money for anything. They are expecting you to pay your fair share.
Joy, I have no children and yet I pay for kids (maybe yours) to be educated with my taxes. How would you react if tomorrow all public education becomes private? Let everyone pay for his/her child. If we can make education “socialized”, then we can make healthcare too. Which is more important- to educate children or to keep them alive?
There are several things wrong with the new bill, but the argument that a C-section is considered a pre-existing condition is idiotic. The bill does not change the definition of pre-existing conditions from what they have always been. At all. No insurance company will refuse to insure somebody strictly because they've had a C-section, but if said procedure led to expensive complications that they would be paying for, then THAT is a pre-existing condition, and it always has been. A procedure is not a condition, nor is rape a condition, these are actions that may lead to conditions, but the bill did not alter what can and can't be considered a pre-existing condition, despite the idiotic propaganda coming from the left that is only meant to place the notion in people's minds that Trump and Republicans hate rape victims by not only creating a strawman by alluding to extraordinary cases (same as when the left says “what about people who got raped by their sibling, can THEY get abortions?”), they take such an argument drastically out of context by making people who don't understand these policies think that they actually changed the definition to include rape, not complications caused by rape. It is dishonest at best, hysterically insidious and evidence of stupidity at worst. Here's the kicker, the bill that was passed STILL COVERS PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS! It gives states the option to file a waiver so they can circumvent the pre-existing condition provision, but it explicitly states that pre-existing conditions are still covered, just like they were under the ACA (which is why premiums got so high, frankly there should not be a federal mandate for insurance companies to cover high-risk individuals). This is nothing but political selective outrage against Republicans, because the ACA also allowed waivers when it was first passed (Look up story “Weiner: Waivers might Work For NY”).
And as for the rest of the contents of the handicapped logic in this article, you don't get it, we are not against people having insurance, we are against the government interfering in the commerce of insurance companies because when they do, the costs go up every time, even when they are fining people for not having insurance (which I don't see how that was ever Constitutional). To make the argument that this means that we want people to die is unbelievably egregious and hateful. If anything, the more government red-tape is involved in the healthcare system, the higher the mortality rate goes up for several terminal illnesses, so I could easily make the argument back at you that YOU want people to die by supporting legislation to get more government regulation, but I'm not mentally challenged and don't have to rely on slander and/or assign negative intent to make an argument, I know that deep down you THINK you are fighting for the right thing, but you are not. Government intervention leads to higher costs and less efficient disease control, I can link multiple studies to prove this. Single payer leads to the worst results, but people like it because they save lots of money. That is a cost-benefit you are more than welcome to determine that you'd be willing to take, but the fact is that our government is nowhere near the possibility of paying for such a program as it is right now, we would need to slash funding for a TON of stuff before even considering that, but every time Trump cuts even the most frivolous spending (abortions in third world countries that his critics didn't even know we were paying for, for instance) people accuse him of not being compassionate enough.
Donna, they aren't “her” endless wars. I know you like to point to warmongers like Bush and use them to pretend that all conservatives are pro-war, but Obama was equally tyrannical, ask Libya. And Hillary was a huge warmonger ready to go to war with Russia to please her special interest donors from the war machine (Trump only received, I believe, 3% of what Hillary did from the military industrial complex, they clearly knew they could rely on her more than him to do their bidding).
@Tarquin
You shouldn't be able to circumvent the responsibility for your actions of sleeping with and getting pregnant with such a horrible man then. Sorry, not sorry. You did not make the right decision, you were irresponsible for getting pregnant in the first place and spineless for refusing to take responsibility.
Yes! These “unknown” commenters are cowards. Hard to take your opinion seriously when you don't even have a name!
Greg Ingber, why are only women sluts, when men must be involved in order for pregnancy to occur? Why not apply punishment to both parties to the exchange of bodily fluids? Sure, sometimes the father sticks around, but sometimes not. If you want to pin the blame on “sluts”, you might also want to talk to the man-sluts who sleep with them, provide sperm, and walk away.
Yes, I read the amusement and sarcasm in your post, but you forgot to mention the “sperm donors” who must be involved for pregnancy. You can't get pregnant without a member of the opposite sex, after all.
Wow Joy what a sweetie pie you are. I hope you or someone you love has a devastating illness that you need more money than you have to pay for it….But I think you are a lost cause selfish to the core. Ugly inside and out.
Again, I see blame being placed solely on the women. What about the men who provide the sperm? I mean, pardon me if I'm wrong, but you do need “two to tango”, as it were.
The sheer number of people who criticise women for falling pregnant! As though they do it all on their lonesomes, too! As though they wake up one morning and say “you know what? I think I'd like a baby! And… I think it might be disabled, too… That'll make life a ball of fun!” All parents (who actually do that and expect to have a child at some point fairly soon) hope and wish for a healthy child. If the child happens to have a severe disability, or even is twins or triplets, etc. that the family finances can't afford? What do you expect to happen? Tell the parents they shouldn't have had a disabled child, while guilt-tripping people who abort? Scold them for having twins, when it's what the sperm caused (identical twins, involved in both twins and triplets) over which the man involved has no control, or the result of multi-ovulation, which the woman has no control over and may not even know about (multi-ovulation causes fraternal twins, also involved in twins and triplets)? Take all funding for assistance and expect them to just work for as much money as they can while being expected to be there for their children, even if they have low-paying jobs or a mint in student debt in order to get a well-paying job? It's all interconnected, and we also need to remember that, too.
“And if she did not want to be a mother then she should have kept her legs closed ” I see what you did there, making it all the woman's responsibility. Hate women much?
I am a Canadian. I have free medical care. I pay taxes. My taxes support seniors and veterans in need. My taxes support parental leave benefits for a year. My taxes support people who are unable to work. My taxes support free medical prescriptions for youth under 25 years of age. My taxes support breakfast programs for schools. My taxes support subsidized housing for the poor. My taxes support public schools. My taxes support hospitals. My taxes support police and the RCMP. My taxes support fire departments, ambulances and the 911 emergency system. My taxes support garbage pick up, public parks, national parks, municipal buildings, national buildings. I am proud that my taxes do all that. My taxes are not too high, I live very well on what is in my pocket after my taxes are paid. Canada is a great country. We care about each other. We are not perfect but we have a safety net. My community is participating in a universal minimum living program to see how things will improve when people receive a decent financial minimum. I will NEVER understand why universal medical care terrifies Americans! Why on earth did Nixon buckle to the lobbyists and allow this system in the first Place? Going to the hospital should not put you in to bankruptcy! I just had knee surgery….cost $0. Am off work for 2-3 weeks…still getting paid. I am a free person. I have more freedom than Americans. I am not a 'socialist' which is what people think will happen to the USA if you bring in universal medical. News alert…you have universal policing and courts and jails and fire depts etc….wake up! This is a financial scam to put money in the pockets of the rich (tax breaks) and the insurance companies and it is about keeping the people poor and desperate and powerless. Take back your country! Sorry..,,rant over. I love America, please do the right thing.
Rebecca thank you for letting us see both sides of the spectrum!
Isn't there hypocrisy in supporting abortion on demand while defending socialized healthcare too? If this boy's life matters now why would it not have mattered when he was in the womb? He's the same child after all, just older.
Also the major problem with this article is it ASSUMES that everyone who is pro life is against socialized medical care which is not true. You don't know what pro lifers do with their money, do you know their opinion on Trumpcare, Obamacare or single payer healthcare.
And these are really two completely seperate issues. Dying from an illness is not the same thing as being intentionally killed. There are many reasons people die from illnesses it could be lack of resources or it could simply be that medicine has not advanced yet, etc.. bottom line is medical care is a physical thing, it's limited by capacity and resources while killing someone is an act of intention, so we not evern talking about equal matters. Not giving a dollar to homeless person might be selfish but stabbing that person to death is not the same at all. I can't go to jail for the former but would be in prison for life for the latter. So does anyone supporting this article think the law is hypocritical because it punishes us for killing people but not for refusing to volunteer at homeless shelters? See, it's intellectual dishonesty to even make such comaprisons.
That's why I don't even like the term
Pro life anymore I am simply against legalized elective abortion. I also have no issue with single oayer healthcare in my opinion I think the pros outways the cons (though I am also not so oblivious to think there are no cons).
Ridiculous reasoning. One thing is murder. The other question as to how health care is achieved in a society is a matter of opinion. No normal person wants anyone to be without care; the question is how is this best achieved. State-run health care does not have a good track record.
Late term abortions are only performed in cases where the child can not survive with any quality of life. Conditions where fetuses develop without brains or with their spinal cord outside their body or their lungs never develop to a point where they are capable of drawing even a single breath. Conditions that are impossible to survive without perpetual life support and extreme pain we can't even begin to fathom. In some of these cases, even life support isn't an option. In most of these types of cases, even if the child does survive delivery, either natural or by C-section, the baby dies within minutes or hours and is in excruciating pain for the entirety of their short lives. Now, imagine being the parent who is told that you legally have to put your child through that. That you literally are required by law to torture an infant to satisfy someone else's concept of morality. In extreme cases like that, there is nothing doctors or modern medicine can do to help that baby, except pump them full of pain medication and Allow Natural Death. That's a thing, you know. An AND waver. They gave us the option to sign one after my son was born with a poor prognosis, but he was already breathing over the ventilator, so we decided to wait and see. In our case, there was hope. In the cases I mentioned above, there is no hope. There are no miracles that can fix those conditions, no matter whO you've seen on your favorite hospital drama. Late term abortions are not something that is ever done out of convenience, they are an excruciatingly difficult choice made by parents who desperately wanted the child they conceived and something went so terribly wrong that their onlybchoices are to end that life or torture their third and witness their suffering.
Thank you. This is a comprehensive explanation of what I worry about every day. My son is not yet 3 and has already used about 80% of what most lifetime caps were prior to the ACA. His medications alone would cost far more per month than my husband makes in a year. Considering my child has 9 preexisting conditions, he would be difficult, if not impossible to obtain insurance for and once he can no longer be covered by a family plan, he would be an insurance pariah! There was such outrage over epi-pen prices because an allergic something fathomable. Everyone knows someone touched by severe allergies. Not everyone knows someone with an illness or condition being kept under control by the services and medications made available through being readily able to obtain insurance. We have become an out of sight, out of mind society.
Amy you live in your own tiny little world and have zero idea of what you are talking about. Broad statements and assumptions like yours are a clear indication of ignorance. I desperately want a child, have been through years of failed fertility treatments, have had to induce a miscarriage due to an unviable pregnancy that out my own life at risk, and am still 100% pro choice. I'd happily adopt an unwanted child from another woman but also realize and understand that no one can tell another woman what's right for her. You are a closed and small minded individual that has very little understanding or respect for your fellow humans.
Dear Unknown,
Good thing that women who are raped never get pregnant. As our GOP leaders have educated us, the woman's body has ways of shutting that down….. (OMG OMG OMG)
@ Amy Kienutske There aren't enough loving families to take care of all of the kids in the foster care system. And just like everything else, it's a gamble. People aren't always who they appear to be.
Is it selfish to risk your life due to a medical issue with the pregnancy, especially if you know you and the child will die? Or should the mother just carry the child to term, assuming it makes it that far, only to have it suffer and die once it leaves her body? What if the child is a product of incest?
Having an abortion is not selfish, not is it an easy decision. No woman walks into it lightly and comes away unaffected. I also notice that nothing is said about the men that get these women pregnant. It's almost as if you think they have no say or responsibility in the matter.
I agree with the Unknown poster above. Proper sex education and free or low cost access to birth control is what is needed. Teach what works and abortion will become a nonissue.
Thank you for the article Ms. Rice. Well said.
Property is theft. Taxation is societal contribution.
That coffee you're drinking, Joy? It was probably harvested by people forced to ACTUALLY WORK AT GUNPOINT. That diamond on your hand? That chocolate you treat yourself to? Both more than likely were mined and harvested by CHILDREN at GUNPOINT.
Save me your histrionics unless you're actually taking the time to buy Free trade coffee and end child slavery and the DeBeers cartel.
I love people like Joy. I bet she's enjoying a coffee, maybe with a diamond or two, and might even treat herself to a bit of chocolate at some point today. She doesn't know that all three were probably produced by ACTUAL SLAVE LABOR. Forced to WORK AT LITERAL GUNPOINT, many of them LITERALLY CHILDREN.
The IRS doesn't come with guns blazing, hon. They mostly come at you with pencil pushers and leins if you've been super naughty. Maybe you've had enough of that slave coffee, yes?
Phantomspots I wish there was an option to like your comment 100 times. Unfortunately, I am sure it will fall on deaf ears.
Greg….YOU, and like minded individuals are what's wrong with this country. You're thinking, your views, and blatant disparaged for how the world ACTUALLY works is deplorable. If you want to think what Fox News says is how it is, try listening to both sides first and then make an informed decision. Don't be, yet another “sheep” and do, say, and think what they do, then go spout off at the mouth like you know what you're talking about. You all hide behind religion like you have a leg to stand on. The world was created through science and MILLIONS OF YEARS of evolution. It's SCIENTIFICALLY proven. The big man in the sky is not. It's called fiction. Check it out sometime. Oh wait, bedtimes stories (the bible) are you specialty. I was raised to believe in god and all that bullshit. Then, once i started thinking for myself, i walked away. And what the fuck is this shit? “This is the only way to make poor people feel bad enough to get their shit together and decide to be extremely wealthy like the great Americans who run Fox News and such!” Who says stupid shit like that? Oh wait, yet again, you do. You can take your white privilege ass and go suck a bag of dicks. Let me ask you a question, why is it that “should” be punished and forced to carry a baby that she doesn’t want, or can’t take care of, but men can throw their dicks around and are able to up and leave a pregnant woman high and dry or deny a child, and even after being proven wrong and they still don’t stick around and NOTHING happens to him. No jail time, no punishment..Nothing. How dare you sit there and call a woman a slut for having premarital sex and marital sex (according to you) but a man doing the same thing isn’t? Again, you are what is wrong. I really hope you get what’s coming to you. And a side note:
and Greg…I have no shame in it, I am a stripper, I work a full time job. I’m a BOSS in a male dominated profession and I kill it. l strip for fun. And let me tell you, the freakiest men, and the men that spend the most money on me, and that FREQUENT my establishment are you’re god preaching, bible thumping pervs.
joy…..you have yours & the hell with everyone else…..the helthcare problem is the insurance industry…….we need 'single payer '…you know it……every civilized industrial nation on earth uses it….they have kept their healthcare cost way down & in most cases have much better live expectancy …but the hundreds of millions in bribes from the insurancy companies to congress persons has kept our insurance & pharma cost the highest anywhere….but you….you have yours nobody else counts
Joy, we have less involvement in healthcare by our government than most countries that have excellent, comprehensive and inexpensive healthcare for all of their citizens!
Amy, I wish I lived in your world. In my world, there's plenty of kids in foster care who need a loving home if you're so concerned with those empty nests.
Broad brush fear mongering spinning out of control. All these issues need discussing but in an honest conversation.
The government wastes FAR less money than the private sector. Medicare/Medicaid has been shown, over and over and over again, to be more efficient than private insurance. Part of the reason is that government programs don't have leeches draining off hundreds of millions and calling themselves CEOs. And don't even get me started about billionaire shareholders.
Yes. Thank you for this. YES.
This is wonderful. Thank you for posting. You are exactly right to call out the moral hypocrisy of the so-called Christian right. The cruelty of that movement in the name of care, in the name of God, is frankly disgusting. Jesus wept…
Surely you understand the basic tenets of insurance Hannah. Insurance works on the law of large numbers. It is this large pool of premiums that allow the risk to spread wide enough that there is money to cover the most catastrophic illnesses without the victim being bankrupted.
The problem with the ACA is not its language. It is the insurance companies requiring profits that erode the pool of premiums there to fund healthcare. The problem with the ACA is its still dependent on insurance companies. Once we remove insurance companies from the equation for at least basic and serious healthcare needs, financial order will balance.
Obamacare took the first step … to disallow the inhumane allowance for insurance companies to exempt pre-existing conditions and to impose lifetime limits. Just those two things, which I argue most Americans think is fair and just, has put enormous stress on the P&L's of insurance companies. Allowing them to bail IS the problem, under this scenario. The only other option if we want to retain these two humane rights is Single Payer Universal Healthcare … and we've got over 100 countries (if not more) to look to for successful models.
If you want to repeal Obamacare and replace it with it Single Payer, you won't find many ACA supporters object. The problem with “Repeal and Replace” is the GOP wants to reverse something akin to Roe vs. Wade. Democrats will not stand for this. And apparently many constituents of red districts won't stand for it either.
We're all “against abortion.” No one is out there handing out “I had an abortion” stickers like you get when we vote. The division isn't between people who are “against abortion” and people who are “for abortion.” It's between people who realize abortion is a tragedy that should be minimized, but when necessary performed by doctors in a sterile environment, versus people who live in the fantasy land where making abortion illegal makes them stop, when in truth it will simply make unsafe, illegal abortions rampant. The problem with belonging to the second group (well, there are many) is that those people are *not* in favor of universal healthcare – they are in favor of denying healthcare to desperate women who need it.
@nparks: Not at all. In the first paragraph she is saying that if one thinks legislation needs to be passed to protect the life of a 30-week old fetus, if that same person is silent on legislation that endangers the life of the same child at six years old (by stripping the child of health care benefits and therefore real access to health care), that person is NOT pro-life. She is saying that to be pro-life, one must acknowledge that life worth protecting does not end at birth.
Adoption would have killed you? That's ironic.
sorry for posting 3 times… my post kept disappearing so I tried one account… then another… and then they all 3 showed up at the same time.
Joy, we live in a society. If you don't want to be a part of this society, then stop using any and all public services right now.
God,I hate republicans.
Taxes are not robbery, Joy. They are the cost of living in a civil society with the many protections and comforts that you so obviously take for granted. Believe me, I would love to see how you would fare out in the jungle in complete anarchy, but me, I would prefer to live in a civil society that chooses to take care of its own people. Over and over again, it is proven that trickle down does not work. You know that old Reaganomics belief that if you cut taxes on the wealthy, it trickles down to the rest of us. It actually just puts more in the pockets of those who already have more than they can ever use and the rest of us just get screwed, and we get more “entitlements” cut (don't get me started with the use of that word to describe things that we work hard for, and contribute to with OUR hard earned taxes) and public education cut, and teacher's salaries cut, and fire departments cut, social security cut, medicare cut (or worse yet, privatized! that's all we need is for the powers that be and corporations to make more money off of us and our taxes). Yet, the Republicans keep wheeling out the trickle down theory, every damn time they take over. It is proven again and again, societies that take care of their people, people are more productive, there is less crime, people are happier. Why don't we all want that? Well, most of us do, and then some of us continue to be brainwashed by Fox News and the wealthy establishment that it would be better if the less-enfranchised, and poor starved and died. And then when the Republicans are in power, they gerrymander districts in a way that keeps them in power. Wake up people. You are on the wrong side. You're on the side that will sell you out for another yacht, in a second.
The “And if she did not want to be a mother then she should have kept her legs closed” statement is always bizarre to me. Do these people realize that they're arguing that sex is only to be enjoyed by the privileged? Or do they believe that sex should only be used for procreation?
Taxes are not theft. Congress is authorized by the Constitution to levy taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States and its citizens. It's funny to me how many Constitutionalists know so very little about the Constitution.
HAHAHAHAHA this is a joke right??? If not there is a lot of people out there with some seriously distorted thinking.
What are these special cases that suddenly make “murder” ok?
I didn't read it like that at all. I could be wrong, but I read it as she considers herself pro-life, which is why her baby was carried to term and born despite his physical issues. However, she's struggling with understanding why her fellow pro-lifers are abandoning her support for her child now. Never did she say she wanted to abort her baby or that she wishes she had. So I'm really not seeing where you think the author wanted to end her son's life….
Jennies mom- I have a disabled child. The ACA is a mess and has cost us access to actual health care. It needs to be fixed. I don't think there is anything the republicans could do to tweak it that the democrats would be happy with. I hope you were complaining when the ACA was passed and millions on the individual market lost access to health care due to high premiums and ridiculous deductibles. The failure of both the dems and republicans to come up with a workable health insurance bill is reason enough for the federal government to stop messing with it and let the states take over.
As a Norwegian reading your post and the comments, I find your courage and your point admirable.
Having a child that struggles is life is very challenging, and it must be even more stressful when all you want to is to provide your child with as much life and joy as you can, but fear the financial concequences of a future that is beyond your control.
Being pro-life means supporting life, that means making sure that you enable everyone- the richest and the poorest, the best and the worst a chance to grow and live. That means to me as to you, affordable health care, long maternity leaves, that child care and care for the elderly is affordable. It also means schools that provide everyone with a good education, but it also humane prison sentences. It means affordable, safe housing. And it also means accepting climate change and taking measures so that our children and grandchildren will have a world somewhat similar to ours to live in. Being pro-life means accepting that you are a part of a system, and that our problems and everyone elses can be better solved when shared – financially and socially.
I am a forty-one year old female and I had the choice at seventeen to have an abortion. I even went to court to obtain approval. I made the appointment and was approved by a counselor who bought every feeble excuse out of my mouth. I did not go to the appointment. I called an adoption agency and they helped me keep my apartment, provided counseling and made me wait for two weeks after the baby was born so I was sure I was making the right decision. I gave the baby up for adoption to a family that was overjoyed to have him. While my heart hurts for the loss, my soul rejoices because a child and a family are whole and I did not have to compromise my beliefs. I am pro-life. I have watched women use abortion as birth control. I have watched them conflicted for years because they did not know if they made the right choice. Even if I wasn't sure if the choice I made was right, I did not end anyone's life or compromise the future promise they might contribute to the world. There is always a choice, with or without a government healthcare act.
Yeah, Michelle, that's a head-scratcher for sure. There are actually people who think it's a sin to “murder” your fetus if conceived consensually, but that it's ok to “murder” your fetus if it was conceived via rape. So, um, can you murder your 2 year old if s/he was conceived via rape? At what age does that become taboo? It's just such a blatant example of the fact that so very many people still think that pregnancy should be a woman's punishment for sex.
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thank you, Tarquin Jezobel Rocketman
the hardest words to say, i am sure
i am happy that things turned out for the better for you
what “pro-lifers” seem to fail to understand is the highly, highly individual nature of every case
and how hard the decision is in the first place, even without constant screaming from the outside that you would be the literal devil if you refused to bring a life into a world that might end up being a living hell for them and yourself
i admire your courage for speaking up
thank you
p much ^
you're not the one talking to your doctor and counselor and grieving and having to make one of the hardest decisions of your life
so keep your nose out
So back in the day when the founders were writing our Constitution they considered the “common good” to be desirable. It is also called a social contract. Here is a definition:social contractor social compact
Examples Word Origin
noun
1.
the voluntary agreement among individuals by which, according to any of various theories, as of Hobbes, Locke, or Rousseau, organized society is brought into being and invested with the right to secure mutual protection and welfare or to regulate the relations among its members.
2.
an agreement for mutual benefit between an individual or group and the government or community as a whole.
We ARE all in this together, so we had better be willing to take care of each other.
The age-old, “You can't be pro-life unless you're a full-blown socialist” argument. It fails every time. This argument is the same as saying that I can't be opposed to the murder of a man unless I'm willing to pay his rent and bills for the rest of my life. You don't have to support the garbage ACA to know that crushing the skull of unborn babies is morally reprehensible. You make no to attempt at explaining how being against abortion and against ACHA are linked, you just like abortion and dislike ACHA. This whole post demonstrates the morally-bankrupt attitude that liberals have to where they would rather be killed in the womb than live without free stuff. Despicable.
Well said, Joy.
It is really frustrating that people keep bringing up adoption. Did you know that not all children get adopted? Did you know that it is incredibly hard for a child with special needs to become adopted? Did you know that a high percentage of special needs children given up are then abused by foster or adoptive parents? Did you know that many people who have children don't actually love them and abuse or neglect them? Did you know that many children will die a horrible, pain filled, infuriating death by parents who would have chosen to have an abortion to begin with? As horrible as some of those things are to say… it's even more terrifying that they are true.
We all have the right to make that choice for our children. While I personally would never get an abortion, I also know that I would ALWAYS have family support and would love my children not matter what. Everyone is not me. Some are very different from me. No one else has any right to make the choice for someone else.
Joy, I have two problems with your suggestion. The first is that it absolves many people of responsibility for their fellow human beings. Believing you own your money to the exclusion of any responsibility for the shared welfare of others is so incredibly immoral I barely know where to start. Your property rights do not trump other people's rights to basic sustenance.
Second, what you suggest is inefficient. It costs money for non-profits to raise funds. They duplicate services by having many agencies doing what could be done by just one. Charities do not do a good job of providing those services because they have to spend so much of their budget making sure they get more money – so, on advertising. That's not okay.
And yet above ALL things abortion is murder. Something about this liberals and pro choice advocates can't wrap there heads around…. Hmmmm.
WTH The MILITARY is like social welfare programs????? What a bunch of lunatics you all are!!! Joy is RIGHT! First the Military is a JOB!! No different than the police or the postal worker. VERY VERY VERY different than the welfare programs INCLUDING your free insurance which is given out to whom ever , encouraging people to not work. No economist will tell you differently! Secondly, I am super sorry to anyone who has to go through difficult times, god knows I have. But since WHEN are other people OBLIGATED to pay for your misfortunes? Answer, they aren't. The US gives more to charities than any other country…but you think that THOUSANDS of young families and TENS OF THOUSANDS of young adults should go without insurance because its TOO FRICKING EXPENSIVE so you can have a greater portion in your coverage??!?! WTH is wrong with you people? I didnt choose cancer, your child didnt choose to be sick…that lady didnt choose to get fired..that man didnt choose to be born to poor uneducated parents….but hey..according to you, we should all get whatever we feel we deserve! The healthcare system sucks, it always has..NOT because the pharmacies or insurance companies run it for a profit as a democrat would have you believe…GET AN EDUCATION!! Its effed up because it was based on a hospital selling healthcare to a local business as a way to drum up business and now we sell insurance through our jobs! If your job told you, you could go to the supermarket as much as you wanted for free…wouldnt you go whenever you wanted and not give a crap about the prices….driving the prices up for those who dont get that benefit? You are ALL a bunch of UNEDUCATED idiots buying into what crap you are fed through your party. Dont call that woman selfish, it is YOU who are selfish. Tens of thousands should not have insurance because they cant afford it anymore and another hundred thousand cant afford to buy their kids clothes for school because they have triple the insurance premiums…but HEY who cares about their kids right?!?!? Selfish , uneducated MORONS!!!!
“You can't call yourself pro-life and stand by idly while millions of people are stripped of their healthcare benefits”
Where were you when obamacare passed?
Hi Kathleen, I think you are getting a little off topic. The article explains that if people are pro life, they should also support the child through their life… so let's say you are told your baby has major complications and conditions that will cost a lot of money… well those would now be prexisting conditions. Now it will be harder for that child to be cared for with the new condition with Trumpcare. I think this article is trying to point out the hypocrisy of the prolife movement to say life is sacred yet the kids that are born/living life should not be cared for. If all life is sacred then all life should be cared for period.
Here's another example: My son is now 30 years old but was a 31 week gestation baby and was only 1/2 oz from being 4 lbs. He got necrotizing enterocolitis because his intestines were not developed enough to accept food. (It's like gangrene where the tissue dies). That turned into spinal meningitis due to the e coli germ in his blood stream. Since birth ,he has been blind, deaf, has cerebral palsy, is shunt-dependent and has epilepsy. He can't walk.
Number 1: the rumor that a 20 week old fetus can survive outside the womb is a LIE.
Number 2: It irks me when someone says “I don't care what's wrong with him, I'll love him anyway”
Of course you would! You're not a heartless robot. That is not the point. The point is how much pain will the child suffer to make you feel good about loving him?
Number 3: My son gets $720 a month in SSI but he does get free healthcare. Disabled children/ adults are treated like 2nd class citizens whether you like it or not. $720. C;'mon.
The medically fragile children and adults in our communities should be given every opportunity to thrive & be taken care of. But if I had known that my child would go through the suffering he has gone through (and still does and can't tell you what hurts), I would have had an abortion if I could have. Not for my convenience, but because I would not want to live the way he has. It is a prolonged suffering and tears my heart out everyday.
Still I will love him forever and eternally.
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I think you are confusing socialism for capitalism… The pharmaceutical companies and for profit medical insurers love dumb people like you. Yes let's keep paying “all the market will bare” for healthcare. Let's keep making the share holders and ceos big money while exploiting the disadvantaged. Sure, let's just make it a luxury to take care of chronic conditions so we can over load emergency centers and waist even more money. Bloody fucking brilliant 😡
First of all UNKNOWN should not be allowed to post because he is too afraid to show his face. How do I know he's a he? Because although he called someone racist for using the term white trash, he said a woman should keep her legs shut. So he is a White Male Misogynist.
Either MAN UP, UNKNOWN, and use your real name or shove off & squawk like a chicken
Amy–I am pro life but recently have noticed a disgusting trend in our movement. Adoption is not exactly giving away a cat it's not exactly a minute of their time. A loving family blah blah blah… they are absolutely not entitled to anybody else's child. One woman's failure to conceive does not entitle her to someone else's baby. This is not the 1950s. Single women should be encouraged to keep their own biological babies, not hand them over to strangers. The sense of arrogance and entitlement some infertile couples exhibit makes me ill. More often than not, their infertility is of their own doing.
I am pro life but wholeheartedly support strong sex education, access to low cost birth control, and counseling for young women in crisis (not the foul exploitive adoption industries though). No one wants to see anyone suffer from an illness but Obamacare was a disaster with the higher premiums for everyone; many businesses ended up not giving employees 40 hours a week because they didn't want to pay the fees. Obama created a gig economy by which everyone has scrape together 3 part time jobs just to make ends meet.
Yes, I agree that we all must help one another. We the people are capable of volunteering, donating to charity, and supporting non profits. The government does a crappy job.
The solution is neither. She should keep her own baby. She doesn't owe anybody shit.
ObamaCare was a disaster not only for the expense of people's health insurance premiums but also for their employment; businesses suffered big time
I do not agree with your choice to have an abortion but am also infuriated that people would suggest you carry a baby to term, deliver it, and then hand it over to strangers. The adoption suggestion is the worst of all the options. No one deserves anyone else's child. I do not know you or your situation but do know that many women have found ways to make it work while keeping the bad guy away; there are resources available for people in these crappy situations.
Unknown… that late in the game, an emergency c-section can take place. If the baby happens to die after the c-section that is sad but at least the intention was not to kill but rather an attempt to save. Kathleen…you claim “Adversity doesn't change the inherent value of an individual” wow that is an amazing quote you should patten or I may use it sometime–how profound and how deeply true. Absolutely no parent of a living child with Down's Syndrome or retardation would say they regret their child being born. I cringe at the arguments of “but what if the baby will grow up to be retarded?” Uhm… that implies that retarded people have no right to live which is Nazi-ish and awful. May God bless you. Having a child with anxiety is no easy feat but I can tell you love her very much and cherish her life as a mom.
In the entire history of humanity no large society has ever been able to remotely fill the need by individuals volunteering funds. It's a nice fairy tale, but worth exactly jackshit for those who need the help right now.
If people are so convinced it's possible, then why not set up a test area that is large enough to extrapolate to the entire population and prove its efficacious? I'll tell you why, because they know it doesn't work. The simple reality is we live in a communal species which requires us to forgo some of the perks of being solitary to gain the benefits inherent in a group dynamic, and that includes contributing resources to the collective. If you want to benefit from the collective, you must participate. If you'd prefer to not contribute, leave.
You can't have it both ways, and I am sick to death of self-indulgent myopic adults behaving like spoilt children because they don't want to share.
202-224-3121 is the Congressional switchboard to contact anyone in Congress or leave a message with their people.
You really need to read that bill a bit better because you are a fool for lashing out the way you did. NOTHING is being denied to people. I am pro-life but do support a woman's right to term. IF and ONLY if there is a real health reason to do so or in cases of rape. To just do it because you can't support a child or don't want it is wrong. Keep your legs closed or give it up to the many couples who want to adopt a baby but can't due to waiting lists.
The major problem with having healthcare run at the state level is that you do not have coverage, or consistent coverage, when you leave the state. If you live near a border or visit family in another state and become ill, you may not receive the same level of care or cost for that care than if you were an in state resident.
Think about it like going to a State College, if you are a resident you get one rate, if you are an out of state American you get another, if you are a foreign transfer student another rate. Additionally, without a centralized system, you do necessarily have access to your medical records. And, if you are being seen for treatment outside of your normal coverage area it is because you are in an emergency situation and may not be able to provide your medical history either due to loss of consciousness, disorientation, or in some cases, language barriers.
If you have never had to operate in another language or country to receive medical care you don't know how frustrating and dangerous it can be trying to navigate a new healthcare system.
I'm an American who lived in French Canada for 3 years, and now am in Sweden. I've gone without my medication in the states because I couldn't afford to see a doctor to get my prescription renewed, to French Canada not bothering to get my medical history, boxing my pancreas and giving me diabetes, to Sweden where I am not allowed to pay more than $300 USD a year on prescription medication, and where insulin and prenatal care is entirely free.
Everyone talks about how evil socialized medicine is, but it generally comes from the mouths of people who have never operated in that system.
And here's the kicker.
Our tax rate is actually lower in Sweden than it was in Canada.
Our tax rate is slightly higher than it was in the U.S.
However, our take home pay is significantly higher in Sweden.
You don't pay for additional medical insurance, you don't pay into your pension, and in a little over a year when our child turns one, she will get to go to fully funded and subsidized daycare. You get money every month to cover daycare, rather than a tax break at the end of the year, which forces you to find that money and then be reimbursed. Sweden also has tax incentives to boost services, you get a discount on babysitters/nannies/house cleaners that the state pays directly to the contractor. They bill you for a portion and bill the state for the rest.
So even though we pay a 31% tax rate, because of the benefits and costs that are paid by employers and the state, we end up being more fiscally solvent than we would be in the U.S. with the same salary.
Remind me again, who is it that is stealing from you?
In other words: You are not pro-life unless you are 100% behind socialized medicine and have absolutely no concern about other people determining how healthcare will be run and funded. I happen to disagree.
Thank you Joy for a well-reasoned response!
I was married to an abusive man and we unfortunately lost our child due to circumstances that I don't even understand. I wanted that child. I love my child. And I would have given every dime that I had to have adopted yours. I am sorry that you felt that was the only way and I truly am sorry that you still have such pain and sorrow.
This posting is a disservice. The entire premise is based on nonsensical hysteria. For the record I'm not onboard with the new law, I think we need a Bizmark system honestly. That said “If you are willing to accept a law that will make a C-section a pre-existing condition (and thus make future health care harder to get and more expensive), then morally demand that a woman carry a baby who is incompatible with life to term, you are not pro-life.” – This is just plain silly. I mean just utter non-sense. The bill does no such thing. Oh, it also doesn't define sexual assault as a preexisting condition either. Oppose this law on merit please, not hysteria.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/08/politics/trump-liberals/index.html
This is why I am a proponent of abortion well past the 150th trimester
Nope, not even close to what it said. It's saying that if you support it as a human life as a fetus, why not also as a living aging child. Smh
Murder is murder, weather you murder the one on the right, or the left, it's still murder. Do what you want with your body, not the body of another. If you're dumb enough to have sex and get pregnant, not wanting a child. Then deal with the consequences; that's like complaining about being thrown in jail for robbing a convenience store… you could just… not rob the store, then you wont have to deal with the jail time. Sure, sometimes you'll get away with it, other times you wont. It's your choice. But again back to murder is murder. if you're willing to kill the one on the left, then when does it stop, can a mother murder her child if her child is 17, and graduated from high school? what about murdering a mother who's 35, and was just in an accident, and is now paralyzed, or brain damaged? What about Grandpa and Grandma, when they have to take a cocktail of pills in the morning to be able to see, and to be able to drive, or to function. the article talks about “who is incompatible with life” and “who is diagnosed with profound medical needs,” Who decides what, and who is “incompatible” and what exactly is considered “profound medical needs” tell me, life “ends” when a heart beat stops, so why doesn't it begin when a heart beat begins? when will murder be acceptable, and who will be the judge and jury, who will decide who, and when to take life? Before Obamacare, hospitals were required to take everyone, those who had, and who hadn't had insurance, now, after Obamacare, a hospital can refuse those without insurance. Thanks Obama. But back to profound medical needs, and incompatible with life… is this article saying that we should get rid of all vaccines, all antibiotics, all modern medicine, and surgeries, and let only the strong survive? if I don't need any pills, then why should you? i think your calcium, and vitamin pills are “profound medical needs” because “I” don't need them… how slippery does this slope get, and who is to decide? just some thoughts…. don't murder. Murder is bad.
Hey Gramps, until you have to carry a child around in your body, you should stay the hell out of the discussion.
Hey Gramps, until you have to carry a child around in your own body, you should probably keep your mouth shut and let women make their own decisions about their bodies.
Well said auldtwa!!
Joy, the government has been “volunteering” your money to corporations for decades. I have no problem paying slightly more, read that again: SLIGHTLY more, taxes so everyone can afford healthcare.
Joy, have you ever gone to the doctor? Yes you have. Did you pay full cost out of pocket? No you didnt. All the healthy people with your insurance plan paid for you. That's how insurance works.
Tell you what, talk about voluntary charity. Send me your address so I can send you a dollar so you can buy a clue.
Thank you for sharing your story Tarquin. It is a very personal gut wrenching decision that no one should make for you. Blessings to you and your two kids.
Joy, have you ever been to the doctor? yes you have. Did you pay full cost out of pocket? No you didnt. The healthy people on your insurance plan paid for you. THAT IS HOW INSURANCE WORKS.
Tell ya what – talking about charity and volunteerism? Send me your address so I can send you a dollar so you can buy a clue
Wonderful points here Elizabeth.
Wow, Greg. How very Christian of you. Thats exactly what Jesus would agree with.
That kinda bullshit is why I went atheist. Keep your God out of my uterus and out of my law books.
May I ask what affordable is for you? I had choices but all were going to cost me as much as my mortgage payment and out of pocket would be almost $10k/yr before it's even any good. I'm that wonderful age and income level that's suppose to help support this whole thing…
Joy, did you go to public school? Taxpayers paid the salaries of those teachers. When a child has a brain tumor and survives, they are left with life-long devastating pre-existing conditions. They well never be able and will rely on Medicaid their entire life. Taxpayer dollars, my dear. Should we forget about them too? What if the states, if left up to them are properly funded because they don't do well managing their state budgets? Without Federal oversight, sometimes we fail to adequately care for our citizens. It is the right thing to do to care for people who cannot care for themselves… don't you think?
I am pretty sure she is saying that the care that people who claim to be “pro life” give to the child at the fetus stage should care just as much about the 6 year old issues and medical needs to give him a quality of life. One can't pick and choose when to mind someone else's business and hold themselves up in “pro life” sanctity and disregard the dignity of life here. I think what she is getting at is that the people that want to pass/support legislation to create road blocks to abortion and contraception are often also readily supportive of cutting funding and accessibility to welfare programs, cost-sharing and tax-funded avenues to help for those pregnancies that are carried (healthy or otherwise) to full term and result in an actual person in our society that perhaps demand that we as a village contribute to his/her well-being. I think that she doesn't say anything that deems his life as deserving of abortion because of a disorder. That is my interpretation.
This article makes some poor assumptions that we shouldn't accept as fact.
First, the plan that is going to the Senate isn't going to pass as is. It will change and we don't know how. But, even as written, the plan does not strip anyone of insurance. That is a narrative that is being widely desciminated but is not based on reality. The current bill removes restrictions that forced people into plans they didn't want, eliminates the Obamacare market place that has failed and creates risk pools for difficult to insure people. This plan has worked in numerous states.
Second, it assumes the government's job is to care for people. The government's purpose is to protect rights and freedoms. There is nothing in the constitution that even allows the federal government to give financial assistance to individuals. They are only charged with ensuring the states and local governments don't violate the rights of individuals. Mandating that someone buys a product is 500% unconstitutional. No rational minded person can make the argument to the contrary.
Finally, the article assumes that protecting a life is only valid if that life will be financially supported. Do we really want to live in a society that assigns rights based on wealth? Is that what you want to argue. Rights are endowed by our creator and are inalienable. The right to life is the most sacred of all those.
It is the government's job to protect people from threats, foreign and domestic. It is not the government's job to cradle people. Protecting life, born or not, is a function of the government.
What kind of argument is that Cford? You could say the same for rape…”Stop being so judgemental, you don't know what that man was going through, you don't know what they had to endure..”
I agree with many of the points made by Elizabeth but why use the term “clutch your pearls”? What does that imply?
The only part that doesn't work is mandatory purchasing healthcare. Everything else works. I was helped through ACA. *Is Disabled*My life was full on saved. As was many others iny state and neighboring. Both of which took on the expanded Medicaid.
Greg, that's a funny parody.
If you are in favor of the death penalty (as a lot of conservatives are)……YOU ARE NOT PRO-LIFE.
no. she's saying if you claim to be pro-life….be pro-life. be as passionate about caring for humans after they are born as you are before they are born.
Sure you are. There is a stark difference between protecting an innocent life and terminating the most aggregious violators of personal rights.
Please tell me you can see the difference between killing a defenseless fetus and a measured termination of murderous child rapist?
shared. it can absolutely be argued our current system is broken. However, if we do not look critically at what is being proposed, we are simply replacing one problem for another. well said, and thank you for saying it.
From what I have read, rape would be a pre-existing condition so all medical treatments stemming from the rape are not covered, but the rapist gets charged and if found guilty, goes to jail and all of his food, clothing, housing and medical needs are paid for by the taxpayers. That's messed up
You've been lied too. Some people feel that it is ok to make these outrageous fabrications to trick good people into supporting legislation that doesn't fit their ideology regardless of the benefit to the public. I don't think it is disputable that the ACA was a net negative with some positive areas. However, some think it is ok to say that if it is repealed we will be worse off than before the ACA. That simply isn't true. When we repeal a law that is a net negative we don't degrade the lives of the citizenry.
When my children were small and we didn't have insurance because it is not a God given right to have insurance that is what is wrong with this country everyone thinks someone owes them something from the government on down my point being we went to the clinic waited longer but got their immunization s for free which what you all crybabies stand in line wait for hours when you aren't blessed with insurance that is what you do no one owes you a thing
Left to our own devices, there would be no healthcare for the poor. We are too selfish to contribute enough for their care. It would have to come from the top, and unfortunately history does not prove that this would occur.
The phrase common good never appears in the Constitution of the Inited States of America.
So a person is not pro-life if they don't want to use the govt gun to provide health care for other people? They aren't pro-life if they don't want politicians involved in health care? They aren't pro-life if they expect people to be responsible for their actions?
Your definition of pro-life is backwards. Being pro-life means opposing murder for all people, born or unborn. It certainly doesn't mean providing entitlements to some people at the expense of others.
Amy Kienutske, as long as it is legal for a man to sabotage contraception and intentionally cause an unwanted pregnancy, it needs to be legal and safe for a woman to end an unwanted pregnancy.
Also, you don't put a space before a period.
Greg Ingber, please run for president.
You also don't have the right to life. Once the government controls the how, when, where, why, what and who, your right becomes a privilege. Rights are only rights if they are independent of outside control and do not compel others to act on your behalf. Your system does both. It requires you to pay taxes (willing as it may be, it is compulsory) and your government tells you where, when, why, what, who and how.
Yes, your government painted your privilege with a wide brush to create the appearance of maintaining your rights. But, now you are trapped in a system that they control. They can deny you anything they want, any time they want. You are stuck with no right to life.
But…hey…you are happy. Right?
Amen Joy!!! This blog is as asinine as it gets. There are two very separate issues and comparing apples to oranges… well they are still an apple and still an orange. Both part of the government issues but not the same. Lol.
Here's one for you, Noemi!
THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF BEING PRO-CHOICE. IT'S A CHOICE.
It's like reading a dictionary to a rock, honestly.
Abstinence programs don't work?!?! Bull crap!!! birth control doesn't always work and people shouldn't be making choices without being prepared to deal with the consequences! Everyone has the right to be born and live and should get health care but what you said about abstinence not working? That, my friend, was retarded. Abstinence is the only 100 percent guarantee that you won't get pregnant. People are freaking idiots these days and only ever think of themselves. How pathetic.
If you believe in war, YOU ARE NOT PRO LIFE. War only exists to have one person extinguish the life of another person, for usually religious or economic reason. After 22 years of service to America, I have become a pacifist. Short of a direct attack by a foreign state on the physical borders of the U.S., there is NO reason for war, at all.
U.S. Army 22 years Ret.
Brava!!! So well said. I am pro choice.. but found myself pregnant at 17. There was no way I was giving up my baby, and CHOSE to have it. I was lucky.. my parents, and the father, agreed that I should have that choice, and didnt give me a hard time.
@Rebecca Rice: Thank you for saying that so eloquently.
Me too strawberry red in K.C., me too! I call them redumbliKKKans though! 😁
I wholeheartedly agree with Elizabeth's point of view. For the VAST majority of women, abortion is an agonizing decision, one which is not made lightly, and one which will haunt them for years, if not forever. Their reasons for making such a choice can be myriad, ranging from lack of funds to raise a child, (you do realize contraception can fail, yes?), from conception through sexual assault or incest, to birth defects that can run the gamut of being incompatible with life, or cost insurmountable bills to sustain a life. Do I sound cruel? Mayhap. Do I sound realistic? Yes. Obamacare is designed to reduce the burden of healthcare costs for women more so than men, while tRumpcare is clearly rigged to take us back decades, if not centuries. I, for one, am tired of being singled out due to my sex. I am every bit entitled to fair treatment, and the current establishment can darn well go sit in a corner and suck their thumbs.
Thank you Peggy. Those planes land on runways that are publicly funded and leave from terminals built with tax dollars.
Tarquin, are you seriously trying to tell us that letting a child live under better circumstances was more horrific than killing it?
Joy and nparks: Yes, the government wastes plenty of tax dollars. The biggest example I can think of off the top of my head is Trump and his family wasting millions going golfing at Mar-a-Lago, funding security for international business trips (his sons), and extra security for Melania because she refuses to move to the White House. How about they put that toward healthcare and then you'd pay less.
You'll regret your comments if you ever find yourself in need of insurance the same way the family in this article is.
It is not the mandate of any provision of the ACA that drove the cost of either the premiums or the deductibles but the profit margin for the insurance companies
And the number of insurers who have left the marketplaces is a direct result of the GOP deliberately reducing mandated “risk corridor” payments to insurers by 88%
And the GOP governors who decided their racism was more important than assuring the health of the citizens in their state by refusing the Medicaid expansion
It blows me away that someone can present a sensible, respectful opinion on here and just get shamed, insulted and verbally torn apart by emotional people that have literally no viable solution to this problem. Please go do some history on Socialism and Communism in the world, and see how it turned out for the other left-leaning countries. (i.e. Nazi Germany and Stalin's Communist Soviet Union)
Try and have an open mind. Try to have a curious mind. Learn the other position. Learn why people continue to politely disagree with your stance; it may just because they're coming from a sensible, logical (albeit painful) grasp on reality.
We do not live in utopia. We never will. But socialism will tear this country apart.. when it comes to healthcare, pick two:
Quality
Affordability
Universality
I guarantee if you learn the bits of history from the last 150 years of global war, you will understand why socialism is destined to destroy us.
Joy. Where did you ever get such ugly and horrific viewpoints on fellow humans? We are all here to help each other. Some people suck at that which is why some of us have to work harder to right things. You seem to have this “I have mine, you go get yours” mentality that is all too pervasive in 21st century America. Trump is encouraging more of that thinking. If you don't want to be a part of humanity, go find your patch in the wild and stay there. That is essentially what you are in favor of if you think that you can take but not give back. You take, every time you use public roads, any time you have used or enjoyed a park, a library, a public school. To balance that out you also need to give. That is what taxes are. Any other argument is complete crap. Rethink your position because you obviously have things backwards if you think taxes are theft.
Medical care is a commodity, not a right. If you hear me out, I’ll hopefully convince you that the statement does not make me soulless, It means that our common welfare comes first, because personal recovery in any state depends on the unity of our free-trade economy without violating rights. Thus, in the following, please keep in mind that I am thinking about our society as a whole, and the future of and survival of our society as a whole; I ask you to also have this in mind when reading the following.
So Marx (I assume you’re semi-familiar with Marxism since this post is pro-socialism, if not then check it out, as it is the third step down after capitalism and socialism) thinks that autonomy, rather than necessity, creates rights. In this sense, Marxism is foolish in both the moral and practical sense. In the moral sense, you have no right to demand medical care from someone else. You could find people that will come together and fund the medical costs (Gofundme), but one child’s necessity does not change basic math, no matter how dire or emotionally appealing their mother may be towards the situation. Medical care is a service and a good provided by a third party.
No matter how much I need gluten free pastries, it doesn’t give me a right to stick a gun in the baker’s face to demand food for my belly and my children’s bellies.. this is also called theft. Theft is probably the least immoral choice in this particular situation, but that doesn’t make it a moral choice, nor does it suggest I haven’t violated your rights in pursuing my own needs.
So this leftist tactic declares some necessities as rights, which overcomes the individual rights of others. Just because I’m sick with my epilepsy and my Crohn’s doesn’t make it right to demand a service from a doctor. So now we must question, what is the limit to this right? This is where the expansion of government is, yet again, unknown and scary. I don’t have the right to demand that the medical community provide life-saving medical care for the foreseeable future for millions of dollars of OTHER people’s taxpayer dollars and services. Do you see the actual inequality here? There can’t be a right like this unless the government is rationing care themselves or using compulsion to force individuals to pay it; confiscating mass sums of money to pay for it.
Rights that derive from individual needs INEVITABLY violate individual autonomy. To make this commodity cheaper, we need profit incentive and freedom of labor. AKA free-market. Socialism destroys both of these things in Obamacare. I guarantee we’ll really start feeling the effects of the current system in the next 10 years on the macro level, unless things immediately change. Just check out the extreme shortage of doctors in America; it’s only getting worse, as will our healthcare. The first thing my MD cousin did after marrying her MD husband was move to another country with a free market, not so they can get rich, but so they can actually care for their patients instead of being forced to have 5 minute appointments with 100+ a day on medicaid.
(part 2)
The solution is certainly not declaring medical care as a right. Free market is the solution, as it has been for this country’s entire existence. Treating it as a commodity will mean temporary shortages, and some folks won’t get everything we wish that they could have, like this story of the boy with Mitochondrial disease. There are still community-based solutions to these problems. We become closer knit and help each other out in hard times, then support each other back to the top in this capitalist society. People are leaning on government more than their communities, and it’s raising victims, not Americans who are empowered and given the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The problems with free market are just as true AND worse than government healthcare – government sponsored healthcare (top down approach) violates individual liberties, generates over-demand and it quashes supply; markets prize individual liberties – they reduce demand because you don’t demand more of what you already have, and they heighten supply through profit incentive.
We will never live in a utopia, but free markets are the #1 reason why today’s successful countries are as successful as they are. The socialist Scandinavian “dream”, well, I suggest reading “Scandinavian Unexceptionalism: Culture, Markets and the Failure of Third-Way Socialism” by Nima Sanandaji (A Swede who’s lived the “dream”)
Also this site provides a decent breakdown with sources: https://stream.org/5-myths-nordic-socialism-mislead-the-american-left/
The absolute MOST important aspect of this is our rights. When any American’s rights are being impeded on, rich or poor, it is a SERIOUS threat to us, and more importantly, to our future generations.
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men [and women] were free.” – Reagan, October 27th, 1964
I don't believe these comments have turned into a debate about “pro-life” and “pro-choice.” That is not the issue here. The issue is that Trumpcare, if it passes, will take away our right to affordable and necessary medical care. y husband is a diabetic, which is on his “pre-existing condition” list. How are we to manage his diabetes if we cannot afford blood test, diabetic meds, and insulin? I have at least four of those pre-existing conditions listed. How do I pay for my meds if my health insurance doesn't cover them? Should all those with pre-existing conditions just lay down and die because we have a health plan in force that only caters to the rich? This is HEALTH insurance, not LIFE insurance. If Trump were any kind of an intelligent president, he would realize this and help the middle and lower class get the medical care they need.
Before insisting that these children could be 'given to a loving family' realize how many kids are already in the system being traded from foster care to boys/girls home till they age out of the system. If every pro-life went out and adopted a child today, this would no longer be a problem, but I doubt that would happen…
Donna, there are a lot of people against this measure that Joy seems to support. The thing is that they are not nearly as loud and obnoxious as the republicans your countrymen voted in by voting for it or not voting at all.
Greg Ingber, I am having a really hard time taking you seriously.
This entire post and every response to it that I read are absolutely ludicrous. Comparing police officers who are actually doing a job to earn their taxpayer funded pay while putting their lives on the line is a far cry from paying healthcare for people who refuse to work or who don't have enough self control to not have sex and conceive a child they can't afford or don't want. Take responsibility for your actions people and stop blaming everyone for the mess you are in. It wasn't that long ago when people were proud of standing on their own two feet and taking care of their own, not sitting on their a$$ and wanting everyone to take care of them.
This is all sad. I had a baby at sixteen. I had the HARD decision. Then I realized wow the reason this is such a hard decision is because killing an unborn child is really fucked up and why the heck am i even thinking about this. I thought of the horrible outcomes of my babies future. But I had sex. Everything in my life is the way it is because of me and no one else. I need to do EVERYTHING I can to make it work. Say I failed. Well I'm sorry but you have a baby and people love babies and help is everywhere. If you don't want a baby then it's your responsibility to get birth control. But having an “oops” pregnancy, or just being really really dumb and having unprotected sex is absolutely pathetic. The POSSIBLY DOOMED future of health care or a situation is not a fact. It's a guess. So.., my child might not have health care.. So yeah he's better off dead, is hypocritical. If you cared so much about the future of the healthcare for your child you'd think youd care alittle MORE about the child himself. Rape, ( rare )failed birth control, detected birth defect disorders, along with cancer and tubal pregnancy- where mother will have high percentage of not surviving if pregnancy continues are real excuses and real problems. Otherwise you should get your act together and do everything you can to be successful in motherhood and providing. If you do everything you can and tried atleast you did instead of killing a baby. And an embryo is a baby, guys. If you do have any other very sensible reason aside from pretending to be a psychic and predicting a doomed future you made up without even doing EVERYTHING first, I'd honestly love to hear it. “I have a job, I live on The streets, my family life is bad, I'm broke I don't have anytime to get this together” yeah.. well YOU were NOT responsible. The baby is on the way. You need to change your life and do it now. It's not the fault of the baby. Kind of like executing someone on death row who they found out wasn't actually guilty. But it's worse because you knew they weren't guilty but you killed them anyway.
Hit the nail on the head. Thanks
When it is legal to force a man to donate his organs or blood or bodily fluids so that another person may live, then maybe there would be reason to outlaw abortion. As it stands today, it is illegal to force any man to donate his organs or blood or bodily fluids against his will EVEN IF the other person will die without it. It is also illegal to force a woman to do so for a developing fetus, at least until the fetus is several months old. The REAL issue here is that the developing fetus/person to whom a woman is donating her bodily fluids and blood and nutrition to, is there because of (Horrors!) SEX, and women should not being having sex in the minds of self righteous asshats. Think about whether you would be willing to donate your kidney or bone marrow to a stranger against your will and at your own expense before judging a woman who terminates a pregnancy.
Ti unknown, you are so ignorant to think that the ONLY time a woman gets pregnant is wen she doesn't keep her legs closed. You are so totally part of the rape culture problem. How bout you keep your big mouth shut, because you have no idea what you're talking about.
*Coughing* Bullshit.
Returning to the initial post… I'm pro-choice. However, if a compromise needs to be made. I would accept limiting abortion to 3 weeks (if I'm dead when my heart stops beating, I certainly wasn't alive before it was beating) and exceptions for incest ect.
Nothing will happen without compromise. I don't love it, but if women and the poor had their basic needs met, abortion rates would drop regardless. We can't win everything. Yes, all these issue matter. But we need to prioritize. Especially now.
I feel like your reading comprehension skills need some improvement. Elizabeth is saying that if you're okay stripping a person (in this case her young – MUCH LOVED –
child who was born with a terminal disease) of access to affordable healthcare you're not pro-life, not the other way around.
Anyone who jumps on a thread or article or anything else that has a comments section when it wasn't about taxes, to throw up a video and comment arguing that taxation is theft, is not to be taken seriously. There is no point to responding to the attempt, and any such comments ought to be completely deleted from every comment section they appear on. It just as annoying as any other time you're interrupted for a wildly off topic discussion, and smacks of “EXCUSE ME SIR DO YOU HAVE A MOMENT TO TALK ABOUT…..!”
Here Here! So called Pro Life people are SUCH Hypocrites!
Kathleen, no. You just come off as a complete and utter idiot. THE MOTHER COULD DIE, the baby dies in the womb and guess what. IT FREAKING POISONS HER but she cant get it out medically because OH NOOOOOOO its STILL a baby to you people and im sorry but that other person is HORRIBLY misinformed because you know what? the current abortion method?? ITS THE FAULT OF THE PRO LIFE PEOPLE!! SHOCKER. They USED to use a more human method but NOOOOOOOO that was NOT RIGHT and they saught to change it the HORRIBLE METHOD we have now. So you only have them to blame about that. Just thought you should know.
nparks- No, that is absolutely NOT what she is saying. you must not have read the article because she did not “end his life.” Her son is 6 years old. she made the CHOICE to keep her child knowing that he would have a difficult life but with the expectation that the life and the suffering his disability would cause would be manageable via affordable healthcare and medical options. Her point is that anyone who calls themselves PRO-LIFE, but only thinks “life” means until birth and won't fight for affordable healthcare options after birth , Is not actually pro-life. They are pro-BIRTH. Now how about actually reading the article before writing whatever shit pops into your head.
no such thing as Obamacare .. it's the affordable care act … once 23 people are removed with dumpff replacement you may see more refusal of care … Caesarean sections and rape will be preexisting conditions … have you read the bill ??? It's online you should
Read the bill rape is pre-existing … so are many other things … if this gets through senate you guys are effed up … I can imagine living in a country that does not have universal free health care .. what's funny is most of the world cannot understand how a country that calls itself a super power or the greatest country in the world doesn't have free universal healthcare
You don't get it! First that description of a late term abortion is false, an d cruel. There is no sawing of body parts. A shot is given to stop the heart beat, and the mother is induced, in the regular fashion, or given a c-section. Your bullshit, propaganda lied to you.
Late term abortions are limited to before 30 weeks, I believe 24 is max. Next late term abortions, must meet very strict criteria, that of severe issues with the baby, or risk of life to mother. They are also ridiculously rare, and if fact, I believe currently only preferred in two clinic in the US, and are very expensive, one article said about $20,000 for the last dates available. It's a lie that they are common.
I had a close friend, who happily walked into he 18 week scan, and walked out with her loving husband, to the worst news ever. We are not talking something minor, no miracles were happening, this was a baby, that would die in utero, or suffer horribly at birth. I don't want to get graphic, but for some you need it. The babies brain was only partially grown, it had no top to its skull, all of its, lower organs were growing outside its body cavity, they only saw one kidney, major growth issues to legs and arms.
So you think, it's too much for a dog to suffer, if it were in pain, but you would honestly choose, to continue a pregnancy, were the baby, might only suffer tremendous amounts of pain and suffering, only to die, is something to celebrate?
You need to read, the stories of the women who chose to end much wanted pregnancies, which is pretty much all of the end of term ones, that only occur that late due to the scan time frame or things going down hill. It's nothing like the pro-birthers tell you.
Joy Paris, not theft, taxes.
All of this ripping at our healthcare seems to be designed to drive us into the arms of con-men and shysters.
I'm pretty sure that's the real agenda. Look at the irrational Jesus looney who has shown up to make this conversation all about God. It's like a demented narcissist who can't shut up about themselves. But they are probably just selling you a scam.
The purpose of the destabilization of our healthcare is to make it vulnerable to scams. Period. That's what it's about. The normalization of total fraud as a business model.
We are becoming Conman Nation.
Your concerns about abortion are irrelevant, Andy. It's not your body.
You failed to understand.
No, Eden, there isn't hypocrisy in supporting abortion on demand and socialized healthcare.
That's a manufactured concern of yours in order to give yourself a wedge in an argument you lost the moment OP opened their mouth.
WHERE is the pro-life movement's concern for children? We can SEE it is bullshit so you can stop pretending that's your motivation. That cudgel of 'pro-life' you were holding that made you unassailable?
A GENERATION of self-evident bullshit from the pro-life movement has made it clear to EVERYONE BUT YOU that you're full of shit, and nothing but abusive manipulators bent on hurting women.
STOP pretending you have a moral high ground. Your own actions as a movement have REPEATEDLY demonstrated you're a bunch of misogynistic low-lifes.
<3
No, she is stating that pro-life does not end at birth, it continues though LIFE! No mention ever of killing.
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