June 30, 2010

I am Wanda Franz, President of the National Right to Life Committee. It gives me great pleasure to open the 40th Annual National Right to Life Convention. On behalf of the Board, the officers, and the staff of the National Right to Life Committee I welcome you most cordially to this convention. The right-to-life movement has deep roots in Pennsylvania; so it is good to come together here.

Dr. Wanda Franz, NRLC President

For my family it is always nice to be in Pittsburgh. We live just about seventy miles south from here in Morgantown, West Virginia. We can't afford to come here for the sports events; but we eagerly follow the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Pittsburgh Penguins ice hockey team on television.

Our host for the next few days is the Pennsylvania Pro-life Federation, a long-standing NRLC state affiliate. I want to mention in particular Michael Ciccocioppo, the executive director of the Federation, Sue Rogacs, the president, who will join us later, and the other officers, organizers, and helpers from Pennsylvania, especially Shari Lewis, Molly Dennis, Maria Vitale, and Bryce McMinn.

These fine pro-lifers have worked with us to make this convention a success. Let's applaud and thank them.

We pro-lifers have a bruising battle over government-controlled health care behind us. We lost that battle for the time being--but we are not giving up. As a legendary baseball coach once said, "It ain't over till it's over."

And we pro-lifers are most definitely saying, "IT AIN'T OVER YET"!

What do you think? "Is it really over"?

Now, under the new health care law, it is not just the unborn who are threatened by the cold hand of government. Now it is also we, the already living, who are in danger, because the inevitable result of the new health care law will be the rationing of medical care. And rationed care leads to involuntary euthanasia of the elderly and of those whose "quality of life" is considered too poor for modern medical care.

The problem is, of course, that the new health care law over-promises and under-funds. And when the government rations health care by making it illegal or impossible to choose lifesaving treatment and nutrition it imposes a form of involuntary euthanasia.

In the minds of anti-life "progressives," giving equally shabby and life-denying care to everyone who is under the government's thumb is the "fair" and "equitable" thing to do. Apparently, our "progressive" friends have missed the numerous accounts on the Drudge Report web site about the horrible treatment of elderly patients in Britain's government-controlled National Health Service. These are not examples of "fair" treatment--they are examples of callous neglect and often deadly mistreatment of elderly patients.

To learn more about the threat of euthanasia, I urge you to get more information by attending the convention workshops dealing with health care and visiting our website www.nrlc.org. On the left side of the web page you will find the "euthanasia issues" section.

The biggest drama during the health care debate arose when the pro-abortion White House and the pro-abortion Democratic leadership mercilessly pressured pro-life Democratic legislators to agree to the government's involvement in financing abortion. In the end, a few prolife Democrats cracked under the ruthless pressure and gave the pro-abortionists their victory.

I was saddened to see my own congressman among those supposedly pro-life Democrats who cracked. The reaction by the voters in the 1st Congressional District of West Virginia was swift and forceful. They decisively rejected Congressman Alan Mollohan's bid for re-election in the May primary.

Congressman Mollohan has been in Congress since 1983 and had always run as a pro-lifer. Nevertheless, this time he only got 44% of the Democratic primary vote. His opponent, pro-life state senator Mike Oliverio, got 56%. This sad ending to Mollohan's congressional carrier was reported nationwide.

The public's persistent opposition to the new health care law rests in large part on an intuitive understanding that governmental overreach inevitably has very bad consequences. In this case the clumsy and wasteful governmental bureaucracy will impose itself even more than it already does on the way we get medical care. As I already said: the new health care law over-promises and under-funds.

Even worse, the so-called "Independent Advisory Board" can even advise on privately-funded medical care. The Secretary of Health and Human Services or other bureaucrats can accordingly impose so-called "quality and efficiency standards" on all health care providers if they want to participate even in nongovernmental insurance plans. In other words, the government will tell the health profession what diagnostic tests and medical care are approved according to these so-called "quality and efficiency" standards. These standards are specifically designed to force you to spend your funds only on health care below the rate of inflation.

Throughout the debate on health care, the anti-life congressional leadership was repeatedly forced to disguise and camouflage abortion and rationing provisions in the law through confusing and contorted language. But of course even if this or that particular detail in the law is changed, a government-controlled health care system inevitably ends up rationing care. It follows simply from the very nature of the thing that makes this inevitable. Public funds are not unlimited, and when we surrender our responsibility to make our own health decisions to an inefficient bureaucracy, rationing will ultimately be imposed on us.

During last year's spirited debate on health care several Catholic bishops expressed their concerns about the government's excessive control of the proposed health care system. They objected to the proposed scheme because it violates the "principle of subsidiarity." It states that the state should respect the dignity and freedom of the individual so that individuals can do what they can do for themselves. Next in line is the family, then the close community, then the larger local community, and only then the state.

Pope Benedict XVI observed that "the State which would provide for everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person--every person--needs: namely, loving personal concern." He also said, "We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything."

Bishop Thomas Doran of the Diocese of Rockford, IL, put it colorfully when he said, "Our federal bureaucracy is a vast wasteland strewn with the carcasses of absurd federal programs which proved infinitely worse than the problems they were established to correct."

To most of us it is obvious that a ponderous bureaucracy will waste resources that otherwise we could have used for our health care. And when resources are wasted and the law constrains us from using our own money to pay for our care, rationing is inevitable. An all-controlling government will ration in the end because "pretty soon they will run out of other people's money," as one British politician once observed.

The principle of subsidiarity was formally announced by Pope Pius XI in 1931 during a great economic crisis and a time of increasing threats from totalitarian and authoritarian states. The general principle, however, goes back to the social teaching of the Church since the 5th Century.

The core ideas of the principle of subsidiarity sound to us as American as apple pie. Personal freedom and responsibility, the freedom of families and local communities to run their lives are at the very core of the American idea. This is how we are meant to run our lives.

It is not exactly a state secret that a big November election is coming up. During the next few months you will have an opportunity to meet with candidates.

So ask them a few questions with regard to health care.

Would they vote for the Protect Life Act sponsored by Congressman Joseph Pitts? This act would prevent federal agencies from administering health plans that cover abortion and prohibit federal mandates requiring health plans to cover abortions or provide access to them.

Would they require any new health care law permanently to prohibit federal subsidies for abortion or health plans that cover them? Would they support a law preventing federal abortion mandates on a permanent basis?

Would they agree that federal law ought not limit what private citizens want to spend--out of their own pocket--on medical care for themselves and their family?

The new health care law cuts hundreds of millions of dollars from Medicare, yet the law empowers the government to limit what senior citizens can spend of their own money on programs like the Medicare Advantage private fee-for-service plans. Would they restore the previous law so that seniors could do this again?

And finally, is it not time to repeal the monstrous law that will ruin health care in America, start over again, and get it right?

In turn, I ask you: Are WE going to give up and let this monstrosity roll over us?

I ask you: Are WE going to let the federal government mainstream and subsidize abortion as health care?

And I ask you again: Are WE going to let federal bureaucrats command us as to how our doctors can treat us and how we pay them?

There is lots to be done between now and November. This convention will inform you on all these issues and more.

So work hard here, make friends here, get support here--and enjoy yourself at this convention.

Please send all of your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are now following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha.

Part One
Part Two