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IN FIGHT AGAINST
HEALTH CARE RATIONING, During its 2007 annual convention held last June, the National Right to Life Committee announced a proposal for state-based health care reform that can cover those now without health insurance without imposing rationing. How Euthanasia Relates to Health Care Reform Since its inception, the pro-life movement has been as concerned with protecting older people and people with disabilities from euthanasia as with protecting unborn children from abortion. It has recognized that denial of lifesaving medical treatment, food, and fluids against the will of a patient is a form of involuntary euthanasia. When the government prohibits Americans from obtaining health care necessary to preserve their lives, or limits their ability to obtain it, this health care rationing is a form of such involuntary euthanasia. For this reason, NRLC opposed the Clinton Health Care Rationing Plan of 1993–94, and has fought rationing in Medicare. Although it is a single-issue organization that focuses solely on protecting innocent human life from abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia, NRLC has recognized that it is sometimes desirable to endorse and promote positive alternatives in order effectively to blunt the real threat of abortion and euthanasia—such as support for adoption as an alternative to abortion, or the promotion of pain relief as an alternative to legalizing assisting suicide.
THE NEW
CLINTON HEALTH CARE PLAN: On September 18, Presidential candidate Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) unveiled a proposal for universal health care. It was touted as a proposal much reworked from the ill-fated Clinton Health Care Rationing Plan of 1993–94 for which she had been largely responsible during her husband’s ad-ministration. But her proposal, in fact, still requires rationing. The 1993–94 plan imposed price controls that would not allow premiums to keep up with the rate of health care inflation. The result would have been a steadily increasing rationing of care, including lifesaving medical treatment. In a famous statement made while testifying before a Senate panel, the then-First Lady said that under the plan “people will know they are not being denied treatment for any reason other than it is not appropriate—will not enhance or save the quality of life.” The 2007 Clinton health plan does not overtly include price controls on premiums. It would effectively impose price controls on drugs, through the fiction of government “negotiation” of their Medicare prices. NRLC has explained in detail elsewhere that this would drastically limit access to innovative drugs and significantly curtail research on new drugs. (See, e.g., NRL News, February 2007, p. 1.)
What a
Visit to NRLC’s National Convention Eleanor Bader is the co-author of a book about abortion with the scary title of Targets of Hatred: Anti-Abortion Terrorists, and a contributor to a number of ultra-liberal publications, including The Progressive. In the magazine’s September issue, Bader writes about the “mood” of NRLC’s national convention, which was held last June in Kansas City, Missouri. In her telling, Bader omits that she did nothing to identify herself as a pro-abortion partisan. In fact we had no idea she had attended until the New York City chapter of NOW announced on its web page that “Reporter and author Eleanor Bader will take us inside the National Right to Life Committee, as she reveals the strategies unveiled at their recent convention held in the wake of the Gonzales v. Carhart decision.” A pro-lifer decided to take up the invitation to “Join NOW-NYC for the inside track on how the anti-choice movement is plotting to take away our reproductive freedom.” What follows is based on what she learned there.
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BULK SUBSCRIPTIONS |
From the President
SPEAK UP AND
ORGANIZE Years ago, the movers and shakers of the elite thought that pro-lifers were hopelessly confined to the margins of cultural and political life. Of course, one reason they perceived pro-lifers to be at the margin was that they wanted us to be at the margin, and they couldn’t imagine us to be in the center. Besides, they did not have any acquaintances or friends who were pro-life. This reminds me of the remark which a prominent movie critic in New York once made. After Richard Nixon had defeated George McGovern, she expressed complete astonishment at Nixon’s victory—after all, none of her friends and acquaintances had voted for Nixon. This elitist insularity is, of course, the reason why the “mainstream media” are losing their grip on the political life of the country. Let’s admit it, we call them “mainstream” in a way to point out that they are anything but mainstream. NRL News Archive2007 2006
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