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NRL News
Page 2
November/December 2009
Volume 36
Issue 11-12

Health Care Restructuring and Today’s Civil Rights Movement

By Dave Andrusko

“Here’s the deal. If Obama gets to sign a health-care bill before he gives his State of the Union address, he starts 2010 with a historic victory to proclaim before the country and then can pivot quickly to the issue likely to dominate the midterm elections: jobs and how to create them.”
– - Columnist E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, December 7

“The liberalism at the heart of the pro-life campaign, however, is constantly distorted by a generation of scholars who have insisted the right-to-life movement is really about the preservation of traditional gender roles or male control over female sexuality. Such interpretations tend to ignore that the right to life movement regards itself as today’s civil-rights movement. The failure to grasp this reality renders the passion and dedication of the pro-life movement almost impossible to comprehend.”
– - Scholar Jon Shields, interviewed by the New Yorker’s Avi Zenilman

“David Gregory: What should the president do?

“Rick Warren: I think we’ve had 46 million Americans who aren’t here, those who could be here since Roe v. Wade who are not voting. And I think that, in a sense, is a holocaust. I really do. ... Now, I don’t understand the idea it [abortion] should be rare and less. Well, either you believe it’s life or you don’t. Why would you believe it should be rare? Because ... if a baby, a fetus, is not a life, then why restrict it?”
– - Pastor Rick Warren, interviewed by Meet the Press host David Gregory November 29

There couldn’t be a perfect/ideal time to mail out the December issue of the “pro-life newspaper of record,” given the constant swirl of events surrounding health care restructuring and the single-minded determination of pro-abortion Democrats to ram through a bill that will send shivers of delight up and down the spines of Planned Parenthood. This editorial is being written December 9. By tabling an amendment sponsored by Senator Ben Nelson and Senator Orrin Hatch, 54 senators voted the day before to keep abortion covered in the proposed federal government insurance program, and to subsidize private insurance plans that cover abortion on demand.

No amount of gibberish during the debate or after-the-fact rationalizations by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and others can change the grim reality that the 54–45 vote killed an amendment to remove elective abortion from the new federal programs that would be created by pending health care legislation.

In order to be able to act at a moment’s notice, NRLC is encouraging all its supporters, including the 365,000 pro-lifers who read NRL News, to come to our web site often, particularly to http://nrlactioncenter.com and http://powellcenterformedicalethics.blogspot.com.

What these sites will do is rip open the veil of secrecy that has shrouded the real agenda of Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama. And since we know that they will say anything to get legislation passed, you must come to these sites regularly to keep up with the latest toss-truth-to-the-wind utterances coming from pro-abortion Democratic congressional leaders and the President.

I began this editorial with a quote from Obama sympathizer columnist E.J. Dionne. He ends his op-ed with clear marching orders: it’s time to restructure one-sixth of our nation’s economy “because the core issues of this debate have been settled.” This preposterous statement is coupled with, “The Congressional Budget Office has swept away the major arguments that opponents of reform have been trying to make.”

Beyond our concerns over abortion and rationing (or worse), there are as many unresolved questions about health care restructuring as there were falsehoods uttered on the floor of the Senate. Dionne lets the cat out of the bag not once, but several times: this it-must-be-done-by-Christmas mantra is pure politics.

One example I quoted above: passage would give Obama something to crow about when he delivers next year’s State of the Union address. To mention just one more, “Getting a health-care bill is important on its own, but it’s central to establishing Obama’s credentials as a domestic reformer and to proving that Democrats are capable of governing.”

In other words, pass something as proof that Democratic control of both houses of Congress and the presidency matters, never mind whether what is enacted is literally incomprehensible, riddled with snares and fiscal booby traps, and represents the greatest Christmas present the anti-life lobby has ever received.

I offered the quote from Claremont Prof. Jon Shields’ Q&A with the New Yorker for one simple, but critically important reason. Prof. Shields understands that the defense of innocent unborn life cannot be “dismissed by secular, socially liberal Americans precisely because it appeals to common liberal values that we all share.” Our cause has not been capsized by what the interviewer calls a “rapidly liberalizing society” because this genuine expression of liberalism is “at the heart of the pro-life campaign.”

Finally, why the quote from Pastor Rick Warren, appearing just after Thanksgiving on Meet the Press? Well, for starters, because no one would accuse him of being reflexively anti-Obama. And because at the debate he moderated with Obama and GOP Presidential nominee Senator John McCain, Warren asked a question of both candidates that forced Obama out of his customary answer on abortion: “At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?”

Without a teleprompter or access to a canned answer, Obama answered lamely, “Well, I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.”

The Meet the Press quote is important because Warren reminds us of something we too often overlook. We know abortion is brutal, a willful decision to refuse to recognize the essential human right. We know it erodes comity, community, and common decency.

What we don’t say nearly enough, however, is that because of abortion on demand millions of people who ought to be here aren’t. Abortion isn’t an abstraction or merely a “political issue.” It is at the center of a debate about who we are as a people. The lives of real, live people have been taken—more than 50 million lives in the United States alone.

And that debate has been joined in a most profound way in the struggle over health care restructuring. It is a battle we can ill-afford to lose.

Please read this edition carefully, frequently check out http://nrlactioncenter.com and http://powellcenterformedicalethics.blogspot.com, and order additional copies of the special NRL News Commemorative issue (see page 9). National Right to Life is only as strong as your dedication and involvement makes us.