An Urgent Message on Health Care

Too Persuasive of a P.S.A.

We're not going to see this Public Service Announcement during the Super Bowl. Evidently, NBC changed their minds and canned it.

Hummmm . . . I wonder why?

See for yourself.





HT: OneNewsNow.com

Change Begins Taking Shape

As change begins to occur under the new administration – some in pretty substantial ways, I’m sure it will not be as most sincere and well-intentioned Obama supporters expected, nor wanted. Obama may be good with words; but it is true: actions speak louder than words.

Matt Barber adds in a OneNewsNow column:

Obama said in an August 19, 2008 speech: "Change doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington." Well, radical change in the form of Barack Obama has certainly come to Washington. Not just in terms of the man's skin color – which is historic and most encouraging – but in terms of his exceptionally extreme and demonstrably dangerous liberal policies (not so encouraging).

So it would seem that change does in fact "come from Washington." Change more radical than our nation has ever seen. Change our founders could have never imagined.

People of faith, conservatives, and those of you with traditional values: hold on to your hats – it's going to be a bumpy four years.

Read More:

• Obama rescinds Mexico City Policy link

• What is the Mexico City Policy? link
  

Profile of a Radical: Obama supports infanticide

Pro-Life and Pro-War?

Here’s an excellent one-page response when pro-choice advocates accuse pro-lifers of being hypocritical for decrying abortion while at the same supporting the waging of war.

Obama's Abortion Extremism

by Robert George
Member of the President's Council on Bioethics
Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University

read article

listen to article being passionately read

Could Euthanasia come to Britain?

From Hot Air:

In yet another revealing moment for nationalized health care, a highly respected British ethicist said that dementia sufferers should get euthanized in order to preserve resources for healthier people. Baroness Warnock, described as “Britain’s leading moral philosopher”, said that the government should license people to be “put down” and stop being a drain on society:

The veteran Government adviser said pensioners in mental decline are "wasting people’s lives” because of the care they require and should be allowed to opt for euthanasia even if they are not in pain.

She insisted there was “nothing wrong” with people being helped to die for the sake of their loved ones or society.

The 84-year-old added that she hoped people will soon be “licensed to put others down” if they are unable to look after themselves. …

Lady Warnock said: “If you’re demented, you’re wasting people’s lives – your family’s lives – and you’re wasting the resources of the National Health Service.

As Ed Morrissey points out, this is one obvious and natural end result of "free" national health care. If care isn't rationed through price by the free market, it has to be rationed in some other way. (I know "rationing" sounds like some sort of scary word, but it's just a basic economic concept--the supply and price of goods and services is affected by the demand.) You just can't give unlimited care to everyone in the country--there aren't enough doctors, hospitals, nurses. You have to make choices about how to distribute the care, and you end up with LONG waiting lists and denials of service. When this isn't enough, the government starts thinking about how to cut further, and one choice is to make less care available to old, very sick people.

Note that the article starts out talking about allowing people the option to choose euthanasia, but Warnock soon starts talking about people with dementia, who by definition wouldn't have the capacity to make that kind of choice for themselves. So, who makes the choice? Family? Doctors? A government bureaucrat in the health care system?

If you believe every human life is precious and sacred, this trend should be a big concern.

And that's not even mentioning that "free" health care isn't free at all. If the Democrats succeed in enacting some sort of nationalized health insurance system, believe me, we will pay for it big time in taxes. If the experiences of places like Britain and Canada are any indication, we'll also pay in time--weeks and months spent waiting to get approval to get a doctor's appointment, see a specialist, etc. (I know this happens to some extent in the US too, mostly driven by insurance companies, but from everything I have read it is far worse in countries with socialized medicine.) You might have to pay extra money in addition to your taxes to get care outside of the system--for people in the UK, this includes "medical vacations" to places like India to get medical care, and a LOT of Canadians cross the border into the US for treatment. Finally, the whole world will pay a price because research into new drugs and procedures will be reduced, with no free-market incentive to spur innovation.

One Issue Voter?

By Rich Bordner

There's a common thought afoot in evangelical circles when it comes to the current political climate:

"We shouldn't just focus on abortion. We need a more holistic approach to politics and social justice. Poverty, AIDS, etc. are 'life' issues too."

In fact, I just talked with two members of my church recently on this very topic. Both are voting for Obama. Both claim to be pro-life. Both will vote for Obama for economic, environmental, and global (i.e., anti-Iraq war) reasons.

As its stated, the statement is true. Poverty, et al, are things we evangelicals (actually, Christians of all stripes) need to battle. However, the upshot of this has been to put abortion on the back burner, treating it as less important than the other concerns. This has steered many evangelicals towards voting for Obama. This is a problem, for several reasons:

1) This presumes that the Democratic solution (traditionally, it has involved some form of bigger dependence on government) to poverty and such is the best solution. This is far from obvious. Liberals and conservatives alike both care about the poor and the ill. What is up for debate is which has the better solution. Far too often, it is assumed that liberals are the ones who care because they are for a government program dealing with the problem.

2) Imagine we are in Germany around 1940: "Hey, Hitler is doing wonders for this country's economic stability. Yeah, what he's doing with the Jews is sad, but hey, we gotta put food on the table! Our nation's pride and economic stability are important concerns too, not just 6 million Jews being slaughtered." That would be horrendous. Protecting innocent life should ALWAYS be front and center.

3) Similarly, around 40 million babies have died from abortions ever since Roe v. Wade. Given this, putting abortion on the backburner is the least compassionate thing we can do; it will show that we really don't care about "the least of these."

4) Obama is crazy when it comes to abortion. Not only has he pledged that he will do everything in his power to uphold and solidify Roe v. Wade, but his voting record is about as extreme as it gets. In fact, in Illinois, he led the opposition to the Infant Born Alive Protection Act, which would have secured medical care to babies born alive after botched abortions. He swears that the reason why he voted against it was because it lacked "neutrality language" in regards to Roe V. Wade, but he shot down the attempt to put such language in the bill!

5) Some prefer to talk of "reducing the number of abortions" through caring for women in crisis pregnancies (mostly through some form of government funding) rather than attacking the law head on. This eases their conscience in voting for Obama. Of course, reducing the number of abortions is a laudable goal, but that shouldn't be the only thing we do. As Melinda Penner at Stand to Reason has pointed out in a recent blog, this leaves a very odious doctrine ensconced in our law: that the unborn are not fully human and are not worthy of protection under the law. That, my friends, needs to be shown for the evil it is. Therefore, if we do not relentlessly attack that plank of our law with everything we have (including our vote), we must ask ourselves just how pro-life we really are.

6) Strictly speaking, it doesn't matter if McCain is likely or not to completely topple Roe v. Wade. Most likely, he will not, given that he will probably be working with a Democratic legislature. What matters is: who is likely to make progress, any progress, towards outlawing abortion. McCain: certainly yes. His voting record alone speaks to that truth. At the very least, he will keep us from moving the other way, towards entrenching Roe further in our law and societal soul. Obama: certainly not. He will move us in the other way, both through perhaps vetoing anything that remotely smells pro-life, through funding the industry of abortion, and through appointing judges that play fast and loose with the Constitution. That's how the problem started in the first place, after all.

Therefore, if this was the only issue/reason I had for not voting for Obama (in actuality, the reasons are many), I wouldn't think twice about it. Despite the public chiding one issue voters get, my conscience would be clean.

Obama’s empty rhetoric

At the recent Saddleback civil forum, Obama says he wants to see a reduction in abortions. There are so many interesting things to point out about this statement. For one, these comments reflect a typical all-talk and no action track record of the Democrats. David O'Steen, executive director of the National Right to Life Committee, expanded on this point recently during an interview with Newsweek:

"I think saying they want to reduce abortions is empty rhetoric…I have not seen the pro-abortion side agree with the pro-life side on anything that would actually reduce the number of abortions."

O'Steen explains how pro-choice politicians constantly obstruct legislation that would actually reduce the numbers, such as bills that would require that a women get an ultrasound before undergoing an abortion.

The fact is, Obama – like the other Democrats – have done absolutely nothing to reduce abortions.

Good News about Stem Cell Research

I'm far from a scientific expert, but everything I read about stem cell research convinces me that the crowd pushing embryonic stem cells is way off base. It seems like research with adult stem cells--you know, the ones that don't involve killing a baby--is way more promising:

Stem cells drawn from the blood system of adult humans or the umbilical cord blood of newborns, injected into mice, formed viable vessels that may one day deliver oxygen-rich blood to damaged organs, researchers said.

This is just one recent example, but I've read a lot of similar stories in the past couple of years. If you're at all concerned about this issue, you really ought to read up on it so you have facts at hand to explain why it's not necessary to use embryonic stem cells.

Caught on Tape

Last month, a pro-abortion advocate is caught on tape disrupting the free speech rights of a pro-life campus organization. After being posted on youtube, the video has kind of gone viral.

As OneNewsNow.com reports:

“[The vandal] stated that the pro-life group had no right to challenge abortion [vis-à-vis their pro-life display] because [abortion] was made legal in 1973 following the Roe v. Wade decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Based on that kind of logic, civil rights activists would have had no right to challenge racial segregation because it was made legal in 1896 following the Plessy v. Ferguson decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

By the way, it was in 1954, that the Supreme Court finally got it right when they handed down their decision in Brown v. Board of Education which overturned Plessy v. Ferguson. Perhaps, one day soon, the highest court in the land will correct another egregious error from the past, by finally protecting another class of citizens – the unborn.

Planned Parenthood Kills Record Number

According to FRC.org: "A record 289,650 preborn babies were killed at Planned Parenthood clinics in fiscal year 2006-07, an increase of nearly 25,000 from 2005-06. The nation's largest abortion provider, which received $336 million in taxpayer money last year, is responsible for 25 percent of all abortions in the U.S."

Just Say Yes to iPS!

From frc.org:

Clearing a huge hurdle on the road to embryo-free stem cell treatments, Professor Shinya Yamanaka announced yesterday that his team has found a way to grow induced pluripotent cells (iPS) without triggering tumors. Since Yamanaka first went public with his iPS research in December, the scientific community has been largely supportive of his work because of its promise both medically and morally. Sadly, some of the remaining holdouts for embryonic stem cell (ESC) research have used the threat of tumors to downplay his progress. However, Yamanaka's team took a gigantic leap forward in silencing critics with the news that he has successfully avoided this problem for six months in the mice that he is currently treating with iPS cells. Although the research is still years away from treating humans, we continue to be encouraged at the steady advances Yamanaka's work is making both in people's understanding of ethical alternatives to ESC and in treating disease.

The Stem Cell Debate is Over!

The recent announcement that scientists have successfully discovered an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells will be considered, as Charles Krauthammer writes in the Washington Post, “one of the great scientific breakthroughs since the discovery of DNA.” History will also regard this watershed event as a total vindication of President Bush for his strong opposition to ESCR (Embryonic Stem Cell Research) despite intense pressure from the cloning industry, the media, and political foes brought about by a highly funded campaign of suppression and deception.

To learn more, go to: stemcellresearch.org.

WMDs Found In Press Room

I took a few minutes this morning to re-read portions of an addendum to President Bush's policy statement on human cloning written by Dr. Robert P. George of Princeton. Sounds dry, I know, but not at all. Although it was written over five years ago, it is of as much extreme relevance for us today as it was then.

By contrast, the inconsequential details of the inner life of Anna Nicole Smith have absolutely no bearing on the moral direction or consciousness of our nation. Yet, which topic, would you say, has more dominated news coverage over these years in the mainstream media?

The rationale behind the Presidential Council’s recommendations of a four-year ban on human cloning – as opposed to proposing an immediate permanent ban – was intended, as George pointed out, to “provide time for a careful and thorough public debate about the moral status of the human embryo.” Well, thanks to our national media, that careful and thorough debate never really happened. In its place was incessant borage of headlines about everything from Anna Nicole Smith to the vilified, but now vindicated, Duke men's lacrosse team.

Despite having no significance to society writ large, the Smith story, for example, became a major topic of discussion around the water cooler at work. The mainstream press pushed it down our throats convincing us that she was worth more of our time and attention than discussions on the details of proposed legislation on human cloning.

To illustrate the incessant nature of the media’s coverage of her at the expense of more worthy topics of discussion, let me bet you that I can tell you more about her than the average person can tell you about human cloning. This is true despite the fact that I NEVER tried to learn ANYTHING about Anna Nicole Smith. In fact, I RAN whenever I heard anything about her story. I could smell that story a mile away! Her story was simply another WMD (“weapons of mass distraction”) that the MSM frequently lobs at the American people at the expense of really important matters that should be covered in the news.

As a self-professing moralistic society, how we handle the issue of human cloning has significantly greater implications on the moral fabric of our society, than what we voyeuristically think about concerning the private and troubled life of an individual woman. In fact, this is an understatement of monumental proportions.

In closing, might I encourage you to turn off Jerry Springer (just kidding) and take a few minutes to read the piece on human cloning by Professor George. Greg Koukl calls this “the most sublime piece of reasoning about the morality of cloning and embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) (and abortion, by logical extension) that [he has] seen in print.” Read it here.

Supreme Court decides partial-birth abortion ban constitutional

Take a look at the legal and ethical implications of this ruling, as Greg Koukl explains in this Townhall.com piece how the logical slippery slope of banning partial-birth abortion can slide our nation towards a more pro-life posture.

Presidential Candidates react to ruling

McCain's pro-life credentials called into question

-- OneNewsNow.com