GOP wants to put Government between women and their doctors

Despite the rhetoric on the right about the Affordable Health Care act of 2010 allowing the government to come between patients and their doctors, new bills proposed by the GOP would do exactly that.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sen-richard-blumenthal/gop-dials-back-the-clock-_b_818826.html

What if we applied the spirit of the Hyde amendment to all laws?

Listening to C-Span today, I heard Senators Voinovich and Senator Enzi talk about how important it is to apply the Hyde Amendment (that bans federal funding for abortions) to the current Health Reform bill. They continue to say how federal monies going to abortions would compel millions of Americans to pay for things they morally oppose and it would be unfair to use their federal dollars to fund something so abhorrent to their being. While I disagree wholeheartedly with this stance vis-a-vis abortion restrictions, I started to wonder why we don't have a Hyde amendment on the military spending bills.

I was vehemently opposed to the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions on the moral grounds that we would be taking the lives of hundreds or thousands of our own men and women, as well as potentially millions of Afghanis and Iraqis. Since there were millions of us opposed to the Iraq war then it seems only fair that if Senators Enzi and Voinovich get to withhold their federal tax dollars from paying for, or subsidizing plans that offer, abortions, then those of us who oppose these unnecessary wars of aggression should be likewise protected from being compelled to have our tax dollars squandered on the killing of Iraqis, Afghanis, and coalition soldiers in those countries.

Mr. Enzi speaks of safe guarding the "sanctity of human life," but is fine with snuffing out human lives half way around the world. Perhaps if the anti-abortion crowd cared for the lives of our men and women in uniform, or for the lives of the millions of civilians caught up in our bloody wars, as they do for the lives of the unborn, then maybe we wouldn't have wasted so many billions of dollars killing and being killed overseas.

Explaining fossils to creationists just isn't worth the effort

Chants of "Socialist!", "Communist!", and "health care rationer!" abound if you turn on the news and see a Tea Bagger rally taking place. Sadly, the irony of seeing simultaneous accusations of fascism and socialism on the same posters long since ceased to be amusing. As the debate on the Health Care reform bills meanders through the Senate, like a carton of molasses spilling across a frozen pond, the opponents of bringing America's health care system in line with the rest of the developing world continue to throw in new challenges and obstacles.

Senator Nelson has stated that he would like to put forward an amendment "based on a proposal by Rep. Bart Stupak (D., Mich.). The measure would prevent the public insurance plan from covering abortion. It would also prohibit any woman who got the tax credit from enrolling in a plan that covers the procedure." He has made clear that he will not vote for the bill if it does not include these restrictions. Fine! So be it. Let him go home to his 156,000 constituents in Nebraska that currently lack health insurance (www.familiesusa.org). Let him tell those families, and those 35,000 uninsured children that he doesn't want them to have health insurance because someone somewhere might try to get an abortion.

The unfortunate reality is that both the Stupak amendment and any potential other anti-choice amendments that are put forward will not ultimately matter for real meaningful reform. If a single payer plan were still on the table, and this asinine ban on abortion funding would mean that large numbers of Republicans would finally start voting for their constituents' interests instead of in the interest of their next campaign contributions, then I might even be ok with it, in the hopes that it would be repealed or declared unconstitutional down the line. But to give in on the issue of choice, when the reform that is taking place is no longer even Health Care reform, but Health Insurance reform makes my stomach churn.

For the past 30 years we have had to keep fighting the same fights that were thought to have been won already. The problem isn't even with the ridiculous views of the Sarah Palins and the Sam Brownbacks who probably think the Earth was created less than 10,000 years ago. Don't get me wrong, that's a serious problem and the millions of Americans that actually believe that nonsense doesn't help our scientific standing in the world, but the real problem stems from the turncoat, traitorous, backstabbing, shortsighted Democrats like Ben Nelson. A line must be drawn! These people need to be cast out and purged. Donations to their campaigns from any DNC or President Obama supporters should come to an end, and they should be left to rot in the beds they've made.

If they have such serious qualms with the efforts to make Health Care something that all Americans experience and can afford, then they should vote no on the bill itself, but they should stop this nonsense of holding up the bill with non-filibustering filibusters. Allow it to come to a vote and VOTE NO if your conscience demands. Democratic senators, no matter their view on health care reform, should not be trying to stop the vote itself with procedural wrangling.

Finally, I wish that those fighting for meaningful change, like the great Senators from Vermont, Leahy and Sanders, could organize their allies and lash back at the disinformation machine that has confused so many Americans this past year. If opponents are concerned about rationed care or medical services being denied due to Washington bureaucrats then they should be equally upset about the "rationing" of OBGYN services through the Stupak amendment. If people are concerned about the rationing of medical care then attack the Stupak amendment as a slippery slope towards bureaucrats, and not doctors, deciding what treatments can and cannot be provided to a patient.

President Obama is supposed to have the most cunning team ever assembled to deal with "the message." If only that were actually true.

If you don't like abortions then don't get one

Now that the massive Health Reform bill is shaping up to be something everyone can hate, the anti-choicers are clearly overdue for a smackdown. Unfortunately due to that magical mix of cowardice and inaction that have become the Democrats' rallying call, it's looking like women's reproductive rights are about to get backhanded into last century.

While an LA Times OP-ED downplays the notion that the Stupak Amendment is a total victory for the anti-choice forces, it still points out that "it's undeniable that the amendment threatens the availability of insurance coverage for elective abortions for the working poor and lower middle class." By accepting this amendment into the final bill, Congress will be stripping those strata of society the ability to receive an abortion, while keeping it within reach of the wealthy.

People across the nation should be outraged by this, even if they are afflicted with a crippling mental defect that prohibits logic and reason from taking root (religious belief), by its very class oriented approach at limiting medical services. Supposing various other groups decided to take this approach to the health care reform bill, there are a whole range of other medical procedures and services that could be whittled out.

Those that eat healthy and exercise regularly might not see any good reason for plans receiving federal money to be providing care for heart surgeries, diabetes, or other ailments related to an unhealthy lifestyle. Similarly, the argument could be made that smokers should have to pay for any lung cancer treatments out of pocket as well. Perhaps lobbyists for women's issues should request that funding for prostate cancer come directly from the patients as well. Equally absurd as the "abortion rider" being proposed would be "drug rehab rider", or a "mental health supplemental" because they are all things that one doesn't plan for.

What's even more troubling to those of us who actually want real reform that produces an environment of universal access to health care (not insurance) is that these provisions are being placed in the bill under the auspices of winning over votes from across the aisle. But like previous attempts to reach out the opposition, this isn't going to succeed in getting more than a handful of Republican votes, some of whom would have voted for the reform without the amendment. It's time for the Democrats to start acting like, as former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones put it, "assholes" so that they can get shit done. It is a disheartening slap to the face that President Bush with 51 seats in the Senate was able to get so much regressive legislation passed but President Obama with 59-60 "fellow" Democrats can't get the most basic of progressive initiatives passed.

The fact remains that the only reason to put these restrictions into the bill isn't because Stupak and his friends are terrified that some of their income tax dollars are somehow going to end up paying for someone's abortion, but because they want to see abortions outlawed/banned/discontinued altogether. They are exercising their cunning right now in how they go about that, and they realize that by removing the funding for it there will likely be a drop in women's ability to have an abortion.

My answer to them remains the same. If you don't like pot, don't smoke it. If you don't like alcohol, don't drink it. If you don't want an abortion, then don't get one. By giving women the option to have a safe, affordable abortion, it is in no way forcing one on those that do not want them. Organizations like NARAL aren't planning to kidnap Mrs. Stupak and force her to have an abortion so it would be really nice if Mr. Stupak could get over himself and his beliefs that were conceived in an age when people thought that the universe revolved around the Earth and those that were able to swim were witches.

Pro-Life...unless that life differs politcally

I've been wanting to write about the death of Doctor George Tiller for some time now, and I've probably missed the boat as far as saying something that hasn't already been said given how fast our news cycles move these days, but I still feel it is important for as many voices as possible to denounce this heinous killing of, as Jeremy Scahill said on Real Time with Bill Maher, "a provider of women's health care." Despite having always been of the belief that women must have the right to choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy without any pre-conditions or constraints, it was really upon reading John Irving's The Cider House Rules that cemented that belief that for this country to truly be considered free, women need to have full control of their own bodies and there need to be doctors able to perform these operations in modern, safe, and hygenic environments.

The fallacy of the pro-life movement is that even if abortion is banned outright throughout the 50 states, that does not mean that abortion will end as a practice. What will happen instead, is that abortion will be pushed underground and performed by people without the training, or the professional conduct of today's ob-gyns who perform these procedures. Anyone who claims to care about life should be appalled at the possibility of America's return to the days of back-alley abortion clinics and other horrors of our oh so glorious past.

As has been reported by any journalist worth their paycheck (of which there are fewer and fewer every day) no providers of women's health care are taking women who are 9 months pregnant and giving them a late-term abortion. In the United States less than 2% of all abortions were conducted after the 21st week of gestation, and an estimated figure from 1997 suggests that less than 1% were done after the 27th week. For those bothering to listen to the doctors who perform these abortions, it becomes clear that these are done not because the patient suddenly feels like taking a trip to Europe and doesn't want a baby along, but are done because of some very serious health problems with the fetus or a potential danger to the mother.

The "right-to-life" movement has been sickeningly been pretending to denounce the death of Dr. Tiller while in the same breath excusing it because of his willingness to perform abortions. This deceptive double-speak is mostly to blame for the crazies like Scott Roeder who actually go out and commit these atrocities. And while I believe that we need the inalienable rights of free speech in this country, I think it is false, and disingenuous for those spewing the most hateful and uncompromising vitriol to pretend that the death Dr. Tiller, and the terror it spreads among women seeking abortions or doctors providing health care to women, isn't exactly what they want to see happen.

While I disagree with many of the terror statutes being used to hold prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Bagram Air Base, or any of the other black sites the CIA has, Mr. Roeder is the textbook definition of a terrorist and should be shipped out to one of those facilities. In his Falwell/Robertson/Limbaugh/O'Reilly motivated killing of Dr. Tiller, he has killed more Americans than many of the detainees in Gitmo over did and he has terrorized more people than Omar Khadr, the last remaining westerner still held at Camp X-ray.

Americans need to stop being fooled by monikers. Focus on the Family and the American Family Association don't give a shit about families. The Patriot Act isn't patriotic. Pro-lifers do not care about life or they would work harder at making things better for the lives that are already here on this earth rather than focusing all of their energies on the lives that do not yet exist.

Catholics and Politics

I was watching c-span today and I caught a video broadcast of a Denver radio show called Calpis and Silverman.  It's a small radio show gets to be on c-span once a year (or so I understood from the clip I watched).  It fit the genre like so many other bi-partisan shows these days with one host on the far right and other to the right of center, it's an interesting sea saw with one guy on the end and another in the middle (leaning to the right).

Calpis was going on and on about what a radical Obama is and what radical Jeremiah Wright is but what really "ground my gears" (thanks Peter Griffin) was the focus of Calpis' abortion debate.  He talked about Bishop Chaput who has echoed the same nasty rhetoric that we heard back in 2004, that Catholics that support abortion rights or vote for a candidate that does should not be eligible for communion.  While I personally think that Catholicism is shit and that Priests are either child molesters, child molesters that haven't been caught yet, or secretely having sex with parishiners, this idea that if you disagree with the current teachings of the Catholic church you cannot be a Catholic would only make sense if the Catholic church had always been on the right side of history.  Even if they don't believe in evolution, I would turn Calpis and Silverman's audience to the flat earth/round earth debate.  If that was going on today, and the pope with his infallible words was proclaiming that the earth was flat and to think otherwise was heresy, why should that invalidate a person's belief that Jesus was the son of god and through loving him you can attain eternal salvation?

I'm sorry if it seems I'm picking on Catholics.  To be honest I think that all religions are a farce but if you want to believe in spaghetti monsters, your political views should not prevent you from doing so.