Planned Parenthood President’s Shocking Reason For Aborting Her Baby

I remember the days when Bill Clinton talked about abortion. President Clinton’s mantra was nobody wanted to get an abortion. He said that it should be “safe, legal and rare.” Likewise, when the pro-choice crowd challenges legal restrictions on abortion, much of the time it is because the laws allegedly don’t contain strong enough provisions for hardship cases such pregnancies that result from rape, incest or that threaten the life of the mother.

There is some logic to these arguments. Americans can argue in good faith about if it is ever moral to kill an unborn baby. While I believe that abortion is murder and morally repugnant, I can concede that there are gray areas where there are no good choices. With deep moral and logical arguments to be made on both sides, it is all the more shocking to hear Planned Parenthood’s president Cecile Richards justify her own abortion.

In an interview with Katie Couric in 2015, Richards described her decision to take the life of an unborn baby. “It was a decision my husband and I made. It was a personal decision. And we have three children that we adore and that are the center of my life. And we decided that was as big as our family needed to be,” said Richards. “It wasn’t anything more dramatic than that. But I can’t imagine a woman being in that circumstance — with an unintended pregnancy and not being able to make her own decision about that pregnancy.”

“It wasn’t anything more dramatic than that.”

Cecile Richards is the daughter of former Texas governor, Anne Richards (who notably coined the nickname “Shrub” for George W. Bush). She comes from an affluent family. Lifenews estimates the salary of the younger Ms. Richards at “around $600,000.” She is a one-percenter in her own right. Yet she chose to end the life of her baby, the sibling of her other three children, because “we decided that was as big as our family needed to be.”

This is no hardship case. This is not a gray area. This is a case of a wealthy woman who apparently was not on birth control or using contraceptives deciding that she didn’t want another child.

The Cecile Richards abortion is an example of the dishonesty of the abortion movement. The vast majority of abortions are for convenience or quality of life reasons, not for medical emergencies or due to sexual assaults. According to the Guttmacher Institute, rape and incest cases make up less than one percent of abortions. Abortions due to the health of the mother account for only 12 percent of abortions. Concerns about the health of the baby lead to 13 percent.

The most common reason cited for having an abortion? “Having a baby would dramatically change my life.” Cecile Richards’ excuse, “have completed my childbearing,” was given by 38 percent of women who had abortions.

The pro-choice movement is fundamentally a selfish one. At its core, it is all about “me.” The slogan “my body, my choice” puts all other considerations below the mother’s preference. The fact that a human being is killed, the desires of the father, even the possibility of problems with the mental and physical health of the mother are pushed aside.  

Abortion is not a necessary medical procedure to protect the life of the mother in most cases. Abortion is a tool with which people can escape the consequences of their actions.

Ironically, the extremist position of abortion for any reason may be hurting the pro-choice cause. Since the 1990s, the percentage of pro-choice Americans has plummeted while the pro-life position has increased. The country is equally split between the two viewpoints according to Gallup. On closer examination, the majority is neither pro- nor anti-abortion. A majority, 50 percent, of Americans believes in the middle ground that there should be legal abortion with restrictions. Most of these (37 percent) believe that abortion should be legal in only a few circumstances, presumably the traditional exceptions of rape, incest and when the mother’s life is in danger.

The change in attitudes about abortion helps to explain another shocking statistic. American abortions are their lowest level since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. The pro-life viewpoint is winning. Perhaps this is why abortion activists are sounding increasingly shrill and extreme.

(Hat tip to at Amanda Prestigiacomo at the Daily Wire for finding the 2015 interview.)

Originally published on The Resurgent

The idiotic way we buy healthcare

Seven years ago, President Obama and the Democrats said that they had solved the healthcare crisis. Their Affordable Care Act promised universal coverage for the uninsured and lower prices for the rest of us. Their calculations were wrong and Obamacare ended up making America’s healthcare mess even worse.

While there are many problems with the current healthcare system, one seems to stand out among all the rest for its sheer stupidity. The most idiotic thing about the American healthcare system is that when we buy healthcare, we have no idea how much we are buying it for. This problem seems to have been worsened by Obamacare.

Aside from suffering from steadily rising premiums and higher deductibles since the onset of Obamacare, we are being blindsided by unexpected medical bills that come out of nowhere. When we go to the doctor for an office visit or check into a hospital, we have no idea what it will cost.

Medical care is the only commodity that we buy in such an insane fashion. Can you imagine going to your local car dealership and signing a contract to buy a new car without knowing how much it would cost or even what kind of car you’d be driving home? Not many people would be willing to take such a deal, but we do it every time we step into a doctor’s office.

When we go to the doctor, all most of us know for sure is that we’ll be paying the insurance copayment. My copay has gone from $20 for an office visit a few years ago to $35 today. In addition to higher copays, my PPO also makes me pay a share of many tests and procedures through deductibles and coinsurance. With my HMO from years past, I only had to pay the copayment for most services.

Not once, but twice in the past two years I have had large bills come from out of the blue for tests that doctors had ordered for members of my family that were denied by the insurance company. In both cases, I took the bills to the doctor to ask them to appeal the insurance company’s denial. In both cases, the doctors said that lab was only supposed to bill the insurance company, not their patients, for the tests in question.

This seems to represent something of a scam. The doctors order tests that aren’t universally recognized and approved and then the lab bills the insurance company. If the insurance company doesn’t pay for the questionable test, apparently the lab takes the loss rather than billing the patient. Occasionally, a bill for thousands of dollars for a test for a routine health condition slips through the cracks to the patient, but normally the patients never know how much money the insurance company is paying out on their behalf unless they actually look at those Explanation of Benefits forms that normally go straight from the mail to the trash.

A third of medical tests are considered unnecessary according to a paper in the Journal of American Medicine. This mountain of needless testing costs hundreds of millions of dollars. When the insurance companies are billed for these expensive tests, it translates in to higher premiums.

Even when you try to find out how much your healthcare costs, you might still be surprised. When I went in for a colonoscopy two years ago, I paid the doctor and the hospital in advance. I thought that this would eliminate any problems with the billing.

Since I had already paid for the procedure, it came as quite a surprise when I started getting more bills in the mail, again for more than a thousand dollars, a few weeks later. After spending countless hours on the phone getting the runaround between the insurance company, the hospital and the doctor’s office, I traced the problem to a diagnostic code that had been entered incorrectly. The confusion was over whether the scan was medically necessary or preventive care. Under the ACA, preventive care was covered at a higher rate than a procedure that is needed for an actual existing health reason. Go figure that one out.

Even after finding the problem, it took many more hours on the phone to get it corrected. Total time to resolve the issue was about six months. Many people probably would have simply paid these bills when they received them and couldn’t get them dismissed immediately. Alternatively, many others might have ignored the bills and suffered credit damage as a result. I have to wonder how many people are paying outlandish medical bills that they don’t really owe.

Some uncertainty in medicine is legitimate. It is possible to go into a hospital and have real, unexpected complications that make your stay more expensive. However, there shouldn’t be any fear of going in for a routine doctor visit and coming out with thousands of dollars for routine and unnecessary tests, even when you have insurance. The price of a colonoscopy shouldn’t double because you have a medical problem that requires you to get a colonoscopy.

There are many problems with the health care system and Obamacare, but one of the biggest is the lack of transparency in pricing. Patients should have an idea how much they will owe before they commit to a procedure. Too often now, cost is never considered by the doctor and never known by the patient. At least not until the bills start showing up in the mail.

To take it a step further, patients should be able to compare the rates of various doctors and hospitals. With any other commodity, if you want the best you’d better be prepared to pay a little extra. If you desperately need a procedure, but don’t have much money, you might prefer a safe, but less prestigious hospital or clinic. Before you pooh-pooh this idea, consider that medical tourism is already gaining in popularity as people travel to countries with better doctors, advanced treatments that may not be approved at home or less expensive care.

In short, health care reform needs to reintroduce real competition and markets. People can’t make intelligent decisions if they have no information about what a transaction will cost them. The illusion that their copayment is their only cost for care is leading to wasteful practices, large bills and inefficient medical care. Give patients the information to make good healthcare choices and the freedom to choose.

New poll shows social conservatives in decline

Polling released over the past few weeks has revealed what may be seismic shifts in American morality. On virtually every issue, American public opinion has shifted to the left. The most recent polling, released today by Gallup, show that the country has moved left on abortion and approval of out-of-wedlock births.

Today, a poll on attitudes about abortion showed that half of Americans consider themselves pro-choice for the first time since 2012. The Gallup poll showed that the percentage of Americans who identify as pro-life has declined to 44 percent, its lowest point since 2008. 2009 was the first year in which pro-life polled higher than pro-choice. Attitudes on abortion are still much more divided than they were in the 1990s.

The poll does not define pro-choice and pro-life, but 29 percent of respondents indicated that abortion should be legal in all circumstances. The plurality, 36 percent, said that abortion, should be legal in only a few circumstances.

Another Gallup poll released today revealed increasingly divergent attitudes on out-of-wedlock births. Sixty-one percent now believe that it is morally acceptable to have a baby outside of marriage. Only 35 percent call out-of-wedlock births immoral. Opinions on extramarital births have diverged widely since 2002, the last year that a majority called them immoral.

The shift has come as the percentage of out-of-wedlock births has increased dramatically. In 2014, the Washington Post reported that Census figures show that less than 60 percent of first-time births are to married couples. The Census report noted that “women with a nonmarital [sic] first birth are both less likely to ever marry and less likely to remain married if they do marry” and also links unmarried births to higher risks of poverty, lower educational attainment and family instability.

Today’s polling comes on the heels of increased support for doctor-assisted suicide, also from Gallup. Sixty-eight percent of respondents now support a right to die when a person has an incurable disease and is in severe pain. Only 28 percent are opposed. After remaining close for years, opinion on doctor-assisted euthanasia has diverged since 2013.

The biggest shift in public opinion is related to homosexuality and gay marriage. Gallup reports that a record high of 60 percent now supports gay marriage. Only 37 percent disagree. As recently as 1999, the numbers were almost completely reversed with 62 percent opposed and 35 percent in favor of redefining marriage.

Likewise, by 51 – 30 percent, most Americans now believe that homosexuals are born gay, not created by upbringing or environment. On this issue, Gallup’s numbers have also reversed since the 1990s. In reality, scientific proof that homosexuality is inherited genetically has been hard to find. It is even harder to find a genetic explanation for bisexuals, which make up approximately half of the gay and lesbian community.

On a similar issue, Gallup found that respondents greatly overestimated the number of gays in the US. Only 3.8 percent self-identify as gay or lesbian, but poll respondents believed that 23 percent of Americans were gay.

In general, the recent Gallup polling shows that social liberals are now equal in number with social conservatives in the United States. Since 1999, the percentage of social conservatives has declined while social liberals have increased. Both factions now stand equal at 31 percent.

The polling shows that the sample trended more liberal on virtually every issue since 2001. The largest shifts occurred on gay and lesbian relations (considered moral by 23 percent more in 2015 than in 2001), extramarital births (16 percent more), extramarital sex (15 percent more), divorce (12 percent more) and stem cell research using human embryos (12 percent more). Other issues with a large shift included polygamy (nine percent increase) and cloning humans (eight percent).

Some issues are considered less moral today than 14 years ago. Support for the death penalty declined by three percent, but a majority (60 percent) still approve. Support for medical testing on animals declined by nine percent to 56 percent approval.

Some of the shift in public opinion may be explained by the sample. The poll was conducted from May 6-10, 2015 with 1,024 adults, aged 18 or older, living in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Since all of the findings stem from the same poll, if there is an error in providing an accurate sample or weighting the responses, the findings could have been skewed to the left. Nevertheless, these findings do support other polling that shows social attitudes moving to the left on several issues. 

Read the full article on Examiner.com

This mom went to court to kill her 12-year-old daughter

http://youtu.be/N_Pr-nbrc-w

In August, a court in the United Kingdom granted Charlotte Fitzmaurice the right to have her 12-year-old daughter, Nancy, killed. The landmark decision was the first time that a child that was not on life support or suffering a terminal illness has been euthanized in the UK according to the Mirror.

Nancy was born with hydrocephalus, meningitis and septicaemia. Also blind, she could not walk, talk, eat or drink and required constant hospital care. Nancy’s condition was painful and disabling, but not life-threatening. As Nancy’s health deteriorated and pain medications ceased to be effective, Charlotte Fitzmaurice appealed to a British court to allow Nancy to be euthanized.

In a letter to the court, quoted in the Mirror, Charlotte said, “My daughter is no longer my daughter; she is now merely just a shell.” She continued, “The light from her eyes is now gone and is replaced with fear and a longing to be at peace.”

Nancy was unable to communicate any desire to die, but Charlotte’s statement to the court said, “Today I am appealing to you for Nancy as I truly believe she has endured enough. For me to say that breaks my heart. But I have to say it.” Nancy’s father, David Wise, also supported the appeal to the court.

After a ruling in which Justice Eleanor King decided that it “is not the case now” that Nancy has any quality of life, doctors at London’s Great Ormond St. Hospital began to withhold food and water from Nancy. She died 14 days later. Both euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal under British law according to the National Health Service.

While Nancy’s life was filled with pain, so was her death. Charlotte told the Mirror, “Watching my daughter suffer for days while they cut off her fluids was unbearable. She went in pain. It will stay with me forever.”

Nancy’s father, David Wise, agreed. “It was heartbreaking to see my daughter like that,” he said. “It was the hardest decision we ever made.”

Advocates for life argue that such cases are a slippery slope and note that Nancy’s death was chosen by her parents and doctors, not by Nancy herself, and that Nancy was not terminally ill. “The judge's statement sets a precedent that quality of life now becomes a measuring rod as to whether or not a child with a disability should live or die. That's horrific. That's terrifying," Joni Eareckson Tada told The Christian Post. Eareckson Tada, a Christian activist for the disabled who is a quadriplegic, continued, “In the future, I wonder how many other subjective issues may sway another judge's opinion in the life of somebody like Nancy, or perhaps even less disabled physically and mentally than Nancy. This swings open a door to similar actions against other people with disabilities simply based on the fact of distress, the inconvenience, the cost, the discomfort, all of which are subjective issues."

The Autism Self Advocacy Network agreed. The group issued a statement, which read in part:

Euthanasia of people with disabilities is an extremely dangerous and wholly inappropriate solution to inadequate pain management. In cases where painkillers are insufficient, a number of alternatives for pain management exist. A policy of euthanasia targets vulnerable people, particularly when it is applied to children. People with disabilities who experience chronic pain should have same access as others to life-sustaining medical treatment.

There have been other cases of euthanasia in the UK. In 2009, in a case that pitted the mother against the father, a judge ruled that baby Ronnie Bickell’s “quality of life would not be good enough to justify the medical care needed to prolong it” according to the Daily Mail. In another case, Hannah Jones, then 13, refused a heart transplant that could have saved her life. Hannah’s heart had been damaged by treatment for leukemia that she had suffered as a child. A court upheld her right to refuse treatment, but, a year later, she changed her mind and had the surgery.

In Holland, euthanasia is legal. Officially, about three percent of Dutch deaths are attributed to euthanasia, a rate that would be equivalent to 75,000 people each year in the US according to National Review. Unofficially, the euthanasia rate in Holland may be as high as 10 percent acknowledges the Daily Caller. While euthanasia of children is technically illegal in Holland, Belgium removed all age restrictions from its euthanasia law earlier this year according to Time.

Last year, at 18, Hannah Jones told the Mirror that she was glad that she had undergone the operation rather than ending her life. “I’m so grateful for my transplant, and glad I decided to have it. It’s given me a life I didn’t expect, a chance to grow up, to follow ambitions, maybe even get married and have a family.” An actress and dancer at her college, Hannah said, “I never thought I’d be dancing on stage, I love it.”

In August, a court in the United Kingdom granted Charlotte Fitzmaurice the right to have her 12-year-old daughter, Nancy, killed. The landmark decision was the first time that a child that was not on life support or suffering a terminal illness has been euthanized in the UK according to the Mirror.

Nancy was born with hydrocephalus, meningitis and septicaemia. Also blind, she could not walk, talk, eat or drink and required constant hospital care. Nancy’s condition was painful and disabling, but not life-threatening. As Nancy’s health deteriorated and pain medications ceased to be effective, Charlotte Fitzmaurice appealed to a British court to allow Nancy to be euthanized.

In a letter to the court, quoted in the Mirror, Charlotte said, “My daughter is no longer my daughter; she is now merely just a shell.” She continued, “The light from her eyes is now gone and is replaced with fear and a longing to be at peace.”

Nancy was unable to communicate any desire to die, but Charlotte’s statement to the court said, “Today I am appealing to you for Nancy as I truly believe she has endured enough. For me to say that breaks my heart. But I have to say it.” Nancy’s father, David Wise, also supported the appeal to the court.

After a ruling in which Justice Eleanor King decided that it “is not the case now” that Nancy has any quality of life, doctors at London’s Great Ormond St. Hospital began to withhold food and water from Nancy. She died 14 days later. Both euthanasia and assisted suicide are illegal under British law according to the National Health Service.

While Nancy’s life was filled with pain, so was her death. Charlotte told the Mirror, “Watching my daughter suffer for days while they cut off her fluids was unbearable. She went in pain. It will stay with me forever.”

Nancy’s father, David Wise, agreed. “It was heartbreaking to see my daughter like that,” he said. “It was the hardest decision we ever made.”

Advocates for life argue that such cases are a slippery slope and note that Nancy’s death was chosen by her parents and doctors, not by Nancy herself, and that Nancy was not terminally ill. “The judge's statement sets a precedent that quality of life now becomes a measuring rod as to whether or not a child with a disability should live or die. That's horrific. That's terrifying," Joni Eareckson Tada told The Christian Post. Eareckson Tada, a Christian activist for the disabled who is a quadriplegic, continued, “In the future, I wonder how many other subjective issues may sway another judge's opinion in the life of somebody like Nancy, or perhaps even less disabled physically and mentally than Nancy. This swings open a door to similar actions against other people with disabilities simply based on the fact of distress, the inconvenience, the cost, the discomfort, all of which are subjective issues."

The Autism Self Advocacy Network agreed. The group issued a statement, which read in part:

Euthanasia of people with disabilities is an extremely dangerous and wholly inappropriate solution to inadequate pain management. In cases where painkillers are insufficient, a number of alternatives for pain management exist. A policy of euthanasia targets vulnerable people, particularly when it is applied to children. People with disabilities who experience chronic pain should have same access as others to life-sustaining medical treatment.

There have been other cases of euthanasia in the UK. In 2009, in a case that pitted the mother against the father, a judge ruled that baby Ronnie Bickell’s “quality of life would not be good enough to justify the medical care needed to prolong it” according to the Daily Mail. In another case, Hannah Jones, then 13, refused a heart transplant that could have saved her life. Hannah’s heart had been damaged by treatment for leukemia that she had suffered as a child. A court upheld her right to refuse treatment, but, a year later, she changed her mind and had the surgery.

In Holland, euthanasia is legal. Officially, about three percent of Dutch deaths are attributed to euthanasia, a rate that would be equivalent to 75,000 people each year in the US according to National Review. Unofficially, the euthanasia rate in Holland may be as high as 10 percent acknowledges the Daily Caller. While euthanasia of children is technically illegal in Holland, Belgium removed all age restrictions from its euthanasia law earlier this year according to Time.

Last year, at 18, Hannah Jones told the Mirror that she was glad that she had undergone the operation rather than ending her life. “I’m so grateful for my transplant, and glad I decided to have it. It’s given me a life I didn’t expect, a chance to grow up, to follow ambitions, maybe even get married and have a family.” An actress and dancer at her college, “I never thought I’d be dancing on stage,” Hannah said, “ I love it.”

Read the full article on Examiner.com

Adoption should be easier than abortion

Kermit Gosnell may change national conversation on abortion

The trial of Kermit Gosnell may represent a turning point in the American discussion of abortion. The story is not merely the heinous crimes committed by Gosnell and his staff; the other half of the story is the left’s almost total lack of outrage. As James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal wrote in his excellent summary of the case, the mainstream media almost totally ignored the entire case and trial until an outpouring of interest on the internet all but forced coverage of the trial onto television and into newspapers.

Bill Clinton made famous the line that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” Under modern Democrats, the attempt to make abortion rare, if there ever was a real attempt, has fallen by the wayside. Obamacare’s contraception mandate also forces insurance companies to include coverage for abortifacient drugs and President Obama’s budget increased federal funding for mega-provider of abortion Planned Parenthood. While Gosnell was on trial, President Obama became the first president to speak to Planned Parenthood, telling the group “as long as we've got to fight to protect a woman's right to make her own choices about her own health, I want you to know that you've also got a President who's going to be right there with you fighting every step of the way” and “God bless you” according to Politico.

As the grisly details of Kermit Gosnell’s practice come to light, it is becoming apparent that the left is far more concerned with keeping abortion legal than in keeping it safe. (Clinton apparently meant safe for the mother; abortion is almost always fatal for the baby.) A major point that pro-abortion activists frequently make is that legal abortion is needed to avoid keep women from being maimed in “back alley” abortions. It is apparent now that these back alley abortions continue in the offices of people like Kermit Gosnell.

Among the dead from Gosnell’s Philadelphia office was a 41-year-old woman who had come to Gosnell for an abortion. According to the grand jury report, Karnamya Mongar, a Nepalese immigrant, was given repeated doses of Demerol while waiting for Gosnell to perform her abortion. After several hours of waiting in a drug-induced sleep, Mongar stopped breathing. It is not certain how long Mongar lay there dying before the clinic’s employees noticed. It is known that when she was discovered Gosnell half-heartedly performed CPR, but did not administer drugs that could have restarted her heart. The clinic had a defibrillator, but it was broken. Ms. Mongar was probably brain dead before paramedics were even called. The report states that before paramedics arrived, the clinic staff hooked up equipment and rearranged the body to make it appear as if Ms. Mongar died in the midst of a procedure. Any chance of reviving her was lost as paramedics were unable to get her out of the building for 20 minutes due to cluttered hallways and padlocked emergency door.

Gosnell came close to killing other women as well. The report details several other instances in which Gosnell’s medical incompetence and negligence resulted in serious illness and near fatal complications for his patients. Many clinic employees were not trained or licensed. One employee who commonly dosed out medications was an untrained high school student. Gosnell inadvertently implicated himself by recording hundreds of late term abortions as 24. 5 weeks, when the Pennsylvania law limited abortions to earlier than 24 weeks.

Gosnell’s record of abusing women goes back 40 years ago to 1972. On Mother’s Day, Gosnell offered to perform abortions on 15 poor women from Chicago who were bused to his clinic. Gosnell did not tell the women that they would be guinea pigs for a new abortion device, a ball of gel-coated plastic razors to be inserted in their uteruses. Their body heat was supposed to melt the gel, loosening the razors and cutting up the unborn babies. In reality, the device, called the “super coil,” caused serious complications for nine of the 15 women. One required a hysterectomy. The incident became known as the Mother’s Day Massacre.

There were many more recent reports of problems at Gosnell’s clinic. It is apparent that he flouted numerous laws and nearly killed an unknown number of women due to poor sanitary methods and negligence, yet Pennsylvania’s medical regulators did not investigate. There were a multitude of complaints including a doctor who noticed that many of his patients who went to Gosnell contracted the same venereal disease. The medical examiner of Delaware County informed the Pennsylvania Department of Health that Gosnell had illegally performed an abortion on a 14-year-old mother with an unborn baby at 30 weeks. In one case, Gosnell refused to halt an abortion for a woman who changed her mind. Then, on November 18, 2009, Karnamaya Mongar died of a drug overdose in Gosnell’s office.

The report notes that none of this triggered state inspections of the clinic. In fact, in 1993 Pennsylvania had completely stopped inspecting abortion clinics for political reasons under the administration of pro-abortion Republican Tom Ridge.

Even pro-choice Americans should be concerned about the abysmal conditions that Gosnell’s patients endured. There were many reports of infections and life threatening complications before Gosnell and his staff actually killed Ms. Mongar. It is readily apparent that Gosnell did not operate a “safe” abortion clinic and was actually a threat to the health and wellbeing of women. Any doubts to this effect should be dispelled after reading testimony about how Gosnell drugged patients who were upset or slapped them.

Gosnell was part of a black market for abortionists who will circumvent the meager restrictions on abortions that the courts permit states to enact. Gosnell was aided and abetted not only by his clinic staff, but by numerous referrers, many of whom must have known that Gosnell was performing abortions at much later stages than the law allowed. It seems that the patient’s ability to pay was Gosnell’s only concern. In the end, the raid on Gosnell’s clinic was not due to his many violations of the law, Mongar’s death, or complaints by other women or doctors. The 2010 raid was based on suspected illegal drug trafficking.

In many respects, Gosnell’s clinic was not unique. The undercover filmmakers at Live Action have made a several short films showing abortion clinic workers helping patients to break laws limiting abortions. The practice of circumventing abortion restrictions appears to be widespread enough to warrant further investigation.

There is also evidence that other abortion clinics are substandard when it comes to keeping clean and sanitary facilities. A clinic in Ohio was ordered closed last month after failing a state health inspection. A second Ohio clinic in Toledo may be closed as well. A Planned Parenthood clinic in Delaware is charged with using unsterile instruments and rushing patients through procedures on bloody tables. Police investigating a break-in at a Muskegon, Mich. clinic found similar unsanitary conditions. A Lexington, Ky. abortionist’s medical license was suspended amid charges of fraud and unsanitary conditions. A Wilmington, Del. Clinic was closed in March 2013 after four women were rushed to the hospital with complications within a month. In Atlantic City, N.J. an abortion clinic was closed in for a series of health code violations.

USA Today reported that abortion clinics in Delaware are not required to undergo routine inspections. Maryland does not inspect for cleanliness and New Jersey only inspects surgery centers. In Virginia, the cleanliness and safety of abortion clinics has become a political issue after the state’s clinics were issued 80 violations according to Breitbart. Inspections of clinics vary from state to state with several states apparently choosing not to inspect at all even though the potential for infection and disease is high.

The Gosnell case explodes several myths about abortion in America. Abortion is not the safe, sterile procedure that advocates make it out to be. Many clinics are apparently unsanitary even by basic standards. Many abortion clinic workers seem eager to help clients break the law and often avoid fulfilling even basic obligations for counseling.

Statistics show that other promises of abortion proponents have also been unfulfilled as well. Abortion proponents claimed that abortion would reduce out of wedlock births and child abuse. In reality, a Bowling Green State University study from 2005 showed that women who have had abortions are 144 percent more likely to abuse their children. A study by Edward Lenoski of the University of Southern California found that 91 percent of abusive parents had wanted their children.

The trend toward unwed motherhood has been accelerated since Roe v. Wade. A report released in March 2013 by the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and the RELATE Institute indicated that almost half of U.S. births are now out of wedlock. The average age when a woman first gives birth is now 25.7. The average age when a woman gets married has increased to 26.5.

Originally published on Examiner.com:
http://www.examiner.com/article/kermit-gosnell-case-may-break-deadlock-on-abortion-1

The contraception mandate and freedom of choice

Contraception has been big news lately. The controversy between the Catholic Church and President Obama over whether the church’s charities should be required to provide employees with birth control and abortifacient drugs has become the front line in the war between religious and sexual freedoms. At its core however, the matter is really about the freedom of choice, but probably not the way you think.

These days, freedom of choice is usually a euphemism for abortion. The Orwellian doublespeak is used because fewer people would rally to support “a woman’s right to kill her unborn baby” than “a woman’s right to choose.” Almost always left unsaid is what it is a woman’s right to choose. Ostensibly, the choice is between abortion and giving birth, but in reality Democrats and liberals focus almost exclusively on the right to kill, opposing almost all restrictions on abortion including parental notification laws, waiting periods, mandatory counseling, and even a ban on gruesome partial birth abortions.

In reality, freedom of choice extends to many issues besides abortion. In the contraception debate, the Catholic Church is attempting to exercise its freedom of choice to not buy a product that they do not want. Historically, churches and religious organizations have often been given exemptions from laws that conflict with their religious beliefs. These exemptions have included tax exemptions, exemptions from vaccination laws, and exemptions from compulsory schooling and military service. In recent years, religious exemptions have been granted in several different areas including homosexual marriage laws and not requiring doctors, nurses, and pharmacists to participate in abortions. Essentially, religious groups and their adherents were given a freedom of choice to opt out of laws that violated their religious beliefs or conscience.

All that ended with Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act requires that all health insurance policies must include “preventive services” to insureds at no out-of-pocket cost according to the United States Justice Foundation. The Department of Health and Human Services issued a rule that included birth control and abortion-inducing drugs in these preventive services. The HHS rule exempted churches, but not other religious organizations. An article by Bishop David Zubik noted that the exemption was so narrowly written that it would not even fit Jesus Christ and his Apostles.

Democratic claims that the Republicans are trying to ban birth control are an obvious lie to anyone who looks closely at the ACA and the exemption requests of the Catholic Church. No one, not even Rick Santorum, has proposed a ban or limitation of birth control for people or groups who want it. Even Catholic employees can buy birth control if they want it, it just wouldn’t be covered under their health insurance and they would have the pay out-of-pocket. The cost would be about $15 per month according to Planned Parenthood.

In reality, the Republicans are acting to protect the freedom of religious groups to choose not to purchase birth control. President Obama and Kathleen Sebelius of the HHS originally planned to force religious groups to purchase the coverage whether they wanted it or not. Under the president’s compromise, the religious groups don’t have to pay for the coverage but they are still not given the freedom not to accept it all. The debate is whether the federal government has the right to force groups to purchase and accept coverage that they don’t want and believe to be immoral.

In one sense, the contraception debate is a microcosm of the debate over the ACA’s individual mandate. Nothing in the Constitution, including the commerce clause, gives the federal government the right to force Americans to engage in commerce. The Constitution explicitly lists the powers of the federal government and any power not delegated to the federal government by the states is reserved to the states, even if it is not specifically mentioned.

The religious nature of the contraception controversy also means that the mandate is in violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Wall St. Journal notes that the act, passed in 1993 with only three nays and signed into law by President Clinton, requires that any “substantial burden” on the exercise of religion be “in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest” and be the “least restrictive means” of furthering that interest. The contraception mandate does not meet these tests.

The issue at hand is not whether a majority of Americans approve of birth control. The issue at hand is whether Americans will allow the federal government to force a religious group to violate its beliefs in violation of the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The issue is not whether birth control and abortion-inducing drugs will be banned, but who will pay for them. When Sandra Fluke testified before congress, it wasn’t because contraceptives were not available. She testified because she didn’t want to pay for contraceptives. Fluke wanted congress to force Georgetown University, a private Catholic college, to pay for her birth control even though the school finds it morally objectionable. This has been lost in the brouhaha over Rush Limbaugh’s ill-advised comment.

Increasingly, freedom to Democrats does not mean the right to do something; it means not having to pay for whatever you want to do. Unfortunately, since there are no free lunches, freedom from a financial burden for one means an increased financial burden and diminished freedom for someone else. Requiring someone to pay for someone else’s consumption of an item necessarily limits freedom because the government must dictate that the wealth transfer take place and compel or force the “donor” to part with their cash.

The Democrats would allow these moochers to dictate American economic policy and believe that recipients of entitlements have a right to those payments. In reality, no one has a right to the fruits of another’s labor. That is true regardless of whether the entitlement is laundered through a government bureaucracy or an employer. Today the entitlement mentality has expanded beyond basic needs like food and shelter to mobile phones, too-big-to-fail businesses, and health insurance and now to contraception and abortion.

In the case of President Obama’s contraception compromise, Catholic charities are being forced to accept contraceptive coverage that they don’t want, but they won’t have to pay for it. President Obama says that the insurance companies will bear the cost, but that isn’t true either. In the real world, the insurance companies will pass the cost along to their other policy holders. So health insurance premiums for everyone else because the president insisted on forcing religious groups to get a coverage that they never wanted in the first place.

Republicans are attempting to protect the right of the minority, the freedom to say no. On the other hand, the Democrats are trying to use government coercion expand an entitlement, the right to free stuff (that isn’t really free) whether the people want it or not.

Originally published on Examiner.com:

Standardizing health insurance is a bad idea

Is this one size fits all? (Daniel Barcelona)

In a letter to the editor in USA Today, Uwe Reinhardt of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University put forth the idea that health insurance companies could achieve economies of scale if health insurance policies were standardized across all fifty states into a few basic models.  Reinhardt compares his “one size fits all” model for health insurance to the business model of such restaurant chains as KFC, McDonald’s, and Burger King or hotels such as Holiday Inn and Marriott.

What Mr. Reinhardt fails to appreciate is that while these companies have standardized their own business, they do not represent the entire market.  For example, while KFC has standardized its chicken recipe across its entire chain and a McDonald’s burger and fries tastes the same from New York to L.A., consumers are not limited to those choices.  Instead, consumers have their choice of hundreds of restaurants, both standardized franchises and nonstandard Mom-and-Pop eateries. 

Even within the chains that Mr. Reinhardt cites, consumers are not limited to one choice.  In KFC, diners can choose from original recipe, extra crispy, grilled, chicken strips, chicken sandwiches, pot pie, or wings.  Once you finally decide on your chicken, deciding on side dishes can be equally difficult.  If the KFC is also a combination Taco Bell, then there are even more options.  Restaurants are also constantly innovating and introducing new products to entice customers, which further expands the choices available.

In Mr. Reinhardt’s world, consumers would be limited to a standardized and limited menu.  They would not be able to choose from foods that are limited only by the restaurateur’s imagination and the diner’s daring.  It would be a choice between the bland but reliable menu of burgers and fries versus the ability to go wherever and eat whatever you want.  Thanks to competitive markets and innovative entrepreneurs, diners can choose from burgers, pizza, steaks, seafood, Mexican, Indian, Chinese, Thai, or practically any food that they crave.

In different parts of the country, diners have different tastes.  In Georgia, we appreciate good barbecue and fried chicken.  A hometown company, Chick-fil-a, is one of the most popular chains in Atlanta, but can scarcely be found in the north and west.  In other parts of the country, such as the northeast, seafood is king.  New York is known for its thin-crust pizza.  In Miami, you can find great Cuban and Latino food.  In Texas, they like their barbecue, but with beef instead of pork.  In the southwest, you’ll find a Mexican flavor.  When you get to California, you might be stuck with vegetables and tofu unless you can find an In-n-Out Burger.  Would it be possible to try to standardize the different tastes, desires and needs of a country of 300 million people into a single standardized menu?  Would it be wise to even try?

In the health insurance world, having nonstandard policies means that consumers can choose what is important to them.  If a young person only wants coverage for emergency accidents or illnesses, then he can choose and inexpensive, high deductible plan.  Seniors might want a lower-deductible plan with more coverage for prescriptions and preventive care.  If you are a man or woman who cannot have children, then you would probably not value maternity coverage in a health policy and might well object to paying for a coverage that you will not need.

Likewise, people in different parts of the country have different health concerns and needs.  Americashealthrankings.com gives a synopsis of the health situation for each state.  Georgia ranks 36th due to air pollution, a high incidence of infectious disease, and a low high school graduation rate.  This is a sharp improvement over Georgia’s 43^rd place rank last year.

Allowing companies to innovate and bring nonstandard polices to the insurance marketplace is the best way to expand health insurance coverage.  Governments should allow consumers to choose the plan that best meets their health insurance needs, not be forced to buy the plan that a bureaucrat deems to be the best value for everyone.  People are individuals.  They have different wants and needs.  Regulators need to realize that.

Instead of limiting choices to a few standardized policies, governments and health insurers should take a cue from the restaurant world and expand the available options to let people buy the coverage that best suits their needs.  As the Burger King would say, “Have it your way.”

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