Planned Parenthood — Baby parts matter
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Tag: abortion
Rare events often define our view of society and government. The regular slog of life we habitually forget and everyday crimes we let pass as if unnoticed. But a massacre, an assassination, or a big storm — these get a lot of coverage. And exercise our political imaginations.
Often unduly.
Yet, presently a rare-event story certainly qualifies as “newsworthy,” though almost no one talks about, and almost no media outlet covers: the serial infanticides of the abortion doctor currently on trial, Dr. Kermit Gosnell.
While media folks and political activists continue to publicize the Sandy Hooks shooting, on Gosnell’s bloody tale they remain silent. As Ed Krayewski notes at Reason.com, just as a rare shooting has served a political cause, so too could Gosnell’s grisly crimes. But from the president, no grand “it’s not about me” speeches. From his followers, no demands for instant action.
Why?
The question doesn’t need to be asked. It’s politically inconvenient for “pro-choicers” to confront the grotesque crimes of a doctor engaged in late-term abortions that often became postpartum infanticide. And grisly ones at that.
The pro-choice movement typically responds to abortion in the same fashion they accuse those at the NRA: give no inch. Abortion rights activists defend late-term abortions and argue that bringing up the killing of infants is just so “off-point.” But after reading about the Gosnell case, it’s not off-point at all.
Certainly, Dr. Gosnell’s alleged infanticide should be mentioned for the same reason that any big story deserves coverage. Should it lead to immediate calls for more government regulation of abortion? That’s debatable. Should it inform the debate?
Yes.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Some things I just “don’t get.”
How can either pro-lifers or Obamacare opponents trust Mitt Romney? Sure, he says he’s pro-life and he pledges to repeal the Democrats’ health care reform package. But for years he said he was for abortion rights; he switched in what’s been called a “flip-flop-flip” while governor of Massachusetts. Further, he signed into law the state’s health care program that served as Obamacare’s blueprint.
Not exactly a resumé upon which to build trust.
It’s tough to change the status quo. Perhaps that very fact drives many to such improbable avatars as Mitt.
But it’s even tougher to change the weather, and that’s also in the news.
Pat Robertson says that if we’d pray more, we’d be hit with fewer tornadoes.
I understand that prayer can have healing powers; I recognize that the theory of Divine influence on natural phenomena has a long, august history. But I learned, long ago, that rain (along with other natural occurrences) falls upon both the just and the unjust.
I read that somewhere.
But then, proponents of anthropogenic global warming think driving cars, burning coal and raising cows causes harsher storm weather, too — and that if we’d all just ride bicycles to work, we’d have Robertson’s promised “fewer tornadoes” — so perhaps implausible-to-me meteorological causation has a fairly universal appeal.
When left and right converge on the weather, it’s time to return to subjects I know more about. (Stay tuned. I’ll be here.)
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Regulators spawned by “Obamacare” have mandated that employer-provided medical insurance plans provide contraception as a benefit.
The problem, as currently reported and debated, is that only churches are exempted — church-run or -affiliated hospitals, for example, are not. And so Catholic hospitals, along with other religious-based charitable endeavors, must conform, despite their commitment to age-old ideas about the sanctity of life, which they say contraception and abortifacients, especially (some contraceptive methods are de facto abortion-inducing), abridge.
Many conservatives argue that the mandate thus runs afoul of the First Amendment. But it turns out that many Republican politicians have supported similar mandates in several states.
Mike Huckabee signed one such mandate into law in Arkansas.
No big news that GOP politicians are often just as bad as Democrats, of course. But forget, if you can, the First Amendment angle. The mandate runs afoul of something even more fundamental: common sense.
Adding an umpteenth mandate to the list of regulations government places on contracts amongst employers, employees, and insurance companies hardly passes the smell test. The more benefits that government insists you contract for, the higher your insurance rates. The higher the rates, fewer are those who would willingly buy, thus scuttling the whole point of “health care reform.”
We ostensibly want more people to purchase major medical insurance. Not fewer.
It’s possible that some reformers seek precisely that, to put insurance companies out of business, leaving only government to take up the slack, as a “single payer.”
In the case of Republican reformers, however, is there a hidden agenda or just mere foolishness?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.