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Calling out all the hypocrisies (Conservative healthcare arguments don't apply to abortion)
Chicago Tribune ^ | September 6, 2009 | Arthur Caplan

Posted on 09/10/2009 7:57:03 AM PDT by presidio9

Something mighty strange has been going on in the battles over health-care reform. Conservatives have been screaming that a key flaw in President Barack Obama's plan to extend health insurance to all Americans is that government bureaucrats should not be interfering in matters best left to doctors and patients.

Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Tea Partyers at town halls and many GOP members of Congress have been frothing over the idea that supposedly under Obama's public plan, government will be mandating decisions about your health care.

So why is it that when the subject is abortion and state officials stick their noses right into the practice of medicine, we don't hear a peep from the same crowd about the evil government actually playing a role in how medicine is practiced?

Thirteen states have laws on the books mandating that doctors take pictures of fetuses carried by pregnant women seeking an abortion. State legislators lay out exactly what a doctor must do to get "informed consent" from a woman even if the woman and her doctor want nothing to do with taking an ultrasound, describing the fetus or talking about the gruesome details of abortion. Laws mandating how doctors and patients must interact make no provision for women of different ages or for the circumstances under which a woman may seek an abortion. If you are 15 and have been raped by a relative, the same requirements apply, according to the bureaucrats who want to prescribe medical care when it suits their own values.

Oklahoma County District Judge Vicki Robertson recently ruled that a 2008 state law requiring doctors to perform ultrasound tests on pregnant women seeking abortions is unconstitutional. The law she struck down would have required any woman seeking an abortion

(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: abortion; healthcare; moralabsolutes
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1 posted on 09/10/2009 7:57:04 AM PDT by presidio9
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To: presidio9

This Caplan guy will do or say anything to justify crawling up someone’s colon to take a look around.


2 posted on 09/10/2009 7:59:35 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: presidio9

“Something mighty strange has been going on in the battles over health-care reform.”

Yeah, the lying Democrats, their stooges in the SEIU and ACORN, and their enablers in the news media have been ignoring the public’s concerns.

I want to thank the author for timing his column to coincide with Obama’s insidious speech.


3 posted on 09/10/2009 8:01:10 AM PDT by popdonnelly (Yes, we disagree - no, we won't shut up - no, we won't quit.)
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To: muawiyah
" This Caplan guy will do or say anything to justify crawling up someone’s colon to take a look around."
Crissy Mathews and Kieth Olberman will volunteer.
4 posted on 09/10/2009 8:01:54 AM PDT by American Constitutionalist
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To: presidio9

“So why is it that when the subject is abortion and state officials stick their noses right into the practice of medicine, we don’t hear a peep from the same crowd about the evil government actually playing a role in how medicine is practiced?”

O yes we do, you simply refuse to listen.


5 posted on 09/10/2009 8:04:21 AM PDT by edcoil (If I had 1 cent for every dollar the government saved, Bill Gates and I would be friends.)
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To: presidio9

Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, you pin-headed humanist. You see Arty, unlike all other medical procedures, abortion is the deliberate taking of a human life. You might want to take a look at that Hippocratic oath thingy.


6 posted on 09/10/2009 8:04:26 AM PDT by Right Brother
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To: presidio9

Oh yea, I’m going to take an article from the Chicago Tribune seriously. Not.


7 posted on 09/10/2009 8:05:06 AM PDT by Da Coyote
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To: presidio9

Maybe because the government intervention in question isn’t related to providing health care to the woman in the doctor’s office, it is related to protecting the life of a child who is not receiving health care.


8 posted on 09/10/2009 8:05:41 AM PDT by NavVet
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To: presidio9
government bureaucrats should not be interfering in matters best left to doctors and patients

That's liberal hypocrisy, not conservative hypocrisy. Liberals are the people who justify abortion as "something that should be between a woman and her hired assassin doctor" ... but now they think it's okay to inject government into every healthcare decision.

9 posted on 09/10/2009 8:06:06 AM PDT by Campion ("President Barack Obama" is an anagram for "An Arab-backed Imposter")
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To: presidio9

“Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Tea Partyers at town halls and many GOP members of Congress have been frothing over the idea that supposedly under Obama’s public plan, government will be mandating decisions about your health care.”

This “group” of citizens probably represents collectively the voices of over 100 MILLION American citizens. We are a faction. Not a fraction. Dismissing this group of Patriots as unsubstantial or insignificant is tactically a disaster for left wing politics.

We are coming to get you, and coming fast and furious!


10 posted on 09/10/2009 8:07:31 AM PDT by o_zarkman44 (Obama is the ultimate LIE!)
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To: presidio9

If “don’t kill your progeny” is morally reprehensible government interference then maybe society is beyond saving.

(I suppose rules prohibiting doctors from amputating healthy arms and legs if a patient asks for it is government interference too. But then again, in a morally healthy society I would imaging it hard to find a doctor to agree to perform the procedure.)

And the question can be asked the other way: where are all the “right to privacy” people when it comes to government-run health care.


11 posted on 09/10/2009 8:07:46 AM PDT by cvq3842 (Countless thousands of our ancestors died to give us the freedoms we have today. Stay involved!)
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To: presidio9
So why is it that when the subject is abortion and state officials stick their noses right into the practice of medicine, we don't hear a peep from the same crowd about the evil government actually playing a role in how medicine is practiced?

Because abortion is not like an appendectomy or a nose job. It is more akin to taking your two year old who won't stop crying and smashing her head into the wall a few times until the crying stops permanently.

12 posted on 09/10/2009 8:07:50 AM PDT by KarlInOhio ("I can run wild for six months ...after that, I have no expectation of success" - Admiral Obama-moto)
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To: presidio9

Notice Orwell’s prescience about the misuse of language as a means of social control:

The Left uses “health care” on the one hand to mean “health insurance”, on the other to include anything a physician does including murdering unborn children. The purpose of this obfuscation, just like that of socialists calling themselves “liberals”, is to induce willing acceptance of their agenda (replete with everything from economic policies based on fantasies to outright immorality) under false, beneficial seeming, names.

We liberated the color red from the Left, now I want the word ‘liberal’ (which originally meant a supporter of liberty, esp. of free markets) back. Let them call themselves what they are: socialists (if they want the government to own most everything) or fascists (if they just want it to control most of what people own). Liberals they are not.


13 posted on 09/10/2009 8:08:08 AM PDT by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know. . .)
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To: KarlInOhio

Exactly. Obama himself even concedes this with his impassioned insistence that his plan will not cover abortions. If abortion was simply another medical procedure and just between a woman and her doctor, why wouldn’t his plan cover it? Are there any other medical procedures not covered by his plan? Why would he go out of his way to exclude abortion coverage?(Or at least give that impression. Even Factcheck.org says he’s lying and a dem really has to be lying before they’ll say that).

The answer is simple. Because he knows abortion isn’t just another medical procedure. He knows it’s not medicine at all.


14 posted on 09/10/2009 8:13:47 AM PDT by jeltz25
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To: presidio9
As a liberal the author is clearly a victim of the anti-logic virus prevalent among dims.

What he can't get his thinker around is that conservatives are consistent in their desire to Promote life.

15 posted on 09/10/2009 8:15:20 AM PDT by Pietro
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To: presidio9

Thanks for point me to the article. I’ve posted the following comment:
“Art is a founding member of Podesta’s Progressive Bioethics, over at Center for American Progress. Progressives evidently have a problem distinguishing not only State’s rights to determine how to protect human life and the laws that are permissible under the federal Constitution. They also have a problem with old fashioned right and wrong - as in actions that intentionally interfere to produce a dead fetus vs.those that might result in a live fetus.”


16 posted on 09/10/2009 8:21:04 AM PDT by hocndoc (http://www.LifeEthics.org (I've got a mustard seed and I'm not afraid to use it.))
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To: presidio9
So why is it that when the subject is abortion and state officials stick their noses right into the practice of medicine,

Because abortion snuffs out one or more lives. People deserve basic civil rights.

Barack said that he didn't want to extend such classification to a baby that is born alive in spite of an abortion attempt. At that stage it is NO LONGER INSIDE THE WOMAN AND CANNOT BE CALLED A PART OF HER BODY.

Civil rights for all.

Your rights END when they infringe on the rights of another.

17 posted on 09/10/2009 8:24:49 AM PDT by a fool in paradise (Kennedycare?Recall that "Animal Farm" begins with a Socialist Revolution to honor Big Major's legacy)
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To: The_Reader_David

Heard them using the “P” word for “Progressive” today.

They need to be honest and say “Socialist”, don’t be a P-word about it.


18 posted on 09/10/2009 8:26:43 AM PDT by a fool in paradise (Kennedycare?Recall that "Animal Farm" begins with a Socialist Revolution to honor Big Major's legacy)
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To: muawiyah

Hey Caplan, you doofus - the difference is that a baby is being killed in an abortion. Just how much do you know about human reproduction anyway?? You write as though you are so smart, yet still do know know that abortion kills a human being?

What stupidity it is for you to liken the product of a woman’s womb and an abortion to a colon cleansing & a colonoscopy!!


19 posted on 09/10/2009 8:39:41 AM PDT by Gumdrop
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To: muawiyah

Hey Caplan, you doofus - the difference is that a baby is being killed in an abortion. Just how much do you know about human reproduction anyway?? You write as though you are so smart, yet still do not know that abortion kills a human being?

What stupidity it is for you to liken the product of a woman’s womb and an abortion to a colon cleansing & a colonoscopy!!


20 posted on 09/10/2009 8:42:32 AM PDT by Gumdrop
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