Category Abortion

It’s Begun — Onerous Regulations Under PPACA

Ed

It’s begun. My healthcare provider didn’t wait until our new plan year, it has implemented new coverages immediately starting August 1.

I just received an email from the HR director at my secular job (I have a “regular” job in addition to my position at the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod) regarding the new mandate under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) that requires all health insurance plans, except grandfathered plans, to cover things that are considered women’s healthcare such as contraceptives and sterilization.

It’s amazing how words are thrown around to make ideas look good and most people don’t take the time to actually read the words and question what’s really happening. From the email I received:

Under the Affordable Care Act, women will now have access to life-saving preventive care, such as mammograms and contraception, without paying any more out of their own pockets.

I took issue with this sentence in the email for several reasons. Firstly, it should be noted that mammograms were always covered under our health plan as preventative care. Secondly, when did contraception become a “life-saving” medication? Finally, to make things sound really good, they added “without paying any more out of their own pockets”? Really? Because the last time I checked, nothing is free…oh that’s right, the woman will pay for it in increased premiums, as will everyone else in this plan.

On the first page of a newsletter from the health insurance provider attached to the email, there’s a table showing all the wonderful new coverages under women’s healthcare. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for healthcare that benefits people, but here are some new provisions that should make everyone pause and think:

1. Counseling and screening for sexually transmitted infections for females only beginning at age 10.

2. Counseling and screening for HIV for females only beginning at age 10.

3. Coverage for contraceptive methods and counseling:
a. Counseling, females beginning at age 10;
b. Oral contraceptives as prescribed;
c. Injected/implanted contraception as prescribed; and,
d. Sterilization, females only.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t males also get STIs? Why does the mandate, and my health plan, only cover counseling and testing for females? And why beginning at age 10? And why should my health plan, to which I pay premiums, cover a personal choice like sterilization? The plan doesn’t cover elective plastic surgery, so why should it pay for elective sterilization?

My really BIG question is this: doesn’t this amount to gender bias or gender discrimination? Females can get all these services provided for free (on the surface), but males have to pay for them? Why is there no outrage over this discrimination? Where’s the ACLU to protect me from this bias?

As for those who crafted and supported this legislation, I can’t speak for their motives, I can only question them as I look at what we’re being forced to do. For more on why it is wrong to start “counselling” 10-year-old girls about STIs and contraception, read a series on sexuality on Ezerwoman’s Blog starting with “Sexuality & the War on Women.”

The pro-aborts claim that pro-life folks are waging a war on women, but let’s look at the real facts. They want to sexualize children by 5 years old, they want to make contraception available (to females only) by 10 years old and have all of us pay for it, and they want no limits on abortions such as parental consent or notification (and also make us pay for it–don’t forget that there’s a $1 monthly charge on every health plan participant to pay for abortions under PPACA). And one final truth for everyone to consider: 50 percent of the 1.2 million babies aborted every year in the US are female.

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like the pro-aborts are the ones who are really waging a war on women. Unfortunately well-meaning folk are being used by them to promote this war and it’s our mothers/wives/sisters/daughters who will pay  the consequences.

It’s Not About Politics, It’s About Who You Are

Ed 1 Comment

Yes, I stood in line yesterday (August 1, 2012) at Chick-fil-A to show my support for the company and for the owners. Yes, I had hoped to make a statement that, in this country, it is okay to make a statement based on our religious beliefs and you shouldn’t fear being vilified by the liberal media and those who don’t agree with you. Yes, I hope the elected officials who showed their intolerance towards those who disagree got a message that THEY are the closed-minded bigots.

However, here’s my biggest fear: the people who showed their support will not show it again when it comes to other decisions; for example, at the voting booth on election day. I’m about to make statements that almost everyone will call politically motivated. I disagree, it’s really about who you are and who you support.

There were some supporters of the presumed Republican candidate for president at my Chick-fil-A, and while some were happy to take bumper stickers and voiced their support, there were others who didn’t. Now I’m not sure which candidate or political party those who weren’t receptive are supporting, I didn’t ask and there are other parties and candidates other than the two major ones, but it’s a good chance that you’re supporting either the Republican party or the Democratic party and their respective candidates.

The question I have for those who supported Chick-fil-A yesterday is this: who are you voting for in November? I’m not here to sway your allegiances one way or the other. I’m here to ask you to take a look at yourself and who you are, then consider your actions and why it was necessary to even have a special day to support Chick-fil-A in the first place; or why it’s necessary for Christian businesses and organizations to spend time, money, and resources fighting to preserve their freedom of religion against a law that will force them to do something contrary to their beliefs.

You see, the Democratic National Party has for many election cycles showed it’s official support in it’s party platform for abortion-on-demand  and it appears it will continue to do so as this year’s committee is headed by a strategist for Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the US.  But a new revelation appeared a few days ago: apparently, the platform committee will insert into the party platform official support for same-sex marriage.

A message that needs to get out to everyone is that your vote has consequences. Some people would call me a one issue voter (pro-life), but that’s wrong. I have many opinions on many topics; such as military and war, science and technology, the poor and needy, public school education, and on and on and on. But there are primary issues, basic paradigms, and first things that need to be considered…well, first. For me, that’s the sanctity of human life. If you don’t start there, I won’t consider voting for you. If you do start there, then let’s open a dialogue about some of the other issues we face in our nation.

I have often stated that it would be great if every political party in this nation began with the sanctity of human life as its basis, then we can continue to dialogue about other issues like education, military spending, or social security. But as long as we continue to support party platforms that demean human life and stifle freedom of religion, then nothing else matters.

Who are you? And what do you stand for?

Did you stand in line yesterday at Chick-fil-A but will be an ardent Democrat even though the party will officially stand against your beliefs and what you hold dear? Or will you send a message to the elitist leaders of that party that you won’t be used anymore and they need to align the party’s platform with your beliefs?

Maybe it’s just me, but I think this year’s presidential elections will say more about us as persons than us as a nation.

See a follow-up post on this topic, Pro-life Plank Denied by DNC Platform Committee.

The Nazi Plan Step 2

Ed

This is part 4 of my thoughts from The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert Jay Lifton (click here to see it on Amazon.com)  Click here to read part 3.

The second step of the Nazi plan that Dr. Lifton identified was the killing of “impaired” children in hospitals. It started innocently enough, midwives and physicians were asked to completed reports at the time of birth. The first reports asked for information where “‘serious hereditary diseases’ were ‘suspected’: idiocy and mongolism (especially when associated with blindness and deafness); microcephaly; hydrocephaly; malformations of all kinds, especially of limbs, head, and spinal columns; and paralysis, including spastic conditions.”(52)

Children who were labelled with a hereditary disease were continually evaluated until they eventually arrived in special wards “whose chiefs and prominent doctors were known to be politically reliable and ‘positive’ toward the goals of the Reich Committee.'”(53) The children were eventually killed in those wards.

Why did parents allow this to happen to their children? How can someone convince a parent that it would be better to kill his child than to let the child live? They used the idea where healing and killing were reversed. Lifton writes (54):

A doctor could tell a parent that “it might be necessary to perform a surgical operation that could possibly have an unfavorable result,” or explain that “the ordinary therapy employed until now could no longer help their child so that extraordinary therapeutic measures have to be taken.” Dr. Heinze, who used such phrases with parents, explained in court testimony that there had been truth to what he said: “A very excitable child . . . completely idiotic . . . could not be kept   quiet with the normal dose of sedatives,” so that “an overdose . . . had to be used in order to . . . avoid endangering itself through its own restlessness.” At the same time, “we physicians know that such an overdose of sedative, for children usually luminal . . . could cause pneumonia . . . and that this is virtually incurable.”

“Horrible,” you think to yourself. “Unconscionable,” you suggest. What if you were told that this happens everyday today in countries like the United States and the United Kingdom? What if you were told that anywhere between 85 to 92 percent of the babies diagnosed with Downs Syndrome in the U.S. were aborted? (Click here, here, or here for more information.) What if you were told that during the in vitro fertilization procedure, preimplantation genetic diagnosis is conducted on the embryo and those with Down Syndrome or some other genetic disease were discarded? (Click here for a recent article.)

Make no mistake, step 2 of the Nazi plan is alive and well as we abort babies or discard embryos just because they have some sort of genetic disease.

And don’t forget about making killing sound like healing. For example, how do pro-aborts talk about abortions and abortion-inducing drugs? They are considered as part of women’s healthcare. Opponents of abortion or mandatory insurance coverage for possible abortion-inducing drugs (e.g. Ella, Plan B, morning after pill) are vilified by the media and by pro-aborts as not caring for women’s health.

And how do the supporters of physician assisted suicide get it legalized? By saying this is a medical treatment that will help end the suffering of the patient. In physician assisted suicide, the person wanting to die gets a prescription that basically is an overdose of painkillers or sedatives. Does that sound familiar?

Yes, the tactics that the Nazis employed are still in use by those who want society to embrace death as a cure.

Update July 19, 2012.

The Nazi Plan

Ed

This is part 3 of my thoughts from The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert Jay Lifton (click here to see it on Amazon.com)  Click here to read part 2.

In order to rid the Volk of this disease, Dr. Lifton identified five distinctive steps in the Nazis process (21):

  1. Coercive sterilization of those deemed less “desirable”
  2. The killing of “impaired” children in hospitals
  3. The killing of “impaired” adults in centers especially equipped with carbon monoxide gas
  4. The killing of “impaired” inmates of concentration and extermination camps
  5. Mass killings in the extermination camps

Most people that I’ve related these five steps outlined here are repulsed by the thought that any government would sanction these actions. But of course, we’re doing it today in the U.S. I’ll make the connections for you in subsequent posts but I’ll start here with Step 1: Coercive sterilization.

Many states in the U.S. had passed forced sterilization laws in the early 1900’s. Some of these states kept enforcing these laws into the 1970’s. Read recent news articles about the eugenic past of the U.S. by clicking here to read about forced sterilization in North Carolina or clicking here to read about forced sterilization in Washington.

The difference between Nazi Germany and the rest of the world was that the Nazis went on to steps 2-5 and the rest of the world didn’t, or did they?

Stayed tuned to see how we kill “impaired” children today. (Click here to read part 4.)

Medicine and Life

Ed

Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, just published a new book called Pro-life Reflections for Every Day.  The “minute meditation” for October 9 was based on a quote from Pope John Paul’s 1995 encyclical, The Gospel of Life. Here is the meditation from the book published by Catholic Book Publishing Corp. in New Jersey.

Physicians and health care workers are also responsible, when the skills they acquired to promote life are placed at the service of death. – The Gospel of Life, 59

Reflection. Pro-abortion politicians will often say to us, “Legislators should not be practicing medicine.” But we’re not asking them to practice medicine, but to prevent the abuse of medicine.

Medicine is for the purpose of preserving life; abortion takes life. There is no disease that abortion cures, and no proven medical benefit.

I thought the meditation was apropos since August 1, 2012 is the beginning of implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) the massive so-called “healthcare reform” that the Congress and President Obama passed in 2010. The first implementation is the requirement that all health plans pay for contraception and potentially abortion-causing drugs such as Plan B–a.k.a. the morning after pill or Ella–with a very narrow exception for religious organizations.

But of course, this is but the beginning of the rules that lead to death that the PPACA, for example, all health plans will be required to collect $1 per person per month to be applied to a special fund that will pay for abortions. By the way, the PPACA also states that the employee doesn’t need to be informed that their premiums will include this $1 per month charge nor will you have an opportunity to opt out of it.