I was discussing the Obama birth control mandate with a friend who is less “political” than me and posed the question of why Obama would mandate free birth control. Was it to please the Feminist left? My friend responded immediately that Obama already has the support of the Feminist left, so that can’t be the reason. We speculated about deals with Big Pharma, or Planned Parenthood. It is hard to imagine a rational, national public interest, in the creation of a “free birth control culture”. We know Obama is politically shrewd. If pandering isn’t his rationale, the motive of this birth control entitlement, when coupled with other policies, begins to appear sinister.
Seniors - During the Obamacare debate, when Pelosi was telling us to pass the bill in order to learn what was in it, both sides argued about whether Obamacare included rationing. Sarah Palin labeled the rationing boards “death panels”. We now know that Palin was right. Rationing treatment to patients by “review panels” is absolutely part of this bill. Seniors will dread the words “comfort care” which will convey that the country you built has decided you are carved out of protection, and you will be left to die.
Babies – The radical left has long favored population control, as has every totalitarian regime throughout history. While death panels in Obamacare will purportedly exist to save money, the birth control mandate carries costs into the billions of dollars. Sticking the mandate on insurance does not mean the cost will magically vaporize. Worse, what can we expect when the next generation learns that sex without pregnancy is a government entitlement? How will a rationed healthcare system handle the STD pandemic? This sends the message, “Sorry Grandma, since your grandchildren need treatment for syphilis, you are getting “comfort care.’”
Down Syndrome Eliminated – So much attention has been focused on the birth control entitlement, many of us missed the latest in Obama eugenics: A Down Syndrome free USA. This administration is sending you the bill for the $1000 + prenatal test to find where all the babies with Down Syndrome are hiding and target them for elimination from the gene pool. As an adoptive parent of a beautiful child with Down syndrome, I take special offense at this Mengelean expenditure.
Mark Leach, an attorney and fellow parent of a child with Down syndrome put pen to paper on this one:
Fiscally, public funding of prenatal testing for DS just does not make sense. There are an estimated 2.4+ million pregnancies each year eligible for Medicaid-funded prenatal care. Down syndrome has a birth rate of 1 in 691 pregnancies, with an estimated incident rate, i.e. the number of pregnancies carrying a child with DS, being equal to that. This means that of those 2.4 million pregnancies, only about seven thousand actually are pregnant with a child with DS. Yet, current medical recommendations are to offer both screening and diagnostic prenatal testing to all pregnant mothers. Therefore, the millions of pregnancies not carrying a child with DS may nonetheless accept the testing and thereby incur the cost to the Medicaid system. Current diagnostic testing costs over $1,000. That results in a possible exposure of $2.4 billion to the Medicaid system. All for just 7,000 pregnancies actually carrying a child with DS.
Let me spell this out. Over 90% of babies with Down syndrome are aborted already. Columnist George Will has labeled the aggressive screening a “search and destroy mission”. The Obama administration has targeted the Down syndrome babies of the poor for elimination, obligating taxpayers to a $2.4 billion liability. Presumably the entitlement means now we will pay for their abortions as well. How long before the Obama administration mandates insurance pay for screening for the entire population and their abortions?
When Obama went looking for a Director of Health and Human Services, he chose a Governor with zero background in health care. That is not entirely unusual. What is unusual is that he picked the Governor with the hands down, number one, top credential in her support of abortion. Sebelius provided a safe haven to an abortionist who was the subject of numerous investigations, including the fact that he was a top cash donor to her campaigns. Together, Sebelius and George Tiller made Wichita, Kansas the abortion capital of the nation, a title of dishonor and outrage to many. He earned the title “Tiller the Killer” by his willingness to flaunt late term abortion laws and perform any abortion on any girl, as long as the check cleared. This President put Sebelius in charge of health, when her greatest distinction is her experience with death.
The hallmark of the United States is individual liberty, not collective liberty or liberty for the sovereign. While the Democrat party of yesteryear ostensibly stood for the rights of the little guy, this new Democrat Party is systematically defining people groups out of the scope of government protection, and committing billions of dollars to do so. They are poised to create a brave new world--a world free of people with Down syndrome, the elderly, the infirmed, the inconvenient, and anyone else the panels choose to eliminate from the system.
We all know the short version of the piece that begins with “First, they came for the Jews…” The actual speech was by Pastor Martin Niemöller, who was put in a concentration camp in 1941 because he would not be silent. I think it is a timely reminder of the path many see, and the reason we can no longer be silent:
When the concentration camp was opened we wrote the year 1933, and the people who were put in the camps then were Communists. Who cared about them? We knew it, it was printed in the newspapers. Who raised their voice, maybe the Confessing Church? We thought: Communists, those opponents of religion, those enemies of Christians - "should I be my brother's keeper?" Then they got rid of the sick, the so-called incurables. - I remember a conversation I had with a person who claimed to be a Christian. He said: Perhaps it's right, these incurably sick people just cost the state money, they are just a burden to themselves and to others. Isn't it best for all concerned if they are taken out of the middle [of society]? -- Only then did the church as such take note. Then we started talking, until our voices were again silenced in public. Can we say, we aren't guilty/responsible? The persecution of the Jews, the way we treated the occupied countries, or the things in Greece, in Poland, in Czechoslovakia or in Holland, that were written in the newspapers. … I believe, we Confessing-Church-Christians have every reason to say: mea culpa, mea culpa! We can talk ourselves out of it with the excuse that it would have cost me my head if I had spoken out.
We preferred to keep silent. We are certainly not without guilt/fault, and I ask myself again and again, what would have happened, if in the year 1933 or 1934 - there must have been a possibility - 14,000 Protestant pastors and all Protestant communities in Germany had defended the truth until their deaths? If we had said back then, it is not right when Hermann Göring simply puts 100,000 Communists in the concentration camps, in order to let them die. I can imagine that perhaps 30,000 to 40,000 Protestant Christians would have had their heads cut off, but I can also imagine that we would have rescued 30-40,000 million [sic] people, because that is what it is costing us now.
Most people recognize that Obama has a good shot at winning re-election in 2012.
Will the American be recognizable in 2016?