Op-ed: ObamaCare will prompt abortions of babies with disabilities
September 9th, 2009‘Disabled just won’t make it to birth’
Meghan Clyne writes in the New York Post that ObamaCare would be more likely to prevent babies with disabilities from being born rather than deny end-of-life treatments using “death panels,” as suggested by Sarah Palin.
With finite resources, government has every incentive to keep heavy consumers of health care off the public insurance rolls. And it isn’t hard to see where an unborn baby with a disability will land on the government’s priority list.
So when Obama’s bureaucrats set health-care policies with cost-cutting in mind, don’t be surprised if they “recommend” that OB-GYNs receiving federal funds (which will be all of them) screen for genetic defects as part of routine prenatal care, and “advise” expectant mothers of the “burdens” of raising children with disabling conditions.
… The social stigma will rise, too. When everyone is on the hook for everyone else’s health-care costs, the result is nannying so hard-core it would make Mary Poppins blush — just look at the scorn already heaped on smokers and the obese. Why should we pay just because some silly woman wouldn’t abort her defective embryo?
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September 10th, 2009 at 3:00 am
I don’t know a single person who thinks like that. And yes, I’m liberal and pro choice. Believing in choice means just that — the right to make the right decision for you and your family. I don’t much appreciate the scare tactics being used to try to stop health care reform.
September 9th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Posting Ms. Clyne’s nonsense greatly diminishes this website’s ability to claim to be apolitical.
The proposed health reforms merely create health insurance exchanges where private insurers who voluntarily choose to participate must agree to provide a minimum set of benefits and limit how much consumers can be charged. By requiring everyone have health insurance (the same as auto insurance), this greatly expands the potential market for insurers so that they have every reason to want to participate in the exchanges. However, they can continue selling policies outside the exchange, same as now.
Nothing that Obama or any Congressional bill has proposed changes how health care is delivered. The health services you receive continue to be the decision of you and your doctors.
People like Ms. Clyne are simply distorting what is actually proposed in order to suit their own political agendas.
September 9th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
I was told only the goody-goody happy ending story when i was pregnant with my son, who has Spina Bifida. In order for me to have made a fully informed decision, I should have been told about both ends of the spectrum of his care.
While I understand that other mothers choose to not abort their children, many of us might have made the legal decision to not continue on in our pregnancies had we had full knowledge of our kids’ conditions — from our doctors, not from web sites.
I wouldn’t change any part of my life for the world, whether that part of my life involves any of my children or not. I happen to believe that no one places a price tag on my kids, but that their quality of life IS a qualifying factor.
And yep, many families still choose to ‘hide’ their disabled relatives and children in institutions. That much has not changed over the years. Honesty and integrity in medicine dictate that we the parents should absolutely have full knowledge of our kids’ conditions without being morally policed to make a choice simply because it upholds another woman’s lifestyle.
September 9th, 2009 at 11:34 am
I don’t know if it is fair to say that government will be “dictating an acceptable embryo.” Society already does that. There is already stigma for choosing to go forward with a pregnancy with a prenatal diagnosis and for not choosing to pursue prenatal screening/diagnostic procedures.
September 9th, 2009 at 11:08 am
At what point do you stop posting things like this? At what point do you look into this writer’s background and find that she is a former speech writer for President Bush?
At what point do you start to think that maybe this article (and the hundreds that have been written exactly like this) are for nothing more than fanning the flames of political expediency?
At what point do you wonder if these types of articles written by people who are obviously not advocates for our cause are merely taking advantage of our children, our brothers, our sisters, our cousins, aunts and uncles?
At what point do you start to think that these articles you post here do nothing for intelligent discourse but serve to do nothing more than divide a community of people that need one another more than anything else?
September 9th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Why do you qualify this crap by posting it ?
September 9th, 2009 at 8:46 am
I find this concept terrifying; government dictating an acceptable embryo. Women have fought to have rights to their own bodies, and babies. These are not the 1940′s where we ‘hide’ the disabled in institutions anymore, or worse. I am the parent of a disabled child; the child and life experiences from raising her I would not trade for the world. From her physical differences, her classmates learn empathy and acceptance. The world needs more of these things, not less. We, as a nation, stand to lose more than anyone can imagine when they start putting price tags and qualifying factors on any human life.