No Health Reform without Protection for the Unborn

The Obama administration and its supporters in Congress have crafted an ambitious health care reform bill in HR 3200 and the Senate's Affordable Health Choices Act.  Unfortunately, the legislation as it currently stands threatens the life, health, and economic security of our country.  Experts across the political spectrum agree that sustainable, adequate funding for the proposed initiatives does not yet exist, leaving us with a health care plan that will inevitably result in shortfalls, long waits for a doctor, and (eventually) rationed care.  Combined with the broad, yet vague powers given to the Department of Health and Human Services to set standards of "health care quality" and "comparative effectiveness of treatment," the plan places us on the road to assisted suicide and involuntary euthanasia.  In addition to threatening end-of-life care, the health care bills also target the defenseless unborn, as they provide for broad and unlimited public funding for abortion and may even force the creation of new abortion clinics. 

Throughout the proposed legislation, power is given to Washington to control and direct significant elements of medical care--essentially creating a one-size-fits-all health care system that will allow a massive government bureaucracy to intrude on our health care decisions.

But this legislation reaches far beyond our own exam rooms and ERs and into our children's schools as well.  The school-based health clinics outlined in the bill allow the administration to create massive funding for Planned Parenthood, allowing them access to our children to provide both abortion counselling and sex education services.  The proposed legislation not only undermines our rights as patients, but as parents as well.

It is true that there is much that can be improved about our health care system.  But we cannot reform it at the cost of our country's most fundamental principles.