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Monday, November 30, 2009

Right to Life and Universal Health Care

If you read the headlines on the health care debate, you know that the most recent excuse to oppose a public option is that it might fund abortions. Understandably, this is opposed by most right-to-life advocates. What is ironic is that many right-to-life advocates also oppose universal care on grounds of cost or socialism. After all, the right to life also provides the strongest case for the health care package as a whole!

If you find yourself opposed to universal coverage, especially if you are an advocate of the right to life, ask yourself this: is it any more "moral" for a premature infant to die because her parents don't have insurance and couldn't afford proper postnatal care? What about a four year old boy with leukemia - do worries about US debt levels trump his right to live? Are our capitalist ideals more important than making sure a baby girl with pneumonia continues to breathe?

It is time we realized that we can't have it both ways. Either we support a right to life, in which case we support universal coverage, enforced by a public option - or we don't support a right to life at all.