Maternal Mortality

from Talk to Action

Like both James Dobson and Tony Perkins’ pro-war Family Research Council prayer team, Conservative Woman is hell on both Islamist plots and abortion – but what happens when their twin “Christian” crusades collide?

What is happening is exactly what anyone should have expected. Pregnant Iraqi women and their babies are dying in unprecedented numbers – and women who fear adding to that horrendous death toll with their own lives and those of their children are taking what they see as a lesser gamble by seeking out illegal and unsafe abortions.

The War on Terror is making us all safer, one tiny terrorist at a time.

from Talk to Action

In their avid thirst for the blessing of the Christian right, GOP presidential hopefuls such as Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback lined up last fall to prostrate themselves before James Dobson and Tony Perkins. Now, in the grip of his own presidential fever, John McCain publicly joins them in pandering to the anti-woman agenda of the religious right.

The New York Times reminds us that McCain once played harder to get.

In his unsuccessful run for the Republican nomination in 2000, McCain called [the Christian right] "the agents of intolerance." ... For a taste of their views, you can visit the Web site of Concerned Women for America (C.W.A.), which bills itself as the "nation's largest public-policy women's organization." Its mission is "to protect and promote biblical values among all citizens," the Bible being "the inerrant Word of God and the final authority on faith and practice." As for dissenters from C.W.A.'s stand on issues like the "sanctity of human life," a handy link to Bible passages explains "why you are a sinner and deserve punishment in Hell."

A woman who dissented from that narrow view of godliness by having an illegal abortion might get to hell sooner than most. That's the only thing that criminalization of safe and legal abortion ever has accomplished through all of recorded time, and all it ever will accomplish  -- killing women before their time. That's the dirty little secret that no one wants to talk about, because saying such a thing out loud dirties the Christian right's whited sepulcher of religious purity.  And that truth doesn't matter when power-hungry candidates are selling their souls to be anointed as the chosen one.

Michael Bouldin's piece about healthcare reminded me of a piece I wrote in December for my newsletter. I think it makes a good followup to Michael's piece, so I reprint it here.

Health insurance. Joy and I were discussing health insurance after hearing a NewYork 1 report that uninsured people were more likely to be turned away from an emergency room and sent to a clinic than insured people. Now, hospitals who DO turn away patients based on insurance rather than severity of the injury are liable to law suits, but we all know that the chances of a law suit changing things are small since those who don’t have insurance are unlikely to have much legal counsel.

What is wrong with our insurance system? Too many people are uninsured and because of that do not have adequate health care available to them. But, that is only one part of the problem. What about those who ARE insured? There are long waiting times to get an appointment. Often you don’t get to choose your physician. You often don’t have a primary care physician who follows you through the years and knows you. Care is determined based on a business model where profit (or at least minimal cost) takes precedence over what the physician and patient want or the injury requires.