Portugal

This from the Portugal to legalize abortion, conservatives shaken - washingtonpost.com:

Under the current ban, women caught aborting can go to jail for up to three years.

When the ban is lifted, Portugal will join most European countries in allowing abortions, except a small group with strict abortion laws -- Malta, Ireland and Poland.

Liberals now hope other progressive laws can be passed as in neighboring Spain, such as allowing gay marriage.

The conservative camp, led by the head of Portugal's Catholic Democratic party, Jose Ribeiro e Castro, said this was a "sad chapter in Portugal's history" and blamed Socrates for insisting on a move that split Portuguese society.

More than half the traditionally Catholic nation's 8.7 million electorate abstained, but of those who voted in Sunday's referendum, 59.3 percent voted to lift the abortion ban and 40.8 percent to keep it.

Democracy cannot flourish if women do not have the right to exercising their free will. Anti-abortion laws are just another name for reproductive slavery.

A country is not conservative if it has laws denying women equal reproductive rights. Said country is a tyranny when it forces women --and for that matter families-- to take extreme measures when it comes to their free will.

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.