The Rude Pundit: Health Care, the Public, Abortion, and Money

[meegbear]

Here's a sickening number for the day: the budget for one year of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, part of the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that'll probably be passed by the Senate today, is $128.2 billion. The cost of the most generous, most public optiony of the health care bills currently under consideration in the Congress is roughly $110 billion a year. That's deduced through simple math: $1.1 trillion divided by 10 years. It is, by the way, a lot less scary of a number than the ten-year one, and you gotta wonder why supporters don't use it. But, still, we're not going to blink at spending more on wars that are, at best, the indulgences of a fallen empire left over from its days of bloated arrogance.

Seriously, at this point, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have become that gym membership you signed up for but never use, yet you can't get out of the contract, so you just keep paying the hundred bucks a month, waiting for it to go away. Except for that goddamn automatic renewal clause you didn't see.

This is not about the wars (although, you know, fuck the generals). And it's not totally about cost comparison (although the seeming difference in cost between the House bills and the Baucus bill is about $15 billion a year, the cost of a little over a month of the wars - again, division makes a difference in perspective). No, instead this is about the appalling way in which we're still debating aspects of health care reform.

There's plain facts in this nation. One of those is that abortion remains legal, despite the efforts of some states to regulate it to near-elimination, despite the efforts of individuals to intimidate or kill those involved in the procedure, despite the mewls of the religious that an invisible sky wizard is offended by it. It is still legal.

Yet, in this health care debate, it's not enough for anti-choice nutzoids that the federal government is banned from directly funding abortions. It's not enough that if any public option happens, abortions cannot be paid for by it. No, now anti-choicers want any insurance plan that is part of an "exchange" from which people can choose cannot have abortion coverage because people buying into those plans may be getting subsidies from the government to do so. Follow the bouncing ball to madness here: pro-choicers have already done financial contortions to please the anti-choicers, making it so any subsidies would not actually be used for abortions. But, see, that ain't good enough because, in the even more contorted logic of the conservative crazeratti, any money that's paid to insurers from the government frees up funds to pay for abortion.

Again, this is over a legal medical procedure that simply displeases a segment of the population. It's merely a back door way to outlaw abortions through a thousand cuts, it's another conservative assault on women, it's another hypocrisy in that the only time a business is regulated is to conform to some outdated notions of morality because it gets the yahoos out to vote. It is, ultimately, an argument over a pittance, and it's also another bullshit way to possibly derail reform.

How about this: ask how many people would rather that Iraq/Afghanistan budget go for health insurance for Americans. Then we're talking real money.

Today the fight in the Senate is over the public option. The abortion debate is coming. The landscape is strewn with mines set by the right. The only question is if Democrats are going to try to tiptoe around them or just bulldoze the shit out of them.

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/

[undergroundpanther]

1. Abortion WAS allowed by the church..

It is also biblically OK too.

Those control freak cherry pickers of bible verses want observers of their idiot arguments to forget that the bible is not forced pregnancy..
The real motive of all this shit IMO is about keeping the 'nuclear family' arrangement designed to keep women dependent upon therefore subservient to, men(for bullies it was great considering the ugly history of marriage and it was once legal for husbands to beat their wives )..
Congress has never provided funding for domestic violence counseling and services for battered women in the welfare system, while spending billions to promote marriage and fatherhood.
http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:slcvgCYlpScJ:www.geds-to-phds.org/Approved%2520to%2520post%2520on%2520website/Budget%2520Recon%2520FVO%2520Talking%2520points.doc+marriage+domestic+abuse+sanctioned&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
http://books.google.com/books?id=Q32bgxhNKGIC&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=marriage+domestic+abuse+sanctioned&source=bl&ots=-AIG0upaX6&sig=Cf2ur2KTbVUKFlaMIL1bq-B1kjo&hl=en&ei=dD_CSqOBNs7k8QayjuX-CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBEQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=&f=false

And that family trap is designed to keep men dependent upon jobs and subservient to bosses and wall street.Tie a man's ego to his job and the possibility of eternal life via paternity of kids and he's hooked forever.

And people who complain about welfare,FYI being dependent upon a company that leeches from the government is no different than being on government welfare except that you work day after day,letting the same rich parasites rob you of the days of your life for peanuts, you are dependent upon faceless corporations that have little protection for employees,that work for rich pigs that depend upon government corporate welfare which easily outstrips the programs to help the poor. Corporations that bribe the government to vote as the corporation wants even if most Americans would want their elected reps to vote differently is massive bribery and workers help fund that bribery.

WE all are dependant,even the independent mountain man of myth he depended upon rain for his meager garden,trees to make a shelter and warm his bones and cook,hunting and gathering he was dependant upon the earth as we all are still regardless of who claims they'own' it.We all are dependant in some way..So being on welfare by proxy via a job is still depending on a kind of corporate welfare,and it funds the very bribes that keep the status quo that hurts most americans....Chew on that. poverty bashers


Here is the evidence they pull this whole abortion issue out of their ass.
Numbers 31:17 (Moses) “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every women that hath known man by lying with him.” In other words: women that might be pregnant, which clearly is abortion for the fetus.

Hosea 13:16 God promises to dash to pieces the infants of Samaria and the “their women with child shall be ripped up”. Once again this god kills the unborn, including their pregnant mothers.

Leviticus 26:30 “And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.”
Ask the forced pregnancy assholes about THAT verse.

Romans 13: 1-7

“Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which god has established. The authorities that exist have been established by god. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what god has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he shall commend you. For he is god’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is god’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. There fore it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience.

This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are god’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes, if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.”

Clearly it is the job of Christians to obey the laws, and the laws of this country clearly state that abortion is legal. So too should Christians respect and honor that law. God commands them to NOT disobey, which entails attempting to get the law overturned. If god wanted abortion to be illegal he wouldn’t have appointed authorities to make it legal.
http://www.evilbible.com/god%27s%20not%20pro-life.htm

Forced pregnancy assholes need to STFU, becaustheirer god tells them to STFU about abortion laws.



Christian texts


Tertullian, a 2nd and 3rd century Christian theologian, also described surgical implements which were used in a procedure similar to the modern dilation and evacuation. One tool had a "nicely-adjusted flexible frame" used for dilation, an "annular blade" used to curette, and a "blunted or covered hook" used for extraction. The other was a "copper needle or spike". He attributed ownership of such items to Hippocrates, Asclepiades, Erasistratus, Herophilus, and Soranus.<20>

Tertullian's description is prefaced as being used in cases in which abnormal positioning of the fetus in the womb would endanger the life of the pregnant women. Saint Augustine, in Enchiridion, makes passing mention of surgical procedures being performed to remove fetuses which have expired in utero.<21> Aulus Cornelius Celsus, a 1st century Roman encyclopedist, offers an extremely detailed account of a procedure to extract an already dead fetus in his only surviving work, De Medicina.<22>

In Book 9 of Refutation of all Heresies, Hippolytus of Rome, another Christian theologian of the 3rd century, wrote of women tightly binding themselves around the middle so as to "expel what was being conceived."<23>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1320&dat=19841103&id=fcIRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=1ekDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6580,947215


Abortion is one way to protect women,and ironically children from patriarchical abuse.

[juno jones]

2. +1

:thumbsup: