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(UPDATED) A New Acme Of Meanspiritedness For The GOP
Lacking the conviction to wage war on unemployment, Republicans have escalated their war on women with the passage of a House bill that permits hospitals that receive federal funding to turn away women who seek an abortion even if the procedure is necessary to save their lives. Repeat: Even if the procedure is necessary to save their lives.
And now Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina (R-Fetus Fetish) has filed an anti-choice amendment to an agriculture-transportation bill that would bar discussion of abortion over the Internet and through videoconferencing, even if a woman’s health is at risk and if this kind of communication with her doctor is her best option to receive care.
Under this amendment, women would need a separate, segregated Internet just for talking about abortion care with their doctors.
It’s hard to top these clearly unconstitutional efforts for sheer meanspiritedness but the misogynistic Republicans surely will find a way. And isn’t the GOP for less intrusive government?
(NOTE: The first 24 comments below were in response to the original version of this post, which was published on Monday.)
39 Responses to “(UPDATED) A New Acme Of Meanspiritedness For The GOP”
Does this allow them to refuse a procedure in an emergency? If not for the most part so what? While I don’t want abortion outlawed neither do I want to force people to do things they don’t want.
I don’t know why you are in the least bit surprised by any of this, it’s what people have been voting for for the last 30 years.
It’s time to let them have what they want.
If you don’t like it, move to a Blue State and start a secession movement.
Bill brings back death penalty by firing squad
As soon as this bill passes, some other nut job republican will propose public televised executions, and as soon as that becomes law, some other Republican will propose public stoning as an execution method, It’ll give the victims an opportunity to avenge themselves (unless the body parts are worth more, in which case Capitalism will take over).
Well…ahem…now I am not Catholic, but this death with honor has it’s basis in Catholicism. It’s a theological debate gone political.
If the Confessed, and in the Grace of God, mother dies, she goes to heaven, while the baby, if killed before baptism is subject to the belief of original sin and…the worst happens.
What I don’t understand, since there are not enough Catholics in congress to pass such a bill, why on earth would those Protestants and Jews and others support it when it is against their theology, or, Judaism, or whatever they say they are?
The secular argument is save the Mother.
The overwhelming American religious argument is save the mother.
The Orthodox Theological argument is save the child.
Makes no sense that the GOP would make the decision to save the child over the mother as a theological reference, when only one can be saved.
Maybe when they do the partial birth abortion when the child’s head is outside the womb a priest could baptize the child before they kill it?
Well…ahem…now I am not Catholic, but this death with honor has it’s basis in Catholicism. It’s a theological debate gone political.
Struggling to stay within commenting rules here, my best attempt at response would be:
Allen, if you aren’t Catholic, then on what are you basing your understanding of Catholic theology here? I can assure you that your knowledge is faulty.
The secular argument is save the Mother.
The overwhelming American religious argument is save the mother.
The Orthodox Theological argument is save the child.
The part you’re missing here is that it’s a false choice to say that an abortion must ever be performed in order to save the life of the mother. Medical actions can be taken to preferentially save the mother’s life, and even the Catholic Church supports that…but what isn’t supported by Catholic teaching is the idea of preemptively and proactively killing a child in order to save the life of the mother.
Shaun have you given up using links for some reason? This is 5 in a row with no links.
“it’s a false choice to say that an abortion must ever be performed in order to save the life of the mother”
Untrue, actually. I am sure it is quite rare, but there are indeed cases where an abortion must be performed in order to save the life of the mother. One instance that comes immediately to mind, is a pregnant woman with aggressive cancer, unable to receive chemotherapy while pregnant. Surely there are other instances where it does come down to a judgement call as to which life to preserve.
This is just more of the same woman-hating rhetoric. Exhibit A on why I will NEVER vote Republican in this lifetime.
CStanley-
Calm Down-
Completed Catholic Catechism, studied theology in a formal academic setting, listen to EWTN Radio for five years, receive email updates from the Vatican and local diocese, but I’m not a Catholic. Furthermore I do not disapprove of Catholicism.
My knowledge is NOT faulty, except maybe 30% of the time. So pick up the phone and call your Bishop’s office and ask or just send them an Email.
The base reason the Vatican will not relent on the subject of abortion is because of original sin. It is also why they baptize babies whom could not possibly have a clue what their faith is, (I think).
It has occurred here, and, still does in many places on earth, that Catholic hospitals and clinics will save the child over the mother if there is no other choice. Abortion to save the life of the mother is NOT sanctioned by the Vatican.
Me? I suffer over this issue constantly.
CStanley-
Part Two….
I’m not missing anything. I agree with your comment and my comment is not in conflict with yours.
Today’s medicine is remarkable, and the choice rarely comes up here, but that’s not the case within third world countries. The Catholic church push “no-condoms” to people that run around naked in the African bush when the UN is providing them free. Their little Catholic clinics out there, (that do a great job with pretty much nothing), practice this very choice, (in accordance with secular law of course), to take the child over the mother when there is but one choice for life.
I have seen it with my own eyes.
“what isn’t supported by Catholic teaching is the idea of preemptively and proactively killing a child in order to save the life of the mother.”
And this is where you tell me when the entity inside the mother’s womb is a *child* (small *human*) rather than a zygote, fetus or some other, non-human entity that is the mother’s business, not the legislature’s or the degenerate, blubbery, bleeding-heart ER staff’s.
I am surprised at Congressman Pelosi saying: “I can’t even describe to you the logic of what it is that they are doing”….I say this, because Nancy Pelosi is a Catholic and if she is in favor of abortion of any kind, she is not in union with her chosen faith.
Absalon-
I’m even freaked out by the idea that I may actually have to make a political choice on the matter.
Why would anyone be surprised at anything today’s GOP supports or doesn’t support? If the Spanish Inquisition was still around I expect they would enthusiastically support it.
Allen- no need to prompt me to calm down as I’m not in the least agitated.
Since I can’t reconcile your varied comments here, it’s hard to know how to even engage you on the finer points of the Catholic teaching on this subject. I have no idea where you picked up the idea that opposition to abortion is strictly about the need to baptize infants, but stop and think for a second…does that mean that the only reason a Christian believes that murder is morally illicit is that the murdered person might not yet have had the benefit of baptism? It’s quite possible to believe that baptism is important for salvation while that’s not necessarily the only issue that makes it wrong to take a life.
If you do know of cases where Catholic hospitals have purposefully withheld a medical treatment that would have saved the life of a pregnant woman because the decision was made to save the life of a child instead, I’d be interested to hear of these cases.The closest that comes to mind is the case a year or two ago which resulted in excommunication of a nun, which was actually the opposite thing occurring (an abortion being performed at a Catholic hospital.) While some will feel that if the bishops’ will had prevailed there, it would have been an example of putting the fetal life above the maternal life, it was actually a case where the abortion was done preemptively because the mother had a condition that might have put her at risk later in the pregnancy. The Church’s position in a case like that is that the woman should be given all available medical treatment and it would have been quite possible to bring the pregnancy to a point where the baby was viable; if medical treatment had resulted in the death of the baby, but if it had been done to save the mother’s life, that would not have been an illicit act but that is different than what happened which was to preemptively abort the baby.
If it’s hard to wrap one’s head around the distinction there, perhaps consider why many of us also feel that preemptive wars are morally wrong but war in defense of a nation which is under imminent threat are often morally acceptable (and this was the bishops’ position on the Iraq War, that as a preemptive war it was not acceptable.)
Vera-certainly there are instances where a woman’s life is at risk during a pregnancy- either from an unrelated condition or from the circumstances of the pregnancy itself as in a tubal pregnancy or certain conditions causing uterine hemorrhage.
The Catholic position in those cases would be to treat the woman’s condition to save her life. This may or may not result in the death of the fetus, Performing an action to save the mother’s life which might result in fetal death is not the same as intentionally causing the death of the fetus in order to terminate the pregnancy and resolve the dilemma in that fashion before treating the mother.
The fact we have laws regarding the medical treatment of patients being influenced by religious doctrine is sickening to me. You don’t want abortions, don’t get one. To ban a possibly life saving medical option by gov’t order is insane. But no, instead of simply choosing to live by the religious belief of their choice conservatives want to force it on everyone around them. How hard is that to do? Apparently for busy body social conservatives, its impossible.
I think a third grader would find a hole big enough to drive a truck through given the facts as stated in the OP.
If the hospital is “turning away” that can only logically mean “deny admission”. Therefore, the woman received this diagnosis of fatality at some previous healthcare provider. Now, however, she goes treatment shopping at some other facility. If she didn’t like the first facility that diagnosed her soon-to-be-fatal condition, why is she trusting their judgement to immediately seek an abortion?
Nobody cares about the “catholic position”.
That is almost the opposite of what we have here. This alows private parties to limit their involvement with activities that violate their pricipals. What you want is to force what are private institutions to provide care based on your morals and beliefs not theirs. Catholics hospitals provide a large amount of health care to everyone. Private hospitals operating as non profits with actual donations to patients of around 6 bill a year. How dare those religious bastards want to try and provide all that health care and still follow the teachings of their church which of course is the church that leads them to providing all that non profit care.
Nobody cares about the “catholic position”.
Oops, of course not…my bad. Clearly the numerous posts and comments here indicate that no one cares to discuss Catholicism.
@EEllis
This alows private parties to limit their involvement with activities that violate their pricipals.
This is really the crux of the issue. While the religious discussion is interesting the question is really does the government have the right to compel a private business to perform acts they consider against their principles? A similar dilemma arose with pharmacists being compelled to stock and dispense RU-486.
While it has religious elements this is really an issue of individual freedoms. If the issue of abortion wasn’t present I suspect Democrats would be more open to that concept.
While no details are provided I would guess that the law requiring hospitals to provided necessary medical care to stabilize an emergent situation would still take precedence, and from what CStanley says that would not be counter to catholic position. Where the issue would arise is if the woman required an abortion to save her life but the situation was non-emergent. In that case I believe the patient would be asked to use a different facility, not to be told they should go home and die.
“Clearly the numerous posts and comments here indicate that no one cares to discuss Catholicism.”
But you and the rest of the mooks that actually care ARE nobodies!
CStanley—
Never said anybody “withheld” medical treatment. I said that in a case where a choice had to be made between the mother or the child, the child was chosen as matter of practice. I’m not going to give you specifics, because I wish no harm or denigration upon Catholics or any other Christian body and I personally know of no specific occurrences within the United States. Though historical reference data can be easily researched.
However I do not think the Catholics need to apologize for their belief either. Personally I do not believe in abortion as a means of family planning and I struggle with this belief regarding partisan politics. For this reason, and, others, I consider myself a social conservative, but a fiscal liberal. Politics on the matter of abortion is quite disturbing to me. People taking new life then others killing those whom did so is obviously the work of a powerful evil IMO.
On the subject of Baptism, it is absolutely necessary for salvation. It is one of the seven sacraments of Catholicism and of the two Protestant sacraments. Essentially that is my understanding; “from a mortals point of view of scripture interpretation“. I cannot speak for God. God can accept or reject instantly….even before.
However if you are a Unitarian, then the only time you hear Jesus Christ in Church is if someone falls down the steps, (I stole that joke from Garrison Keller). So I guess to them baptism in nothing to fret over, but for most Christians baptism is critical. Dieing before baptism is pretty iffy. Original sin dictates baptism as soon after birth for some Christians such as Lutherans and certainly Catholics, though other Christian denominations dispute this.
The entirety of this comment thread shows why religion and governance are incompatible. I have never read such an inane series of illogical nonsense on TMV.
Yet this type of stuff is what the majority of the GOP uses to make decisions. No wonder they are #epicfail.
Republicans probably don’t consider themselves to be misogynistic, but thier history indicates otherwise. This is just more evidence.
Absalon is right, the “catholic position” should have zero bearing on any of this. It’s the 21st century folks, let’s try to be rational.
I’ve been trying to find a link to a calm discussion of this since yesterday and haven’t found one. Since the way the amendment is framed here, at Thinkprogress, at NARAL, etc is clearly a breach of the first amendment by DeMint, I think there is part of the story that is being left out. My guess is he is trying to find some way to prevent federal funds from being used for videoconferencing used for the purposes of abortion, but as I said I haven’t found anything referencing the actual amendment. The best way to discuss the amendment would be to start by reading it.
DaGoat:
Correcto mundo.
This and other efforts are, in my view, being tailored to undermine ObamaCare in the short term and undermine new provisions as they take effective in coming years.
And they are, in the end, mostly grandstanding because they are for the most part constitutionally dubious.
The Vatican is against abortion because it wants to increase the child pool from which its priests get to choose.
Does anyone really care what the Catholic religious organization thinks?
I just pull my hair out over this issue.
I can honestly make arguments both ways so I just shove the issue completely out of my head.
DaGoat: I still haven’t been able to find the text of the actual amendment either and like you I’m assuming that there’s some spin going on here. So, although I didn’t find a neutral source or a link to the text itself, I did find the flip side of the story from the prolife side, which at least gives us some insight into what this is all about:
http://www.lifenews.com/2011/10/18/senate-amdt-would-prohibit-tax-funding-telemed-abortions/
If I’m reading this right, it sounds like the intent is to prevent funds which were appropriated to build telemedicine infrastructure from being used to fund telemed abortions. If nothing else (again, if I’m not misinterpreting), there’s an issue of funds in Obamacare a) not being diverted from the law’s stated purpose toward a different purpose and b) remaining consistent with the Hyde Amendment, which Obama promised would be the case when he issued an Executive Order to persuade prolife Dems to sign onto the bill.
And of course, it also appears that ‘barring discussion of abortion on the internet’ is a hyperbolic in the extreme, to the point of being an inaccurate distortion. The amendment appears to be about the use of particular funds related to internet infrastructure improvement, not banning any particular content from internet transmission.
Well first your comment assumes there is no validity to a religion and that those who do believe in it are backward and irrational. Of course you still accept their providing an amazing amount of non profit and lower cost health care you just think what? that they are backward fools?
CStanley:
The article that you linked to does indeed shed more light on what the bill is about, taking my understanding from about 25 watts to 40.
While the devil, of course, is in the details, I still maintain that it an end-run or trick play, or both, in the GOP’s blood lust to deny women the right to make decisions regarding terminating a pregnancy whether it is after a face-to-face consultation, sonogram tests, on the Internet, or wherever.
All of this, of course, plays out in a larger context. A healthy majority of Americans continue to favor a woman’s right to choose at a time when an unhealthy majority of Americans are unemployed.
Refusing to lift a finger to help the president bring the U.S. out of its economic doldrums while attaching anti-abortion provisions to bills having nothing to do with that issue speaks volumes.
As I wrote the other day, today’s Republican Party is adamantly against abortions for the unborn, adamantly against health care for the newborn if their mother chooses not to have an abortion and lacks insurance, adamantly for letting an adult with serious health issues die if they lack insurance, and adamantly for executing people even under the flimsiest of evidence.
Honestly, Shaun, your writing would be more persuasive if you didn’t go out of your way to paint reasonable people on the other side as demented. I’m confident you will not be able to find anyone who is genuinely against health care for newborns or anyone else. You will find people against conscripting other citizens to pay for it, against adding fuel to a corporatist machine that makes it more and more expensive every year, or against forcing practitioners to act against their values to deliver it.
Well to be fair to Shaun though, Dr. J, there obviously are people who oppose abortion as well as opposing the funding of it through tax dollars. Aside from that quibble though, I completely agree with the main point of your comment.
As for the confluence of opposition to abortion and opposition to taxpayer funding, it’s not surprising that the more involved the govt gets in healthcare, the harder it is to reconcile the widely different views of people in a pluralistic society on an issue like abortion (is it just another healthcare procedure or does it involve a second person’s life and well being- the answer to that will lead to completely different views on what the governments role and responsibilities should be.)
Also not surprising that people distrust the motives of those on the other side of the divide, as displayed by Shaun here. Similarly though, I can easily point to areas where I distrust progressives for using healthcare reform as a means of inculcating abortion rights.
Ellis, I’m quite willing to give credit to religious institutions for the good things they do. Pity that isn’t the end of the story.
Dr. J:
Don’t injure yourself getting out of the semantic trap that you’ve sprung on yourself. You might need access to health care.
I did not say that anyone is “demented.” The pro-life folks are, bar the occasional assassin and arsonist, reasonable people, and I am sure you can find the occasional assassin and arsonist on the pro-abortion side; I just don’t know of any.
I am simply making the argument that the Republicans are obsessing on an issue near and dear to its shrinking base that most Americans have long ago moved on from and it matters not a whit that most of the legislation that introduce and inevitably does not pass into law is unconstitutional..
Long story short, the issue for Republicans is not creating jobs. It’s grandstanding by creating obstacles for women. Come to think of it, that is demented.
Here’s the only take on abortion for me. If you don’t want one, DON’T F*&KING GET ONE! This is a free country, if abortion is against your religion, or for that matter TV, or tacos, whatever, because you are free and have choices you can easily avoid that which you disagree with.
Simply having the option to get one is not pushing abortions. Forcing people to get abortions would be pushing or supporting abortions. Simply not making it illegal isn’t support. This is one of the more annoying aspects of conservative political positioning for me. Anything other than full public support of their position is seen as opposition to their interests, even when they have full right to exercise their freedom and live by their standards they won’t stop until everyone else has to live by them too. This applies to gay marriage just as well. Oh, and celebrating Xmas. And any other issue the “Family Values” crowd is whining about in their persected supermajority mega churches.
I appreciate your concern, but I’m not in any trap.
And I didn’t say you did. (Though, of course, now you have.) I said you repeatedly frame the other side’s positions that way, to make reasonable people look as rabidly unreasonable as possible. (“Republicans to disaster victims: Drop Dead”)
Now who’s in the trap? You’re right that Republicans are courting their base, but your post went way beyond that point into some wild and dubious claims. And you’re lapsing back into them now. There’s nothing inherently demented about creating obstacles, for women or anyone else. Creating obstacles to killing babies (as they see the issue) sounds like a pretty good idea.
In regards to Catholic hospitals and pregnant women whose lives are endangered, the following article was published by University of California in October of 2008.
http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/8dm907hm#page-1
I do not know if the policies in this article are still in practice today.