OK, OK, I overstated my case with words like “irrefutable” when I commented on Richard Stith’s very interesting insights into the opportunity provided by the federalization of health insurance policy in America.
Obviously, the question of the wisdom of federalizing health insurance policy in the first place is very important, and judgments about the bad consequences may lead many to determine that we should toss out the main thrust of the recently passed health care bill.
And furthermore, as some folks have pointed out to me, any expansion of governmental control of people’s lives creates the danger that it will be used for bad purposes. One reader draws attention to the possibilities of euthanasia as a cost-saving mechanism. Another points out that it is just as likely (more likely?) that the pro-abortion lobby will exploit the new law to expand abortion coverage.
All good points, and important points, to which we should add the fiscal question of whether we can, as a nation, afford this expanded coverage. And then add as well the question of whether this strategy for expansion will end up making the whole system into a lumbering bureaucratic giant that stifles innovations, and etc.
That said, I want to reiterate a point I made on Friday. A pro-life position is not a “limited government” position, nor is it a “free market” position. On the contrary, the pro-abortion crowd are the one’s in favor of limited government, as in limiting the government’s ability to have any say in what pregnant women do or don’t decide to do. It’s also the free market position insofar as it wants the supply to be free to meet the demand—why shouldn’t abortion providers be free to meet the market demand of women who want abortions?
We need to keep this in mind. There are very good reasons to want a limited government and free markets. In fact, I tend to line up with that side on most issues.
But only most, not all. I don’t think we should have a “reproductive free market.” And I’d like to see Roe v. Wade overturned. Why? So that our legislatures will no longer be limited by the spurious interpretation of the right to privacy that prevents them from criminalizing abortions. In other words, I don’t like the way Roe v. Wade limits government.
November 8th, 2010 | 9:16 am
You are absolutely wrong. A pro-life position is by its nature both a free market and limited government position. Economic freedom is the bedrock prerequisite for both political and religious freedom, since the more intrusive the government’s presence in economic matters, the more easily it can control the individual in other matters (as we are seeing, for instance, in health care legislation).
Only when the political and religious rights of the people are secured can any progress be made towards a pro-life position, because one cannot legitimately impose such a policy by fiat. That would simply be a mirror image of the manner in which legalized abortion was imposed upon the American people by the Left. And just as the Left has been unable to create a consensus on legalized abortion imposed by judicial fiat, so the Right could never create a consensus imposed by legislative or regulatory fiat through health care reform.
For better or worse, as Solzhenitsyn said, the battle between good and evil is fought within the individual human heart. In a representative democracy, this means evil can be overcome only by convincing a majority of the people to vote against evil.
In regard to abortion, this means one must first remove the impediment of judicial fiat for abortion–i.e., the overturning of Roe v. Wade and subsequent decisions–after which the hard part begins: convincing voters in the fifty states to make abortion illegal. There are no short cuts.
No matter how you cut it, this will only happen if the voters elect legislators and a President who will appoint and confirm judges willing to overturn Roe. Who would be more willing to do that? Men who believe in limited government, or men who believe in greater government intervention in all aspects of public and private life?
Since those who have an expansive view of government require activist judges to overcome the constraints imposed by the Constitution, the answer would seem clear. And, since those who oppose an expansive view of government oppose government intervention not only in the personal and religious spheres, but also in economics, you are back to where we started: a pro life position demands both free market and limited government positions, if it is to have any credibility whatsoever.
November 8th, 2010 | 9:24 am
“In other words, I don’t like the way Roe v. Wade limits government.”
Wrong. Roe does not limit government, it expands the role of the Federal government at the expense of the the rights of state governments (a violation of the Tenth Amendment). The Supreme Court, is, after all, a branch of the Federal Government.
On the other hand, and just to be a contrarian SOB, you should thank God for Roe, because prior to the decision, the states were well on their way to legalizing abortion on their own. Had the pro-abortion advocates not gotten impatient and resorted to the courts, by today abortion would be legal in all fifty state, and there would be no viable anti-abortion movement.
If the states had been allowed to pass legislation allowing abortion, then abortion would have the legitimacy that the Supreme Court’s intervention denied it. It was a simple case of the frog being boiled to death by inches, when someone prematurely turned the heat up to maximum, causing the frog to jump out of the pot.
Thanks to Roe, abortion rights were not legitimated. There is no consensus on abortion, as there would have been had it been legalized through the legislative process in all fifty states. And because the consensus is now swinging against abortion, if and when Roe is overturned, the matter will revert to the states in an environment much more favorable to the abolition of abortion than would have been the case forty years ago.
Abortion opponents must avoid making the same mistake made by abortion proponents, of using anti-democratic means to obtain their end. Any victory so obtained will also lack legitimacy and will prove to be ephemeral.
November 8th, 2010 | 9:36 am
R.R. Reno: “A pro-life position is not a “limited government” position, nor is it a “free market” position.”
I see what you mean, Joe, but I think you’d get some pushback from pro-life libertarians or libertarian leaners, like the Pauls (both Ron and Rand) and Bob Barr. As their argument goes, there is never a right to kill an innocent person (which a fetus is), and no government can allow the “de-personing” of anyone, etc., etc. Such people are all limited government types, yet still retain their pro-life stance. We can quibble with certain points of libertarian thought, but these folks certainly try to provide a logical argument. (It’s pretty compelling to me, at least.)
As for whether or not the pro-choice side is the more limited government side, I’d agree to an extent. They do, quite clearly, reject any legislation, be it state or federal, limiting abortion. But they also demand federal judicial interference to overturn laws they don’t like. Government intervention of a different sort, perhaps.
November 8th, 2010 | 9:51 am
It is not anti-free market to believe that the operations of the market should be limited to that which does not injure or defraud innocent persons. A government that enforces laws against slaughter for hire can still be considered quite limited. That’s enforcing justice, not market control. A free market within the constraints of murder and fraud laws is still free in the classic sense of “free market,” hyper-libertarian notions notwithstanding. In fact, there are those who would argue that government’s role in enforcing justice where direct assaults on persons and property are concerned, is a means of *maintaining* the freedom of the market, not limiting it.
November 8th, 2010 | 10:56 am
Dr. Reno writes “On the contrary, the pro-abortion crowd are the one’s in favor of limited government, as in limiting the government’s ability to have any say in what pregnant women do or don’t decide to do.”
I don’t think this is actually true of the “pro-abortion” (as opposed to the merely and honestly “pro-choice”). Spend any time reading Nancy Keenan or listening to Barbara Boxer and you find that it’s not enough for government to “keep its laws of [their] bodies,” but, to the contrary, government must facilitate abortion every way possible: subsidies, mandates, criminalizing sidewalk counseling, prosecuting PRCs, etc.
It’s no coincidence that most of the fiercest defenders of the right-to-life are also free marketers and government limiters, while the most obnoxious abortion symps are also crypto-socialists. As a commenter above noted, a principled libertarianism should find the idea of the government “depersonalizing” the unborn hateful. Likewise the same big government that can foil the pro-abort position can also support it actively after an election or two. The current battle lines (pro-life, pro-market v. pro-abortion, pro-government) are not merely accidental.
November 8th, 2010 | 1:44 pm
Stuart, I don’t understand why you think that fifty state laws in favor of abortion would have put the issue to bed finally and for all. I do understand that not having the ability to complain about “judicial fiat” would be less galvanizing to the pro-life movement, but who’s to say that there would not have been, and continue to be, active movements in some or all of the states? The mere existence of laws such as the Casey laws in Pennsylvania and other abortion restrictions that have been both struck down and upheld in other states belies that.
IOW, just because at least 51% of legislators in every state might have enshrined abortion in each state, it does not follow that none of their constituents or colleagues would today be involved in an active, and perhaps successful, movement to reverse that.
November 8th, 2010 | 1:49 pm
It seems ludicrous to even be talking about abortion in terms of market forces. I can’t verbalize a strong reason why at the moment, but it seems ludicrous nonetheless.
As for abortion and limited government, do we decry the fact that laws against murder are a government intrusion into our private lives? They are, of course, but we recognize and welcome the need for such intrusion (unless we are murderers.)
Pre-birth human children must be given their proper standing under the law as human beings with the full right of life; then killing them should be dealt with in the same way that killing any other human being is dealt with.
Protecting the innocent is one function of government that must be never be cast aside in the push to “limit government intrusion into our lives.”
November 8th, 2010 | 2:52 pm
“IOW, just because at least 51% of legislators in every state might have enshrined abortion in each state, it does not follow that none of their constituents or colleagues would today be involved in an active, and perhaps successful, movement to reverse that.”
At the time of Roe, that was the direction the tide was flowing. Legalization of abortion was occurring below the radar, in a manner that did not attract much attention. Since these were state and not national policies, they did not generate national visibility. There were no significant national anti-abortion organizations because all the activity was occurring at the state level.
Roe changed that, and while, in the short term, it enabled pro-abortionists to get what they wanted, it also did two things that in the long run will, I believe, lead to their undoing: first, it elevated abortion to a national issue; second, the manner in which abortion was legalized nation-wide was widely perceived as an example of judicial usurpation of the Federal and state legislative prerogative. Americans get ornery when they think the government is acting in an arbitrary and undemocratic manner.
And this is what galvanized foes of abortion in a way that no piece of state legislation could have done. Moreover, it is much more difficult to organize against state legislation, since you would have to convince fifty very different constituencies. Back in the 1970s, that would not have been possible. Today, thanks to four decades of opposition to Roe, it is far more likely that, with decisions about abortion returned to the states, all but a handful would either prohibit it entirely or put very severe restrictions upon it.
November 8th, 2010 | 2:55 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by First Things, mattwireman. mattwireman said: RT @rofters: More on Abortions and Obamacare http://bit.ly/9m9wgl [...]
November 8th, 2010 | 3:45 pm
“Moreover, it is much more difficult to organize against state legislation, since you would have to convince fifty very different constituencies. ”
I think the people of Wisconsin only have to organize Wisconsin.
Yes, it would be harder to create a movement to ban abortion in 50 states, but should Roe ever be repealed, that’s where we’ll be anyway. But that consideration aside, I still don’t understand why it would be harder for the people of Wisconsin to organize and oppose abortion in Wisconsin simply because there was a Wisconsin state law enacted. Even if only three states were to succeed in organizing their movements and prevailing upon their legislators, that would result in abortion being illegal in three more states than it is illegal in now. How could that make us worse off?
November 8th, 2010 | 4:24 pm
“I think the people of Wisconsin only have to organize Wisconsin.”
Certainly–assuming there is a high level of interest (which there often will not be), and that adequate resources can be mobilized (which frequently they cannot). National pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood already existed and had immense amounts of money at its disposal. On a state-by-state basis, they could throw all of that behind each pro- and anti-abortion initiative in turn, which would allow them to defeat their foes in detail.
“Yes, it would be harder to create a movement to ban abortion in 50 states, but should Roe ever be repealed, that’s where we’ll be anyway.”
That is true, but you will have had the advantage of a forty year, concerted national campaign against abortion which has largely succeeded in changing the mind of the public about the reality and morality of abortion. In the 1970s, the public was pro-abortion and getting more so. Now it is anti-abortion and getting more so. If Roe is overturned, say, in the next decade, then you could count on having at least a slight majority in your favor.
“Even if only three states were to succeed in organizing their movements and prevailing upon their legislators, that would result in abortion being illegal in three more states than it is illegal in now. How could that make us worse off?”
It would not. But you seem to have missed my point: in the 1970s, abortion was well on its way to becoming universally legal through state legislation. This would have been accepted by most Americans as a matter of “vox populi, vox Dei”. By now, it would have become a non-issue, as it is in most countries outside the United States, where abortion was passed through legislation (albeit with more restrictions than we have here in the United States). My point is, Roe disrupted the inevitable process of legislating legal abortion, and in so doing, laid the groundwork for ultimately overturning all abortion laws in the United States.
November 8th, 2010 | 5:53 pm
“Pre-birth human children must be given their proper standing under the law as human beings with the full right of life; then killing them should be dealt with in the same way that killing any other human being is dealt with.”
Who would be more willing to do that? Those who believe that individual rights derive from a divine creator, and that the power of the state is sharply circumscribed? Or those who believe that rights derive from an all-embracing state which has the power and obligation to bring the greatest good to the greatest number.
When the government takes it upon itself to provide health care for all the people, then the government assumes for itself the right and power to mandate actions and behaviors intended to improve the public health–as defined by itself. Since even the state has limited resources, it must perforce seek ways of reducing public health expenditures, which it does by applying a rigorous utilitarian formula to the distribution of medical treatment; i.e., those who have the most to offer society (presumably through their earnings potential) will get the most effective (and expensive) treatment. Those who can offer little to society (in the way of taxes) will get minimal care (if any at all).
This will affect the weakest and most vulnerable in society–the elderly, the chronically ill, the mentally disabled, and, of course, the unborn.
From a cost/benefit perspective, a child is a great drain upon the health care system, so if a woman or a couple do not want one, it is in the state’s interest to terminate the pregnancy, and spare itself the cost of caring for the unwanted or treating the defective. Indeed, just as the state can put pressure on the elderly or terminally ill to forego life-extending treatment, so pressure can (and will) be brought to bear on the pregnant to abort their children if (a) they suffer from any sort of birth defect; or (b) if the prospective parent(s) lack the wherewithal to raise the child without public assistance.
There are other problems that come from the state accepting responsibility for public health. For instance, the state can proscribe or circumscribe activities that it deems cause health problems or increase health care costs. Thus, the state has taken steps to reduce the use of tobacco and alcohol (without actually banning them), and is now moving on to our eating habits. It would not take much–a finding by a panel of psychologists, for instance–for the state to determine that religious faith is a form of mental illness, and begin to restrict its observance in various ways. It would not be at all improbable for the state to ban religious education of children in order to “protect” them.
After all, everything is permissible, if you do it “For the Children”.
November 8th, 2010 | 7:55 pm
‘All good points, and important points, to which we should add the fiscal question of whether we can, as a nation, afford this expanded coverage.’
Yes, you can. Just reduce ‘defense spending’ by about 10 percent, and stop invading foreign countries, and you will be able to easily afford it.
Where I live (Australia) everyone is automatically covered by Medicare, and yet no-one, not even the reactionary free-market opposition party, would consider scrapping it; it is far too important.
Only in America do you ask ‘Are you insured?’ when a dying patient (yes, patient, not ‘client’)is brought to a hospital. If a small and relatively poor nation like Australia can easily affort universal care, why not the U.S?
November 8th, 2010 | 8:15 pm
“Yes, you can. Just reduce ‘defense spending’ by about 10 percent, and stop invading foreign countries, and you will be able to easily afford it.”
Defense spending amounts to roughly $600 billion, or 18% of all Federal outlays (4.7% of GDP). A 10% cut in defense appropriations would only give you $60 billion, which isn’t enough to fund Obamacare for a couple of months.
Try to crunch the numbers before spouting off.
November 8th, 2010 | 8:17 pm
‘There are very good reasons to want a limited government and free markets.’
Such as? Name one. Free-market fundamentalism isn’t compatible with Christianity. It says so in Acts. The four Gospels. James too. And Psalms. I could go on.
Neither is the concept of representative government. Read Romans 13:1 – 7 if you don’t believe me. It basically says that you must bow to God’s representative on Earth (in your country B. Obama), and pay your taxes.
‘On the contrary, the pro-abortion crowd are the one’s in favor of limited government, as in limiting the government’s ability to have any say in what pregnant women do or don’t decide to do.’ and
‘…our legislatures will no longer be limited by the spurious interpretation of the right to privacy…’
So this is a spurious interpretation of the rights of individuals (in this case women) to keep the government at bay when it comes to making such a personal decision. You can’t have it both ways; either you believe in the inherent rights of individuals to live as they see fit, or you don’t. You can’t seem to make up your mind.
You seem to think that the interpretation that has been given to the concept of privacy is faulty in this particular case, but I don’t agree. I, personally, happen to agree with the second of the three quotes above, if only because the logic is sounder. If you are the type of person who doesn’t believe in government interference when it comes to making your own personal choices, it doesn’t make any sense to say, ‘oh, the government should not meddle with our lives, but regarding this, this and these issues, they can if they want to.’
When privacy is gone, all talk about ‘freedom’ becomes meaningless.
November 8th, 2010 | 9:43 pm
“When privacy is gone, all talk about ‘freedom’ becomes meaningless.”
The very concept of “privacy” and “private life” is a relatively recent concept–and not one who invokes biblical arguments against capitalism should indulge, since in the time of Christ and the Apostles, privacy was really non-existant.
People lived their lives in public spaces, and everyone knew everyone else’s business. These were communitarian societies, in which the notion of the individual was largely subordinated to that of the larger group–first the extended family, then the village, then the tribe, and finally, the polis. In the absence of effective law enforcement, order and cohesion were maintained through social sanctions, as is still the case in large swaths of the Middle East today, to say nothing of small town and rural America.
November 9th, 2010 | 10:17 am
“You can’t have it both ways; either you believe in the inherent rights of individuals to live as they see fit, or you don’t. You can’t seem to make up your mind.”
That’s an either/or fallacy. No one (at least no one sane) has ever believed that individuals have some absolute right to live as they see fit. That’s why we have laws. Except perhaps for some on the libertarian or anarchist fringe, everyone agrees that any individual’s right to “live as they see fit” is, and must be, constrained by other individuals’ rights and by the common good. The only question is what are those constraints; where are the limitations. Unborn children are demonstrably human beings with lives separate from thier mothers’. The mother’s right to “live as she sees fit” does not include the right to murder an innocent human being any more than my right to “live as I see fit” includes the right to murder you.
November 9th, 2010 | 7:28 pm
Just as I should have expected, my comments have been misinterpreted or just misunderstood.
‘Defense spending amounts to roughly $600 billion, or 18% of all Federal outlays (4.7% of GDP). A 10% cut in defense appropriations would only give you $60 billion, which isn’t enough to fund Obamacare for a couple of months.
Try to crunch the numbers before spouting off.’
- Stuart Koehl
These figures of yours may or may not be accurate (the source for this information was…?), but my intent, which maybe I should have made clearer, was that there is a great deal of wasteful expenditure that could be curbed. Whether ten percent is ‘only’ equal to 60 billion dollars is beside the point that I was trying to make, this point being that the priorities of most governments and private corporations are often wrong and/or misguided. If 10 percent is such a trifling amount in your view, then let’s make it 90 percent!
‘The very concept of “privacy” and “private life” is a relatively recent concept–and not one who invokes biblical arguments against capitalism should indulge, since in the time of Christ and the Apostles, privacy was really non-existant.
People lived their lives in public spaces, and everyone knew everyone else’s business. These were communitarian societies…’ – Stuart K.
I invoked the ‘biblical arguments’ simply because there are so many self-proclaimed Christians who whine about ‘Big Government’, ‘high taxes’ (any amount of tax is too high for these people), the ‘free market’ (i.e. capitalist exploitation of the poor), and so on, ad infinitum. I am not actually a Christian myself, or at least I don’t think of myself as such. I was simply pointing out that one cannot be both a Christian and a supporter of the current exploitative economic regime.
As for the comment that privacy is a relatively recent concept, that actually depends on, firstly, your definition of that term, and secondly the type of society that one has under consideration. It is always dangerous to make generalisations about how things used to be in the past, if only because we moderns tend to distort our perceptions about the past by colouring it with our own beliefs about how things should have been, and judging these societies through the prism of our own moral and ethical values. Ex. slavery wasn’t always considered to be ‘wrong’ in the manner we believe it to be today (don’t interpret this comment as an endorsement of slavery by me, by the way).
November 9th, 2010 | 7:50 pm
‘No one (at least no one sane) has ever believed that individuals have some absolute right to live as they see fit. That’s why we have laws. Except perhaps for some on the libertarian or anarchist fringe,…’ – Fred
Yes, we have laws to regulate the conduct of behaviour that could be, or would be, harmful to others, which is a good thing. However, recently (over the last 30 years or so), there has been far too much hot air about the ‘rights of individuals’ without much, if any, consideration of the responsibilities of those same individuals.
A perfect example: the payment of tax. One of the things that arch-conservatives and their lackeys seem to all have in common is the notion that, no matter how low their tax rate actually is, it is still too much. Do these people willfully ignore the fact that these taxes they pay, and that they incessantly complain about, actually go toward keeping the country they claim to love so much on it’s feet? Do they also realise that without tax dollars, their beloved military-industrial complex would become extinct? Do they actually realise that tax cuts for the wealthy are not only inherently immoral, but actually make the current financial situation far worse than it would otherwise be?
‘The only question is what are those constraints; where are the limitations. Unborn children are demonstrably human beings with lives separate from thier mothers’. The mother’s right to “live as she sees fit” does not include the right to murder an innocent human being any more than my right to “live as I see fit” includes the right to murder you.’ – Fred
The point you make that ‘unborn children are demonstrably human beings’ is controversial at best. At what precise stage in the development of the fetus does it become a child? I’m asking because this, one would think simple, point has never been clearly elucidated by either the anti-abortionists (apart from the Catholics, who seem to believe that a single cell is actually a person), nor the free-choice crowd. At what point does the fetus acquire a, for lack of a better word, a ‘soul’?
By the way, that’s not a fallacy. Sometimes there really is only a choice between two options.
November 9th, 2010 | 8:04 pm
‘And furthermore, as some folks have pointed out to me, any expansion of governmental control of people’s lives creates the danger that it will be used for bad purposes.’
It also creates the possibility that an expansion of governmental control will produce good, happy results by keeping those private-insurance leeches in check. Why, in the United States, is the equivalence made between ‘evil’ and ‘government’? Stuart Koehl expresses this perfectly – ‘In a representative democracy, this means evil can be overcome only by convincing a majority of the people to vote against evil.’
‘One reader draws attention to the possibilities of euthanasia as a cost-saving mechanism.’
No, actually it is far more likely that a fully privatised health system will produce countless more deaths through lack of care, cost-cutting, excessive medical bills, insurance companies trying to deny coverage to those with minor genetic defects, and on, and on, and on. After all, private companies exist for one purpose ONLY – to make money. No other reason. They are not charities, they don’t actually care about anyone, except to the extent that they can fleece poor sods of their hard-earned cash.
This absurd comment alone proves that you don’t know what you are talking about.
‘All good points…’
You can’t be serious. Reading this, I get the feeling that I am actually reading a Tea Party health manifesto.
November 9th, 2010 | 10:23 pm
Peter A:
“However, recently (over the last 30 years or so), there has been far too much hot air about the ‘rights of individuals’ without much, if any, consideration of the responsibilities of those same individuals.”
You’ll have a hell of a time finding a conservative who disagrees with that. It’s the left that seems to attribute every form of misbehavior to racism or poverty or some other form of social determinism.
“A perfect example: the payment of tax.”
Your whole take on that is simplistic to say the least. Of course government takes some tax income to perform its function. Again, you’ll have a hell of a time finding anyone sane who disagrees with that. The question is what exactly is or should be government’s function? Surely even you would admit there’s room for debate on that? Also, as a person of the left you might want to believe that the wealth from which taxes come somehow magically appears and is mysteriously inexhaustable, but the fact is that there is a point at which taxation produces diminishing returns, a point at which the government kills the goose that lays the golden eggs. Exactly where that point is, is a matter of debate. That there is such a point is not.
“At what precise stage in the development of the fetus does it become a child?”
Ok, I’ll turn that around on you. What is the magic moment at which the fetus becomes a “person?” At birth? While it’s in the birth canal? Two minutes before that? It’s always seemed to me that it’s the pro-abortion folks who have the religious belief. What’s more logical, to assert that a “clump of cells” at some precise moment mysteriously becomes a “person” or that the “clump of cells” is always already a person? The fetus is simply at an early stage of development and is no less a person than an infant, a child, an adolescent, or an adult. Fetus is a stage of development of something that is from the start a human person. If you don’t agree, then I would like to know precisely at what magic moment something lifeless becomes human. I would also like to know how in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, or embryo implantation is possible if the “clump of cells” doesn’t have an independent life of its own. That seems to me a clear and uncontroversial demonstration of the independent life of the fetus.
November 10th, 2010 | 7:49 pm
“You can’t be serious. Reading this, I get the feeling that I am actually reading a Tea Party health manifesto.”
Peter, you knowledge of both American politics and the American health care system leave a lot to be desired. I can’t say much about your theological and metaphysical acumen, either.
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