Some pro-life leaders have advocated repeal of “Obamacare,” because it requires the public in various ways to fund abortion. Although I agree with their assessment of the law, I disagree with their proposed remedy. The pro-life cause would be far better served to keep the current law, provided that it be amended to include something like the original addition proposed by Congressman Stupak that fully excluded elective abortion from all state plans, except as an individual rider, consciously chosen by the insured person.
My disagreement stems not just from the fact that the healthcare law includes various pro-life provisions, such as new help for pregnant women, which may make them less likely to choose abortion. I think that even if these good aspects of the legislation are outweighed by its bad aspects, that is, if the net effect of the legislation at the moment is to advance abortion, it should not be repealed.
In order to explain my position, let’s step back a moment to remember the situation prior to the new law, when health care was, except for the poor, much more market driven. The market was not favorable to life.
While Medicaid for the poor excluded elective abortion under the Hyde Amendment, many or most health plans automatically included fully elective abortion, giving the insured person no choice in the matter and very few effective ways to protest. Simply repealing the new legislation would presumably restore that market situation.
Faced with the federalization of healthcare, both sides could claim sincerely that they wanted the new plan to be neutral on abortion, i.e., they wanted the new law to preserve the status quo ante rather than to advance their own pro-life or pro-choice preferences. But each was referring to a different side of the prior status quo.
Pro-lifers wanted the old rules for healthcare for the poor (the Hyde Amendment) to apply to everyone. Pro-choicers wanted the widespread inclusion of elective abortion in market-based plans to carry over unchanged into the new federal plan. In other words, there was no way the new law could have been fully neutral on abortion from everyone’s point of view. And in fact, as finally enacted, the plan is not neutral, but is rather a compromise with gains and losses on both sides, though with (in my opinion) a net effect in the pro-choice direction.
However, if the healthcare law were amended to exclude all elective abortion—that is, if the Hyde Amendment were universalized and made permanent—pro-lifers would have the best of all worlds and pro-choicers would face their worst nightmare. The rules against funding elective abortion that were once applicable only to the poor would now become applicable to all, taking abortion totally out of the mainstream of healthcare and making it something no one would have covered who had not previously and deliberately chosen an abortion rider.
Would such a glorified Hyde amendment be signed by President Obama? Maybe yes, if it were presented as the only way the necessary funding for his healthcare plan as a whole could ever be approved by the pro-life dominated House of Representatives.
So, dear friends of life, let’s not urge repeal a law which gives us a tremendous chance to promote the cause of life. Let’s urge instead that it be properly amended to exclude abortion.
Richard Stith is professor of law at Valparaiso University School of Law and the author most recently of The Legal Validation of Sexual Relationships (Wm. S. Hein & Co.). His last article for First Things was Her Choice, Her Problem.
Comments:
However, if this is true, wouldn't a Hyde-type amendment extending to all covered insurance plans likely be challenged and overturned by the Supreme Court because it would effectively deny (to the extent the health care law affects all insurance plans) women the (currently) legal right of abortion?
If so, then that pro-life amendment would be eliminated but the funding would still have been passed, leading to full federal funding of abortion, all because the pro-life House thought it could twist federal programs far beyond the appropriate scope of the federal government to its own values.
In a legal regime in which Roe v. Wade is still constitutional law, it seems to me Professor Stith's belief that federal health care regulations--bound by that law--can be effectively used to restrict abortion is questionable at best. The massive, over-reaching federal health care "reform" (which did no such thing) is perhaps not the most trustworthy vehicle for pro-life policies.
The better we are at convincing the electorate the more likely it is that we will eventually get say, a Supreme Court, that will recognize the fact that, because the unborn are demonstrably human and separate from (albeit dependent upon) their mothers, they are endowed with certain inalienable rights. The first among these being Life.
Failing that, we must vote with our consciences and be willing to have reasoned conversations with those on the fence or in disagreement and help where we can.
They are not called that in the bill, but they are certainly in there, larger than life.
There is nothing pro-life about deciding the fate of an elderly or sick person based on how much their care should cost the state.
Abortion and euthanasia aside, the bill provides for the creation of a truckload of new agencies, and the expansion of the IRS to make sure all the tax incentives/coercions are being followed. Implementation of the bill will drive some established doctors out of
medicine. Bottom line: The plan is to trade a bunch of established physicians in exchange for bureaucrats and IRS agents.
That is definitely NOT pro-life.
Don't listen to the spin doctors : Repeal it!
Amen
Best to repeal ObamaCare at the earliest possible moment, and create something better.
As it stands the legislation engages in many evils (see several posts made previously by others). It is not permitted for us to support it because it MIGHT one day be amended in order to POSSIBLY bring some good. You cannot knowingly commit bad actions for some speculative good. If such were the case, then the medical experiments run by the Nazis on concentration camp prisoners were perfectly acceptable.
Reading his argument, I have but two questions concerning Stith...
1) Is he engaged in the all too common act of rationalizing something which one knows to be sinful in one's heart in order to avoid guilt. Or...
2) Is he really a wolf appearing here in sheep's clothing.
Ultimately, only Stith and God can answer those questions...
I have seen Richard Stith defending life and attacking abortion in South America, in speaking and in writing, forcefully, with exact legal information from US and European sources, with no concessions to the culture of death. So he is not trying to rationalize any sin; and he is not a wolf in sheep's clothing. He is one of the bravest defenders of life I have ever met.
In my view, professor Stith is too optimistic about what can be achieved. I think that in this prudential matter there is room for discussion among people in good faith in the pro-life community. In my view, if market-driven systems include injustice (among other things, the permission of abortion), that should be repealed. And also the death panels. Now, if this is easier by repealing the whole Obama-Care or just by imposing on him (with the new majority) precisely those restrictions, I am afraid that it is impossible to know without knowing the position of those who wish to repeal Obama-Care on free-market grounds and not on pro-life grounds. Because it might be the case that "promarkets + prolifers" can repeal Obama-Care, and go back to a situation of fewer abortions (as Stith reckons); and/or that "pro-Obama-care + prolifers" can save Obama-Care under prolife demands. But who knows this?
We can disagree without attributing evil intentions to brave defenders of human life who have done a good job for decades all over the world, without being ever duly recognized and praised. One of them is Richard Stith.
You are, of course, entitled to your opinion on health care, but I can only remind you that our church teaches that indeed it is a right. In fact quite recently Pope Benedict (Nov. 18), in urging nations toward universal health coverage, called it an "inalienable" human right and providing it in charity and justice among the fundamental, moral responsibilities of a just society. How we do that we can hash out, but it seems clear the Pope has some concern that the world's foremost Western power remains unwilling to offer care (note: not insurance, that is just a method to health services delivery) to nearly 51 million fellow citizens and residents (2009 Census data) and to my mind increasingly indifferent to their plight. If the outrageous cost of our system is not enough to call you to action, surely the moral demand ought to be.
View here: http://www.zenit.org/article-31001?l=english
Kevin
