A coalition of pro-life leaders has announced what is being billed as the largest ever conference call and webcast to oppose abortion provisions contained in the Obama health care legislation. The live webcast will be held this coming Thursday, July 23.
It is good to see Americans uniting against the culture of death. ObamaCare is morally reprehensible because it will increase the number of abortions in the United States, force every taxpayer to fund them, and coerce medical professionals to perform the grisly procedures in violation of their consciences. But this coalition should vigorously oppose the legislation even if all provisions pertaining to abortion were eliminated.
The fundamental concept of ObamaCare is anti-life in that it will ration health care at every stage of life, and particularly threatens the weak, the disabled, the elderly, and all those who may be deemed by government as less than useful, contributing members of society. This utilitarian philosophy is inherent wherever socialized medicine has been implemented. Can we expect a political regime facing the most staggering debt ever known to mankind to operate the system in a compassionate and humane way? Do we really want to entrust to bureaucrats life and death decisions involving our parents, grandparents and children?
Finally, it is incomprehensible how the American Catholic bishops could support such a plan were all references to abortion stricken. Catholic social teaching has not only opposed the fundamental errors of socialism, it upholds the principle of subsidiarity, the idea that nothing should be done by a higher, more complex organization that can be done at a lower, smaller, more personal level. In his landmark 1991 encyclical, Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II said that the welfare state “leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.” To take health care out of the hands of consumers and providers and turn it over to massive government bureaucracy violates the principle of subsidiarity, the Catholic natural law tradition, and will ultimately be seen as an enormous loss for the "culture of life."
So many political battles are lost because Christians elect to do the pragmatic thing and fight on the enemy's terms, with the enemy's tools. ObamaCare needs to be opposed in its totality. This is not a time for small compromises, but for a radical, counter-cultural commitment to the truth. Certainly the Obama administration is not one of incrementalism and compromise. If this evil is to be defeated, Christians need to be equally bold and uncompromising in promoting a culture of life.
It is good to see Americans uniting against the culture of death. ObamaCare is morally reprehensible because it will increase the number of abortions in the United States, force every taxpayer to fund them, and coerce medical professionals to perform the grisly procedures in violation of their consciences. But this coalition should vigorously oppose the legislation even if all provisions pertaining to abortion were eliminated.
The fundamental concept of ObamaCare is anti-life in that it will ration health care at every stage of life, and particularly threatens the weak, the disabled, the elderly, and all those who may be deemed by government as less than useful, contributing members of society. This utilitarian philosophy is inherent wherever socialized medicine has been implemented. Can we expect a political regime facing the most staggering debt ever known to mankind to operate the system in a compassionate and humane way? Do we really want to entrust to bureaucrats life and death decisions involving our parents, grandparents and children?
Finally, it is incomprehensible how the American Catholic bishops could support such a plan were all references to abortion stricken. Catholic social teaching has not only opposed the fundamental errors of socialism, it upholds the principle of subsidiarity, the idea that nothing should be done by a higher, more complex organization that can be done at a lower, smaller, more personal level. In his landmark 1991 encyclical, Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II said that the welfare state “leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.” To take health care out of the hands of consumers and providers and turn it over to massive government bureaucracy violates the principle of subsidiarity, the Catholic natural law tradition, and will ultimately be seen as an enormous loss for the "culture of life."
So many political battles are lost because Christians elect to do the pragmatic thing and fight on the enemy's terms, with the enemy's tools. ObamaCare needs to be opposed in its totality. This is not a time for small compromises, but for a radical, counter-cultural commitment to the truth. Certainly the Obama administration is not one of incrementalism and compromise. If this evil is to be defeated, Christians need to be equally bold and uncompromising in promoting a culture of life.
