Lifesite News Bends Over Backward to Defend Kyl's Remarks on Maternity Care
In the category of "gimme a break," LifeSite News today is bending over backwards to do 3 things:
- defend Senator Kyl's recent self-revelatory comment about maternity care (i.e. "I don't need maternity care) and paint him as "concerned about women;"
- twist the maternity care debate into a "pro-life" versus "pro-choice" debate and in doing so proving once again that the woman in the equation is just null.
- Use the "pro-life" rubric to cover some incredibly small-minded arguments against extending universal benefits for pregnancy, labor, and delivery.
Pretty amazing for the ol' "pro-life website."
Their excuse? Quoting Carrie Lukas writing on the National Review Online:
"When government dictates what insurance policies must contain — whether that is general maternity care or more specific mandates like a two-night stay in hospital for any birth — the cost of insurance goes up," she writes
But Lukas says that concern about health care costs doesn't equal insensitivity to the need to help pregnant women.
"We can all agree that it's a problem when pregnant women can't afford health care without flocking to support the kind of massive government intervention in the health-insurance market that the Democrats are advancing," she says. "There are far better ways to reform health care to make it better for women." Lukas suggests that reforming the litigious nature of health care would better help women than promoting a pro-abortion government-run health care system.
Get it? No health reform, just tort reform = conservative Republican Party position. "Pro-life" to pregnant women? Just labor on by yourselves.
Women's Groups, Health Groups in Montgomery County, Maryland Question Expansion of Catholic Hospital
The Montgomery County Gazette reports that a battle is brewing over the expansion of Holy Cross Hospital. Holy Cross is governed by Catholic religious doctrine, and therefore, according to opponents of expansion, "provides less health care coverage than any other hospital in the area and should not be allowed to expand."
The discussion about the expansion of the Catholic Hospital in the geographically large and populous county comes as the state's commission reviews a proposal for Holy Cross, which announced in August 2008 a plan to build a 93-bed hospital on Montgomery College's campus in Germantown, Maryland and another proposal for Adventist HealthCare, which announced in April a plan to build a 100-bed hospital on part of a health care campus in Clarksburg. "It is unlikely the commission will approve both hospitals, and it has not yet set a date for when it will make a decision," the Gazette states.
Holy Cross, like all Catholic medical institutions are governed by a set of ethical and religious rules decided by the Vatican in Rome, states the Gazette. "The directives follow the moral guidelines of the Catholic faith, which require "an utmost respect for human life in any form,"" according to the official Web site for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. [internal quotations marks added by RH Reality Check].
For example, Catholic hospitals do not provide abortions, including in cases of incest or rape; they do not provide any form of contraceptives, except in cases of rape where the victim does not test pregnant; they do not provide sterilization for men or women; and they do not provide most infertility treatments. They also cannot provide some end-of-life choices, such as euthanasia. The patient's decision-maker should be "faithful to Catholic moral principles," according to the directives.
"In a time of new medical discoveries, rapid technological developments, and social change, what is new can either be an opportunity for genuine advancement in human culture, or it can lead to policies and actions that are contrary to the true dignity and vocation of the human person," the directives state.
Adventist HealthCare also runs a primary-care clinic for the uninsured in Shady Grove Adventist Hospital's Germantown emergency center. The clinic now has a pre- and post-natal department for uninsured patients that provides family planning, according to Washington Adventist Hospital's spokeswoman Lydia Parris.
Adventist HealthCare is owned by the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which has no religious policies governing health care. Adventist hospitals perform abortions and provide a full range of reproductive care, Parris said.
Holy Cross counters that many of the services it is morally prohibited from providing aren't usually performed in a hospital anyway and that its charity work more than makes up for the few services it cannot offer.
But others see the imposition of Catholic morality into medicine with taxpayer dollars or subsidies as contrary to the public health....and the public purse.
"How can you provide a range of services for men if you don't provide a range of services for women?" said Montgomery County National Organization of Women member Lynette Long at a meeting last week with Holy Cross doctors and officials in Wheaton to discuss what services the Germantown hospital would provide. Many at the meeting were critical of the hospital's religious practices.
"The Holy Cross proposal would significantly undermine the public-health priorities of Montgomery County and the state of Maryland," stated a Sept. 14 letter to the Maryland Health Care Commission from a variety of regional women and health care groups. "Indigent citizens, whose care is reimbursed by state funds, would also be subject to these restrictions on their access to health care services and information."
The letter argued Holy Cross Hospital's limited practices handicap the state's goals of preventing unintended pregnancies and the spread of AIDS. The groups signing the letter were: Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, a nonprofit reproductive health care clinic; the National Women's Law Center, a Washington, D.C.-based women's advocacy group; the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a D.C.-based religious liberty lobbying nonprofit; NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland, a Silver Spring pro-choice nonprofit; and The MergerWatch Project, a New York City-based watch dog for unjust health care denial.
"If they're taking up space and representing a hospital, they should [offer full health care services]," said MCNOW member Carole Rayburn, who was concerned that Holy Cross does not provide vasectomies or tubal ligations for family planning. "Otherwise, they should get out of the way."
Other services provided by Holy Cross don't change the fact that "a woman in desperate need of emergency contraception or an abortion might lose precious time visiting Holy Cross first," said Sharon Dooley, a member of MCNOW and Upcounty Action, a civic advocacy group in the county that opposes the Holy Cross expansion. "People often don't know when services are banned until they need them," Dooley said.
But Holy Cross provides excellent women's and overall health care to all of its patients, said Dr. Ann Burke, who is Holy Cross's medical director of obstetrics and gynecology. She stated that Holy Cross has actually increased access to health care in the county with the opening of a new primary-care clinic for the uninsured in Gaithersburg last year, and a new one is set to open next year in Wheaton. Holy Cross, which provides charity work for the uninsured as part of its mission statement, already runs one in Silver Spring that treats about 9,000 patients a year.
"We have not run away from the needy in a community, we run to them," she said.
Parris from Adventist HealthCare said they are staying out of the church-and-state fight of Holy Cross's religious doctrine but that her organization opposes Holy Cross's plans for Germantown because it's poor planning and too close to Shady Grove's emergency department.
October 14th, 2009
All Headline News: Abortion Rates Drop With Increased Contraception Use
Optimum Population Blog: Bans ‘do not cut abortion rate’
Columbus Dispatch: Abortion, sex education spark debate over Planned Parenthood grant
Montgomery Advertiser: Bentley pushing abortion measures in run for governor
CNS News: Pro-Life Activists Speak Out Against Pro-Abortion Leaders in U.S., Spain
Truthdig: CONDOMS PREVENT ABORTION, NOT LAWS
Dallas Morning News: Global health survey: Abortion rate falls; risky practices continue
October 13th, 2009
Chicago Bar Tender: Illinois parental notification law for teen abortions challenged
Houston Chronicle: These women may rescue flagging Republican Party
LifeSiteNews: Bishop Says D&P Funds to 'Pro-Choice' Groups Okay if Restricted to Good Projects
CitizenLink: Pro-Life Groups Take a Stand Against Health Care Bill
USA Today: Study: Abortions decline, but unsafe procedures still kill 70,000 women
USA Today: Bishops aim for a pastoral way to say 'No'
WSJ: Oklahoma Abortion Law’s Online-Publication Rules Come Under Fire
10/12
LifeNews: Senate Committee Votes for Fifth Health Care Bill Promoting Tax-Funded Abortions
LifeNews: Pro-Life Sen. Jon Kyl Unfairly Painted as Anti-Woman by Abortion Backers
Reuters: Unsafe abortions kill 70,000 a year, harm millions
LifeNews: Ohio Pro-Life Group Upset County Giving 50K to Planned Parenthood Abortion Biz
