Note: The recent healthcare reform certainly is historic, in the sense that it most likely will be considered an important, perhaps defining, event in the Obama Presidency. Whatever eventually happens politically as a result, there are important elements of public discourse which marked the debate. One of those elements –religious rhetoric– is the subject of Dr. Kengor’s column.  

God Gets His Healthcare Bill

By Dr. Paul Kengor 

The most frustrating thing I’ve dealt with in professional life was eight years of outrageous, baseless charges against President George W. Bush on matters of faith. Even when Bush was simply asked about his faith, and responded with utterly benign statements, like saying he couldn’t imagine surviving the presidency “without faith in the Lord,” or noting he prayed before committing troops, echoing every president from Washington to Lincoln to Wilson to Carter to Clinton, he was viciously assaulted.

“We are dealing with a messianic militarist!” thundered Ralph Nader.

“He should not be praying,” intoned Lawrence O’Donnell to the MSNBC faithful.

Repeatedly, I was called to respond to this nonsense. My retort was agonizingly simple: I merely ran through example after example of American founders, presidents—Democrats and Republicans—saying either precisely what Bush said or something far more extreme, like Woodrow Wilson claiming God called upon him to found the League of Nations, or FDR mounting a battleship leading troops in a rendition of “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

What I said rarely mattered. Every Bush mention of God was a signal, somehow, that this Bible-quoting “simpleton” was trying to transform America into a “theocracy.”

Alas, there was another tactic I used: I quoted current Democrats on the campaign trail, from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama, invoking the Almighty. I knew that if these politicians reached the White House, they’d say the same as Bush, or much worse—with no backlash from the secular media. Quite the contrary, liberals would roll out the red carpet, enthusiastically welcoming faith into the public square.

All of that is prelude to my point here today:

The Religious Left, from “social justice” Catholic nuns and Protestant ministers to the Democratic Speaker of the House and president of the United States, have been incessantly claiming God’s advocacy of their healthcare reform. That’s no surprise, just as it’s no surprise that the press is not only not outraged but silently supportive. There’s nary a whimper, let alone howls, of “separation of church and state!”

Consider a few examples, most telling in light of passage of the healthcare bill:

Last August, President Obama addressed a virtual gathering of 140,000 Religious Left individuals. He told them he was “going to need your help” in passing healthcare. Obama penitently invoked a period of “40 Days,” a trial of deliverance from conservative tormentors, from temptation by evildoers. He lifted up the brethren, assuring them, “We are God’s partner in matters of life and death.”

Like a great commissioning, in the 40 Days that followed the Religious Left was filled with the spirit, confidently spreading the word, pushing for—among other things—abortion funding as part of an eternally widening “social justice” agenda. The Religious Institute, which represents 4,800 clergy, urged Congress to include abortion funding in “healthcare” reform, adamantly rejecting amendments that prohibited funding. To not help poor women secure their reproductive rights was unjust, declared the progressive pastors. As the Rev. Debra Hafner, executive director of the Religious Institute, complained, federal policy already “unfairly prevents low-income women and federal employees from receiving subsidized” abortions.

Here we see the Religious Left’s continued perversion of “social justice.” Behold: social justice abortions.

Early last week, a group of 59 nuns sent Congress a letter urging passage of the healthcare bill. This came in direct defiance of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which insisted the bill “must be opposed” because of its refusal to explicitly ban abortion funding. What the bishops said didn’t matter, one nun told Fox’s Neil Cavuto—supporting the bill is what “Jesus would do.”

The liberal media cheered on the nuns, gleefully exaggerating the sisters’ influence. In a breathtaking display, the Los Angeles Times beamed, “Nuns’ support for health-care bill shows [Catholic] Church split.” Quoting the nuns, the Times reported that the letter represented not more than 50 nuns but over 50,000. (I’m not kidding, click here.) Like Jesus with the loaves, the militantly secular/liberal Times had displayed miraculous powers of multiplication.

Finally, last Friday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Roman Catholic, invoked the Solemnity of the Feast of St. Joseph on behalf of the healthcare bill. She urged American Catholics to “pray to St. Joseph”—earthly guardian of the unborn son of God. Such overtures are hardly new for Pelosi, who routinely exhorts Democratic disciples to vote the liberal/progressive agenda as an “act of worship.”

All of that is prelude, of course, to what happened the evening of March 21, 2010, A.D., with a rare vote not merely on a Sunday—God’s day—but the final Sunday in Lent, the week before Palm Sunday that initiates the Lord’s Passion. To President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and the Religious Left faithful, Jesus, presumably, has gotten his healthcare package.

Amid that process, secular liberals got religion, as their political soul-mates spearheaded this “change” in the name of Jesus Christ. It’s a quite radical departure from eight years of scourging George W. Bush every time he confessed he prayed. At long last, there is room for Jesus in the inn, so long as the Savior “supports” a certain agenda. Who says conversions don’t happen?

— Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. His books include “God and George W. Bush,” “God and Ronald Reagan,” and“God and Hillary Clinton.” The topic of this op-ed will be discussed at length by several speakers at our coming April 15-16 conference on “The Progressives.” Click here for more information.

Filed under: Religion, abortion, health care, politics by Warren - 11 Comments →

How to be organized without really looking organized.

This came today:

Friend –

All throughout August, our members of Congress are back in town. Insurance companies and partisan attack groups are stirring up fear with false rumors about the President’s plan, and it’s extremely important that folks like you speak up now.

So we’ve cooked up an easy, powerful way for you to make a big impression: Office Visits for Health Reform.

All this week, OFA members like you will be stopping by local congressional offices to show our support for insurance reform. You can have a quick conversation with the local staff, tell your personal story, or even just drop off a customized flyer and say that reform matters to you.

We’ll provide everything you need: the address, phone number, and open hours for the office, information about how the health care crisis affects your state for you to drop off (with the option of adding your personal story), and a step-by-step guide for your visit.

According to our records, you live near Sen. Arlen Specter’s office in Pittsburgh, PA.

Sign up now to visit Sen. Arlen Specter’s office in Pittsburgh this week.

(Not your representative, or think there might be another office that’s easier for you to get to? Click here to find a different office.)

As you’ve probably seen in the news, special interest attack groups are stirring up partisan mobs with lies about health reform, and it’s getting ugly. Across the country, members of Congress who support reform are being shouted down, physically assaulted, hung in effigy, and receiving death threats. We can’t let extremists hijack this debate, or confuse Congress about where the people stand.

Office Visits for Health Reform are our chance to show that the vast majority of American voters know that the cost of inaction is too high to bear, and strongly support passing health reform in 2009.

Don’t worry if you’ve never done anything like this before. The congressional staff is there to listen, and your opinion as a constituent matters a lot. And if you bring a friend, you’ll have more fun and make an even greater impact.

Click below to sign up for an Office Visit for Health Reform:

http://my.barackobama.com/OfficeVisit

Wherever you live, these visits matter: Many representatives are pushing hard toward reform, and they are taking a lot of heat from special interests. They deserve our thanks and need our support to continue the fight. But those who are still putting insurance companies and partisan point-scoring ahead of their constituents must know that voters are watching — and that we expect better.

Earlier this week, the President wrote that “this is the moment our movement was built for” and asked us all to commit to join at least one event this month. This is the way to answer that call, and rise to the challenge of this moment together.

Thank you for going the extra mile when it matters the most,

Mitch

Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America

When people opposed to the President’s health care reform plan show up to town hall meetings, they are minions of big insurance. When his supporters show up, they are constituents.

Please be sure to send this post to flag@whitehouse.gov

Filed under: abortion, health care, politics by Warren - 14 Comments →

I spent some time watching the House Energy and Commerce Committee consider a variety of proposed amendments to the House health care reform bill (HR 3200).

Several abortion related amendments were considered culminating in a dramatic reversal of an amendment offered by Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA). Pitts offered an amendment making it clear that no public funds were to be used for abortion as a consequence of the health care reform bill. Initially, this amendment passed the committee by a 31-27 vote. Oddly, pro-choice Democrat and chair of the committee, Henry Waxman (D-CA) voted in favor of the Pitts amendment. However, House rules allow the chair to reconsider an amendment if the chair originally voted in favor. Waxman then brought up the amendment for reconsideration and switched his vote, along with one other Democrat, plus one who did not vote before. Here’s how the AP told the story:

Abortion measure passes, then fails, in House
(AP) –
WASHINGTON — An anti-abortion amendment to a sweeping health overhaul bill was voted down in a House committee late Thursday — a dramatic reversal just hours after the measure initially was approved.

The amendment said health care legislation moving through Congress may not impose requirements for coverage of abortion, except in limited cases. It was approved in the Energy and Commerce Committee after conservative Democrats joined Republicans to support it.

But committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., invoked House rules that allowed him to bring up the amendment for a second vote, despite Republican objections.

This time, one conservative Democrat — Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee — changed his vote from “yes” to “no.” And a second conservative Democrat who hadn’t voted the first time — Rep. Zack Space of Ohio — voted “no.”

It was enough to take down the amendment on a 30-29 vote.

Prior to the first consideration, the House subcommittee consider the Capps amendment which supporters said would prohibit abortion with public funds. However, pro-life representatives expressed doubts that the amendment as worded would prevent the Secretary of Health & Human Services from allowing such abortions in the public health plan option. All pro-life groups opposed the Capps amendment. However, it passed 30-28.

The conscience clause amendment passed by a voice vote. The one allows pro-life health care providers to opt out of conducting abortions. If pro-life groups are correct about the ineffectiveness of the Capps amendment, and this bill is passed by House and Senate, the conscience clause will unfortunately be necessary.

Filed under: abortion, politics by Warren - 2 Comments →

Reid says health care reform won’t happen before the August recess.

From Politico:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said today that the Senate would not attempt to pass sweeping health care reform until after returning from the August recess.

“It’s better to get a product that’s based on quality and thoughtfulness than on trying to just get something through,” Reid told reporters.

What he said.

It will drag on a long time now, I suspect.

Might change the tone of this rally a bit…

Filed under: abortion, health care, politics by Warren - 4 Comments →

Eleven years ago, I wrote a brief history of health insurance for the Journal of Psychology and Christianity (“Managed care: It’s like deja vu all over again,” 1998, vol. 17, 131-141) as a part of special issue on managed behavioral health care.

I thought of that article this past week while reading various news reports about President Obama’s push to enact some version of health care/health insurance reform. I argued in that paper that managed care was one on many private sector arrangements designed in part to avoid government run national health insurance (NHI).

Obama says health care reform will lower costs, however, the Congressional Budget Office says reform as envisioned will spike the deficit by over 200 billion during the next decade.

For some reason, Democrats want us to believe this:

Democrats insisted the budget analysis ignores savings and Obama’s pledge not to add red ink to the federal ledger.

For about 100 years, the debate has come and gone. When a politician or anyone really says, buy now or else you lose your change, I worry. We needed the bailout now, we needed to bail out GM now, and now health reform now…

President Obama urged Congress yesterday to push past their growing doubts and pass a comprehensive health-care reform package this year, saying that a better opportunity to remake the nation’s health-care system may not arise for generations.

Here is more on the CBO estimates. If you can read this and believe the current plans will be cost neutral, then you have more faith than I do.

The concern I have at this point in history, is that the private sector seems to have rolled over and may expect that NHI is truly inevitable this go around. The hope to offset more federalization of health care probably rests with conservative Democrats and resistance to two main policy points: one, the increases to budget deficit as noted and two, the proposed inclusion of abortion in any federal plan.

Filed under: Professional issues, abortion, health care, mental health, politics by Warren - 10 Comments →

Ginsburg article wrap up regarding those “populations we don’t want to have too many of.”

World Magazine – Paul Kengor and I team up to discuss Ginsburg’s awareness of minority concerns regarding abortion and population control since at least the early 1970s.

Crosswalk – I take a little trip back to the 1970s and discuss the “population explosion.” Remember that? I grew up in Southern Ohio and remember thinking that we could get a lot more people in our neck of the woods. Also, there is a prophetic quote about health care from Richard Nixon in this piece.

Michael Gerson – Eugenics? Possibly; elitist and/or insensitive may better describe Ginsburg’s remarks.

Jonah Goldberg – Explores the question of eugenics.

Kurt Nimmo at Prison Planet has been all over this story and posts a You Tube video of PA’s Rep. Joe Pitts raising Ginsburg’s comments on the House floor. He also notes the connection of the Rockefeller family to modern eugenics.

On flip side, Andrew Sullivan takes Gerson to task for his contextual criticism. However, Sullivan provides no substantial exploration of Ginsburg’s remarks.

Filed under: Religion and sexuality, abortion, politics by Warren - 1 Comment →

In her remarks to Emily Bazelon, which I linked to on Sunday, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the following regarding Roe v. Wade, a feminist legal agenda and population control:

Q: If you were a lawyer again, what would you want to accomplish as a future feminist legal agenda?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.

Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

Except she wasn’t “altogether wrong” — at least she wasn’t wrong about Roe v. Wade being “set up for Medicaid funding” and population control. Surrounding late 1960s and through the 70s, there was much public debate about the “population explosion.” In 1965, Griswold v. Connecticut struck down a law banning contraceptives. This case helped to establish the right to privacy as based in the Constitution which, in turn, was basis for Roe v. Wade.

As an example of the zeitgeist of the time, here are some excerpts from the 1972 Rockefeller Commission Report on Population Growth and the American Future. The Commission recommended that

…present state laws restricting abortion be liberalized along the lines of the New York statute, such abortion to be performed on request by duly licensed physicians under conditions of medical safety. In carrying out this policy, the Commission recommends:

That federal, state, and local governments make funds available to support abortion services in states with liberalized statutes.

That abortion be specifically included in comprehensive health insurance benefits, both public and private.

Sarah Weddington, co-counsel with her husband Ron Weddington, submitted this report as a part of her brief supporting Roe. Ron Weddington’s views were more pointed. He wrote then President-elect Clinton in 1992 and advised the president-to-be that traditional Democratic programs would not be effective unless Clinton started “immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy, and poor segment of our country.” How did Weddington propose to implement this draconian suggestion? He wrote to Clinton:

No I’m not advocating some kind of mass extinction of these unfortunate people. Crime, drugs and disease are already doing that. The problem is that their numbers are not only replaced but increased by the birth of millions of babies to people who cannot afford to have babies.

There I’ve said it. It’s what we all know is true, but we only whisper it, because we are liberals who believe in individual rights, we view any programs which might treat the disadvantaged as discriminatory, mean-spirited and well…so Republican.

…government is going to have to provide vasectomies, tubal ligations and abortions…RU486 and conventional abortions.

Weddington ended his letter with more words of sympathy for the children of poor families—and the need to prevent their existence:

We don’t need more cannon fodder. We don’t need more parishioners. We don’t need more cheap labor. We don’t need more poor babies.

So where Ginsburg was altogether wrong was not in her understanding of one of the forces behind Roe v. Wade. Where she was wrong was in her understanding of the High Court in the subsequent decisions regarding public funding of abortion. In any case, Ginsburg has been a consistent champion of tax-payer funding for abortions, even when she thought one purpose of Roe was to curb growth of “populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

For Weddington such a policy seemed to be “discriminatory, mean-spirited and well…so Republican.” However, Ginsburg views public financing of abortion as a way to reduce, what she perceives as, gender discrimination. Which is it?

One thing seems sure. The issue of public abortion funding is as current as now. Yesterday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee rejected a bid by GOP Senators to eliminate abortion as a benefit in any government subsidized health reform package. If abortion as a benefit survives, then it will no doubt be challenged in the courts, eventually reaching the Supreme Court.

Justice Ginsburg is ready.

Filed under: Religion and sexuality, abortion, politics by Warren - 5 Comments →