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Abortion Industry Worried About "Trig Palin Effect"

September 11, 2008 |

Meet Dr. Andre Lalonde. Andre is a Canadian doctor who is concerned that Sarah Palin's decision to give birth to her son Trig (the one with Down syndrome), may have negative consequences on Canadian women. What consequences, exactly? That instead of aborting 90% of the time, women may actually feel strong enough to go through with the pregnancy and care for the child, and "thereby reduce the number of abortions." Oh no!

Andre offers more insight into just how much having Down babies worries him:
[Dr. Lalonde] worries that Palin's now renowned decision may cause abortions in Canada to decline as other women there and elsewhere opt to follow suit.

He says not every woman is prepared to deal with the consequences of Down babies, who have developmental delays, some physical difficulties and often a shortened lifespan.

Wider use of blood screening and amniocentesis during pregnancies can now accurately predict the presence of Down syndrome.

Lalonde says his primary concern is that women have the...choice of abortion and that greater public awareness of women making choices like Palin to complete a pregnancy and give birth to their genetically-abnormal baby could be detrimental and confusing to the women and their families.
What sort of doctor looks at the Palins' situation and says "The worry is that this will have an implication for abortion issues in Canada"? The Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Canada, of which Lalonde is the executive vice president, has tried to recover its credibility after these statements, but according to Carly Weeks of Canada's Globe and Mail, doctors in Canada routinely give "messages of fear" to parents upon learning they will give birth to a Down syndrome baby. She writes:
Members of Canada's Down syndrome community say that many of the country's medical professionals only give messages of fear to parents who learn their baby will be born with the genetic condition.

"It's very dark," said Krista Flint, executive director of the Canadian Down Syndrome Society. "They hear a lot about the medical conditions that are sometimes associated with Down syndrome. They hear about the burden ... it places on children and a marriage.
From the same article, on the subject of Dr. Lalonde's comments:
As a vocal opponent of abortion, Ms. Palin's widely discussed decision to keep her baby, knowing he would be born with the condition, may inadvertently influence other women who may lack the necessary emotional and financial support to do the same, according to Andre Lalonde...

Dr. Lalonde said that above all else, women must be free to choose, and that popular messages to the contrary could have detrimental effects on women and their families.
Forgive me if I'm being grandiose, but doesn't this speak rather loudly against Canada's socialized health care system? This essentially eugenics via abortion, except instead of attempting to create a "master race" like oh, I don't know...the Nazis - the good doctor is just looking out for the Canadian government, whose health care system is already in shambles. It doesn't take the vice president of an OBGYN society to figure out that the socialist system will be further burdened if more special needs children are born.

And if you think the eugenics comparison is a bit of a stretch, allow me to remind you that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was an advocate of negative eugenics - the goal of intentionally lowering fertility among the genetically "disadvantaged." Here were some insights she managed to pass on before her death in the 1960s:
"The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."
Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.

"Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race."
Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. Page 12.

"[Our objective is] unlimited sexual gratification without the burden of unwanted children..."
Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.
With that last quote, Sanger crystallized the difference between pro-lifers and many people on the left. One crowd sees such children are burdens - the other sees them as blessings.

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Canadian Health Care System "in Crisis"

June 26, 2008 |

Ever heard of Claude Castonguay? Claude fathered the single-payer system in Quebec that locked out all private insurance. This is the same system that U.S. advocates of nationalized health care love to cite as a romantic Socialist success story.

Better not plan the honeymoon just yet, as the architect of this plan (now a proponent of private insurance) is admitting that the system is in ruins. And no, he wasn't bought out by "health care lobbyists."
Back in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.

Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in "crisis."

"We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: "We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice."
This comes as no surprise. Nationalizing something like health care limits the available resources, which drives down the quality and the quantity of services. There is no competition and no incentive for investment, only a weighty regulation scheme. These are problems no government can spend (ahem, tax) its way out of.

What does Claude suggest? He is urging "for the legalization of private health insurance." What an idea! Because all medical facilities are owned by the government, he is recommending the space be leased to private physicians and care-giving companies to increase the amount of services available to Canadians. Remember Hillary's sob story about the woman "forced" to give birth in a subway tunnel? How about this anecdote:

Sick with ovarian cancer, Sylvia de Vires, an Ontario woman afflicted with a 13-inch, fluid-filled tumor weighing 40 pounds, was unable to get timely care in Canada. She crossed the American border to Pontiac, Mich., where a surgeon removed the tumor, estimating she could not have lived longer than a few weeks more.

The Canadian government pays for U.S. medical care in some circumstances, but it declined to do so in de Vires' case for a bureaucratically perfect, but inhumane, reason: She hadn't properly filled out a form.
Today, Canadians whose needs can't be addressed in a timely manner are actually crossing the border and spending their own money, or that of Canada's tax-payers, on doctors in America - you know, the country that has the one of the worst health care systems in the world? Got anything to say on the subject, Mr. Moore?

According to the article, "Since the spring of 2006, Ontario's government has sent at least 164 patients to New York and Michigan for neurosurgery emergencies — defined by the Globe and Mail newspaper as 'broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or around the brain.'"

I present to you this graph of waiting times for basic surgical procedures in Ontario, with data from the Canada Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care:

(Click for full-size)

The article also mentions that Americans are "desperately unhappy" with their system of health care, and quotes Barack Obama on the issue of a single-payer system similar to Canada's:

Polls show Americans are desperately unhappy with their system and a government solution grows in popularity. Neither Sen. Obama nor Sen. McCain is explicitly pushing for single-payer health care, as the Canadian system is known in America.

"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer health care program," Obama said back in the 1990s. Last year, Obama told the New Yorker that "if you're starting from scratch, then a single-payer system probably makes sense."
You want nationalized health care? Go to Cuba. Just don't come limping back to Uncle Sam when your new doctor is too busy playing dominos on the hood of a '62 Chevy to perform your MRI.

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Canada: Get Cancer, Get Deported

June 11, 2008 |

I would love for Americans in favor of Canadian-style "universal" health care to explain the case of Juana Tejada in Canada. In an effort to save the government money, Canada has attempted to attract foreigners to fill positions as live-in caregivers. A few years after her arrival (legally, mind you), Tejada became sick with cancer and was apparently no longer valuable enough to the Canadian government to treat.

Above: Just remember, for those of you the government
deems worthy of treatment, it's free!

She is being deported, cancer cells and all, even though one of the terms of her service as a nanny was a "gateway to permanent residency." According to the Toronto Star, Tejada has been denied a chance to stay because "her illness puts a burden on the health-care system." Her immigration lawyer had a few choice words:

"Juana has respected and followed all of our laws to the letter. If not for her cancer, she would have already been a permanent resident and realized her dream...while it may be legal, I don't think it's right. It would be manifestly inhumane."

Yet in America, there are those of you who would attest that those who aren't in favor of nationalizing our health care industry simply "don't care" about people who lack health insurance -- that their position stems from a lack of "compassion" for those without coverage. Of course, compassionate liberals love to look at problems on the micro by bringing up any sob story they can muster.

"I once met a man from a small mining town, and he told me that because of my opponent's policies, this Thanksgiving he was forced to choose between feeding his family and treating his Lyme disease."

"In my travels across this great country, I met a woman from Clarksville, Virginia who told me that because of job losses in her town, she couldn't afford groceries and was forced to eat her pet snake, followed by her own eyeballs."

Where is their compassion for people like Juana, who was simply brushed aside because the system (ahem, government) couldn't be "burdened?" This is yet another illustration of how conservatives think liberals are foolish (but still well-meaning), while liberals think conservatives are wickedly evil mustache-twirling villians, content with the fact that "47 million Americans are without health insurance," just so long as their shares of Exxon-Mobile are doing fine.

Michael Millenson, a columnist for the Washington Post, is one of those liberals. A proponent of "universal health care," he writes:

"Despite much media hand-wringing on the subject, most of us give about as much thought to those who lack health coverage as we do to soybean subsidies.The major obstacle to change? Those of us with insurance simply don't care very much about those without it."

To Michael, I submit a passage from Frederic Bastiat's The Law:

Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.

Conservatives do care about the sick, which is why they don't want to turn their care over to the same government who spent 42 million dollars not on stimulus checks, but rather on letters informing taxpayers that "the check is in the mail."

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You Got a License For That...Fag?

February 19, 2008 |

Health England, a government health advisory body in the UK, is pushing for the introduction of a "smoker's license," which would require those wanting to buy tobacco products to pay £10 for a permit to do so. The chairman of Health England, Julian Le Grand, has said the plan would "make a big difference to the number of people giving up smoking."

Since when is it the government's responsibility to try and get people to quit smoking? Since the introduction of government health care. So while tobacco taxation is at record levels, smokers are essentially being taxed yet again.

The chairman continued:

"You've got to get a form, a complex form - the government's good at complex forms; you have got to get a photograph. 70% of smokers actually want to stop smoking. So if you just make it that little bit more difficult for them to actually re-start or even to start in the first place, yes I think it will make a big difference."

Smoker's rights advocate Simon Clark warned that the government advisor pushing the plan forward is "not only adding to the red tape and bureaucracy we already have in this country...he is openly bragging that he wants to make the form as complex as possible to fill in."

He added, "We are becoming not just a nanny state but a bully state."

Now come on. Everyone knows smoking is bad for you, so why not make it illegal altogether? If we don't want people smoking, isn't it as simple as outlawing tobacco? Where does this stop? Alcohol kills more people annually and is responsible for more crime than almost all illegal drugs combined. Should we require a permit to drink beer, wine, or liquor?

When was the last time you heard of someone abusing their children because they smoked too many cigarettes? What about a license to eat junk food? Maybe Britons can offset eating all those crisps by purchasing "Carb-Credits." Al Gore, are you reading this?

When the government is in the business of health, your health becomes the government's business. And that includes control over what you eat, drink, smoke, swallow, snort, or inject. Personal liberty means the freedom to choose what you do with your body, and to make your own decisions, good or bad. After all, you're the one paying to take care of yourself, right?

Oh that's right, you aren't -- it's free! Too bad you can no longer say the same about yourself.

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