Babies or Fetus?

Which ones to throw under the bus?

A number of Republican senators attacked an agreement reached between Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Senate Democratic leaders Saturday, saying it would lead to the eventual reversal of more than 30 years of federal law banning abortion funding. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oka.) said it is “absolutely fictitious” that there is an anti-abortion provision in the Senate Democrats’ reworked healthcare reform bill. “The negotiations, whoever did them, threw unborn babies under the bus,” Coburn said.

From here.

It appears that the clusterfuck mêlée unfolding in the US Senate (or is it Congress?) around legislation to reform the parameters of US healthcare has been distilled to this.

On one side, The Fetus©™ fetishists - Repubs and Dems alike - who are taking their marching orders from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops lobby.

On the other, those who appear to be more concerned about the survival of babies born, the availability of medical care to pregnant women, and their families. The recent World Economic Forum analyzed a number of gender indicators in order to measure for example, differences access to healthcare differences between the sexes. Antonia Zerbesias demonstrates why this is important.

For the record, Canada ranks No. 25 on all these measures, while the US is No. 31. Tops in the world is Iceland, followed by the usual line-up of northern European countries, Finland, Norway, Sweden. As for the bottom of the list, let's just say you don't want to be a woman in Yemen.

But let's cut straight to the maternal mortality chase, which those ''pro-lifers'' focus on. Not only do "weak healthcare systems not prioritize women's health,'' there is evidence that the number of skilled healthcare workers available to support women through pregnancy, delivery and post-natal care had everything to do with women's survival. The women who die, die of "severe bleeding, infection, hypertension'' and then ''complications from unsafe abortion.'' About 20 per cent of maternal deaths are related to diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS -- and then there's women's inability to get decent nourishment.

From here.

So let's be clear on who exactly who gets thrown under the bus if healthcare is not reformed in the US. Yup, yup, you betcha! Women and children - considered by those rabidly opposed to abortions as mere "Gestational Support Units" and "Not-Fetuses".

More teabaggers', assorted rightwing religious zealots' and stupid attention-mongers' indecent repurposing and/or spoliage of respected aphorisms, check out Boris' post at The Galloping Beaver.

Two exemplary & MASSIVE smack-downs.

There are times when someone writes with clarity, precision and genuine emotion about political issues that have been muddled with the truthiness, the faux-outrage and the diversionary tactics of rightwing, fundamentalist religious and so-Con zealots.

Here, for example:

Matters of social ethics, especially when tainted by religion, often finds matters of substance being sacrificed in the name of symbolism. This is nowhere more true than in the matter of abortion which is back on the public stage once again through health care reform. No one is actually "pro-abortion" though most people in the Western world believe that every woman should have the right to make decisions about her own reproductive life.

[...] if we restrict insurance coverage of abortion services then which abortions are being stopped? Obviously, the only women who lose choice are the poor who cannot pay for an abortion. Stupak returns us to the days before Roe v. Wade when the daughters of the rich and the middle class were forced to take a three-day trip to Europe when they wanted to terminate a pregnancy.

Catholic bishops join arms with conservative politicians and force upon the public legislation which, and don't kid yourself about it, it only means, "We impose a burden upon poor women which we would not dream of imposing on the middle and upper class." Otherwise, why wouldn't they be discussing making it illegal to get an abortion at all, arresting women of means in the airport when they returned from France or Spain after exercising their "choice?" Because, if they impose these standards on their own members you would find a lot of politicians, Catholic bishops and evangelical preachers working the drive-through windows at local fast food restaurants. They can be high and mighty forcing the poor to be ethical for them but they would never accept such regulation of their own family or constituency. This is the hypocrisy of choosing symbolic action over substance.

Bravo, pastor Roger Ray of Springfield, Missouri.

And then there is Boris at The Galloping Beaver, armed with an aim and a heart so true and fierce. To the ReformaTories he says: ...

the Geneva Conventions do not exist so we're nice the the enemy. They are not about the goddamned enemy. They are not 'soft' or 'weak' vestiges of some liberal ideal. They're not about the enemy. They exist to protect us. They are not about the enemy. They give legitimacy to our claims of unfair treatment when our soldiers are captured, and legitimacy to our cause when say we are better than those we fight. They protect us because they ensure that we live by our own standards. Contrary to the sadistic views of some, this is not some of unmanly deficiency on our part; this is holding ourselves to the standard our own free and peaceful society demands. ...

You cheered torture; you praised throwing out the rules when swarthy people became the national enemy . You elected politicians who felt the same, and you failed to take a stand when you saw us failing ourselves by ignoring th rules that serve to protect the members of the armed forces you claim to worship so bloody much. You said fuck-you to the fight for the very set of encoded righteousness and decency that thousands of cenotaphs and memorials across the country inscribed with "Lest we forget" are built to recall.

You forgot alright. You forgot the ONE lesson of two world wars, tens of millions of innocent dead, the standard behind the establishment of traditions of rights and democracy, and the core of most of the world's religions. If you cannot recall this lesson, get the fuck off our planet because you have no place in the world we're trying to build. We have no use for your moral cowardice here.

Amen.