Fitzwater’s Pro-death Platform

At just a few minutes before noon on Tuesday, President Obama signed the hotly contested Health Reform Bill that has consumed the attention of most of the country for months now.
In celebration of this historic event, I want to simply say, welcome to my world of delays and what I like to call afterthought services. Yes, welcome to the same red tape, back of the bus treatment that Vets and those receiving Medicaid and Medicare have been saddled with for years and years. Welcome my brothers and sisters, have a seat and learn patience. Unless you are very wealthy or a member of the House or Senate.
Now, I have nothing against providing healthcare for the citizens of this country. In fact, I honestly believe that the words “promote the general Welfare” in the preamble to the Constitution of the United States means to promote the general welfare. Ensuring the good health of the citizens would be promoting the general welfare wouldn’t it? But the healthcare debate hasn’t been and isn’t now about healthcare, it’s about access and insurance.
That simple distinction has been ignored in the national press, at the protests and on the floor of the House because that is how government works.
Still, all things considered, this exercise in civics we have witnessed, if nothing else, has educated the citizenry about just how back-door-dirty the process of making laws really is. It’s not what we learned from Schoolhouse Rock and it’s not what our elected officials want us to know. You see, we become dangerous to Big Politics when we get educated about how things really work.
As for me, the one thing that really ticked me off the most about this process wasn’t the threatened reconciliation process, that wasn’t needed after all, or the filibustering because both parties use those processes all the time. No, it was the hypocrisy of those Democrats that at first said they were standing on a Pro-life platform and that unless the abortion language was cleaned up they wouldn’t vote yes. But they were quick to switch their votes on the word of the President that he would issue an executive order to prohibit federal funding for abortion that wouldn’t be worth the paper it was printed on. Executive orders cannot trump law. This, they seemed to feel, would satisfy both their party (who wanted their yes vote) and their constituents (who wanted a no vote.) Of course, some of them still voted no after waiting to vote until the magic number of 216 votes were achieved. That’s called having it both ways.
These worms are a perfect example of the outright lie the whole Pro-life v. Pro-choice argument has become, and really always has been.
I wish I had gotten his name during all the sound bytes on Sunday, but one elected official gave the truest definition of Pro-life I have ever heard when he said “life begins at conception and ends at natural death.” I’ll say it again, “conception to natural death.”
Given that definition, I feel quite comfortable saying that all other Pro-life/Pro-choice positions are hypocritical. You see, you can’t call yourself Pro-life if you believe in the death penalty because folks on death row do not choose to die an unnatural death and you can’t call yourself Pro-choice if you believe in abortion because a fetus can’t make a choice to live or die. Both those lives are taken or given by others, not by God or natural selection. I have never understood how exactly Conservatives and Liberals can justify their particular group’s positions on this topic when their positions on those issues are in conflict.
As for me, well I guess I would have to call myself Pro-death. You see I believe that there are times when abortion is the correct answer, such as when a mother’s life is in danger or a child will be born in such terrible condition that it can’t survive. Those folks who know me know that the only smart thing I think Bill Clinton ever said was that “abortions should be legal, safe and rare.”
On the other side of the coin, I believe that there are some people who are so vile and so evil that they need to be taken into a field and shot dead and left to feed the coyotes, rather than remain a drain on resources that could be funneled to childrens’ homes. Those folks are murderers, rapists, child molesters and certain white-collar criminals that completely ruin lives, just so there is no confusion as to whom I’m talking about.
Maybe that is too simplistic a way to look at such complex issues, and I know that there are anomalies in any given situation, but it’s a base to stand on and one I’m comfortable with.