#352 Gorsuch, Health Care, Comedy - March 17, 2017
Hearings Next Week Senate hearings for US Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch are scheduled to start on Monday, March 20. Here’s where he stands on our issues; we’ll be watching the hearings to see if more details come. ∞ It’s not clear where he stands on abortion. He did rule for Hobby Lobby in their conscientious objection to covering abortifacients in their insurance. While favoring conscientious objection is admirable, it doesn’t necessarily mean one shares the convictions of the objector, nor that one supports conscientious objection to other kinds of violence. ∞ There’s not much on the web about rulings related to the military and war.
Photos: left, Gorsuch book; right, we demonstrate at the US Supreme Court
∞ It’s very well known where he stands on euthanasia. He’s written an entire book on it: The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia. Rachel MacNair read it, and recommends it as a thorough discussion to anyone interested in legal philosophy and case law; it makes a lengthy case for many of the points we made in our blog post on the topic. He ends up arguing a position against private persons killing others, but never says if unborn babies are covered by this. He explicitly says he’s not covering the death penalty or war, because those are government-authorized kinds of killing, so involve different legal issues. ∞ His rulings in capital cases imply favoring the death penalty.
Health Care Many of the arguments over current proposals in the US Congress for health care reform have to do with whether policy is sound. We comment only on those aspects related to killing: ∞ Much as we’re pleased with the proposed idea of defunding taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood, one longstanding pro-life argument for doing so has involved redirecting funds to community health centers and other Medicaid providers. Any new plan that offers less money to those centers or Medicaid is not only wrong for low-income women, but hands Planned Parenthood supporters a public-relations advantage in making their case. ∞ In current plans, there appear to be fewer services available for prenatal care and childbirth services. If so, this is toxic for abortion prevention. ∞ Since several states have legalized assisted suicide, anything making health services less available for the terminally ill or the disabled can have immediately lethal consequences.
Again, Comedy Humanizes Unborn Children Seth Meyers in a segment on his show on March 13, 2017 [starting at minute 9:10], after deriding Jason Chaffetz’ remark about how low-income people should buy health insurance instead of iPhones, covered a congressman who said one insurance mandate he objected to was men paying for prenatal care. Meyers responded: “Yeah, why should men pay for prenatal care? For that matter, why should women? Prenatal care is for the fetuses. Fetuses should pay for it. They’ll just have to give up their precious iPhones.”
We previously covered another instance of Meyers humanizing a child, and a Conan O’Brien skit.
Latest CL Blog Rob Arner speaks of his personal experience as a misfit in a two-sided world: “On Being a Consistent Chimera.”
Quotation of the Week Campaign brochure against a referendum to legalize abortion in Michigan, October 1972 (the referendum was defeated) Michigan was the first state in America to outlaw the death penalty for criminals. Proposal B would legalize the death penalty for thousands of unborn babies.
Responses/News tips/Questions to share are all welcome.
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