Culture Wars: Does the Left Value Money over Life?

Several  times on this blog, I have mentioned that Conservatives tend to view each life as a blessing, while the left seems to view humanity as a burden.  For the left, each life is another mouth to feed, another body to clothe and house, another brain to indoctrinate, and otherwise, just another number in the system.  Since the left views all life as something that they must manage and control, it’s easy to see their logic emerge in their various statements and actions on the subject.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg discussed her thoughts on abortion, and more specifically, public fundoing for abortion last year.

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. (Emphasis added)

Margaret Sanger, the founder of what is now called Planned Parenthood, also thought that there were certain people that we needed to have less of…

“We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

So then, should we be surprised that Planned Parenthood “over-serves” certain populations, and tends to locate their clinics in neighborhoods of a certain demographic composition?

Percentage of US population that is African American:

13.4% of the US population, or 40.9 million persons.

Mmkay, let’s look at the percentage of abortions performed on African American women:

This 13.4% has 35.5% of all abortions.

So then, who exactly belongs to the “…populations that we don’t want to have too many of???”

Earlier this week, Bart Stupak revealed that in conversations with Henry Waxman, it was discussed that having public funding for abortion would mean that there would be less people, and therefore, less cost to the health care system.

“If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” the congressman stated in an interview published March 12. “Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue – come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we’re talking about.”

Mind you, Stupak is no Conservative.  He would vote for ObamaCare if it would ban public funding for abortion.

More recently, NewsBusters ran a story about some of Rosie O’Donnell comments that are along the same lines.

Given recent liberal statements disparaging having children, it’s easier to understand left-wing opposition to a pro-life amendment to the health care reform bill. Just one day after Rosie O’Donnell essentially stated that public funding of abortion would solve the problem of paying for “all of the unwanted kids and the half-million of them in foster care,” she disparaged the QuiverFull movement as “even scarier” when she found it was made up of conservative evangelical Christians.

Now, let’s just forget about the Christian bashing (at least for now), as that is nothing more than the bulbous lefty’s competing religion (either self worship, or statism, flip a coin).  I think the real clue here is the “progressive” view of human life.  In each of these examples, “progressives” seem to believe that they somehow have the right to judge the value of individual lives.  Some do it for racial or sociological reasons, others for financial ones.  In the end, what are we to expect when they finally get control of the health care system?  Perhaps Ezekiel Emanuel, health care adviser to the White House, can shed some light on the beliefs of the administration…

This civic republican or deliberative democratic conception of the good provides both procedural and substantive insights for developing a just allocation of health care resources. Procedurally, it suggests the need for public forums to deliberate about which health services should be considered basic and should be socially guaranteed. Substantively, it suggests services that promote the continuation of the polity-those that ensure healthy future generations, ensure development of practical reasoning skills, and ensure full and active participation by citizens in public deliberations-are to be socially guaranteed as basic. Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.

“Many have linked the effort to reduce the high cost of death with the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. One commentator observed: “Managed care and managed death [through physician-assisted suicide] are less expensive than fee-for-service care and extended survival. Less expensive is better.” Some of the amicus curiae briefs submitted to the Supreme Court expressed the same logic: “Decreasing availability and increasing expense in health care and the uncertain impact of managed care may intensify pressure to choose physician-assisted suicide” and “the cost effectiveness of hastened death is as undeniable as gravity. The earlier a patient dies, the less costly is his or her care.”

So, if cost and “desirability” are criteria for who lives and who dies, and the “progressives” reserve the right to themselves to decide who lives and who dies, will we be surprised when the government, at some point will do as the POTUS suggests; instead of having the expensive procedure, just take the “pain pill?”

In the end, our “progressives” are no better than other totalitarians.  They reserve for themselves to control the means of production, the flow of information to the masses, what we can eat, where we can live, where we can work, how much we can be paid, how much of that pay we can keep, and when we will die.  Obama voters, is this what you signed all of us up for?