Opinion: Health Care Must Protect and Include our Youngest Neighbors!

During his campaign the President Elect often reminded us we "are our brother's (and sister's) keeper". We must insist that includes our littlest neighbors.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Catholic Online) - In one of many unique approaches to his new administrations' plans for governance, President Elect Obama has begun an effort to enact sweeping health care reform in America. The "Transition Health Policy Team" of what can best be called an "administration in waiting" has called for "input and ideas from their friends, family, and communities" on how to reform the delivery of health care to all Americans.The President Elect asks that social gatherings occur in homes and neighborhoods throughout America over the Holiday season. The communication team of the administration in waiting is utilizing the resources of the virtual and viral community of the World Wide Web to make it possible for people to sign up to host such gatherings. The report on this massive effort can be found on http://www.change.gov where the President Elect and his new governing team are communicating regularly.

In this recent communication the new administration also announced that Senator Tom Daschle is the leader of this effort. He has been nominated by the President Elect to be the Secretary of Health and Human Service and is expected to easily secure confirmation in the new Congress. Senator Daschle will attend one of these meetings himself, reporting back to President Elect Obama with a kind of "man on the Street" video, complete with testimonials. Speaking at a health care summit in Colorado on Friday, December 5, 2008, Sen. Daschle made the importance of this health care reform initiative clear and asked for Americans to send the President Elect their stories saying "...We have to make this as inclusive a process as possible....what we want to do now is to move to a discussion across the country...We want your exact ideas."

Senator Daschle's seriousness is underscored by the massive effort of the Obama Administration to use this virtual input mechanism, honed to perfection during his campaign, as a tool for governance. Such comfort with - and savvy use of - internet resources was characteristic of the Obama team's Grass Roots strategy during the campaign. The internet is not an "add on" to the leaders of this "administration in waiting". No, it is what it is in reality, and what it has become for so many of us, an extension of our life together, and a virtual community. It helped the President Elect to secure the White House and this new effort signals his intention to use it's "dis-intermediating" potential to prevent his health care reform effort from being stalled by the old school lobbying style entrenched in the Political infrastructure inside the beltway. "These health care community discussions are a great way for the American people to have a direct say in our health care reform efforts" noted Daschle in the message on the change.gov site.

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The President Elect issued a statement on Friday saying "In order for us to reform our health care system, we must first begin reforming how government communicates with the American people...These Health Care Community Discussions are a great way for the American people to have a direct say in our health reform efforts." In addition, the Senator called the "Liberal Lion" Edward ("Ted") Kennedy announced on Friday that he will resign his seat on the Judiciary Committee. He will focus exclusively on health care reform, a cause he has been devoted to for most of his career. Senator Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in May. He issued a statement for the Press yesterday which said "As chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, I expect to lead a very full agenda in the next Congress, including working with President Obama to guarantee affordable health care, at long last, for every American... This is the opportunity of a lifetime, and I intend to make the most of it."

In short, major health care "change" is coming to America. Now the real question is whether we help to shape it or stand on the sidelines and criticize it. The question for all who know the truth that children in the womb are human persons - and that they are our neighbors - is whether we will fight to protect them, and their mothers and fathers, from the continuing lie that abortion is ever "health care" and that the killing of innocent human life can ever be properly called a "reproductive service". Medical science confirms what our conscience and the Natural Law has long confirmed, every procured abortion is the intentional taking of innocent human life. We have to ask ourselves what we will do to ensure that the taking of innocent human life by suction, surgical intervention, and chemical warfare on the womb is not considered a part of any definition of "health care" or "reproductive services" in this new effort.

Further, we must insist that our smallest neighbors, children in the first home of the whole human race, be included in this health care reform allowing for all of the extraordinary breakthroughs of medical care and surgical care for children in the womb to be included as well. During his campaign, the President Elect often reminded us we "are our brother's (and sister's) keeper". We must insist that the American community includes our littlest neighbors. This is a solidarity issue Mr. President Elect!

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Those of us in the Pro-Life community are actually Americans of every political persuasion, Democrat, Republican, Independent, Third Party and no political Party. There is no doubt that we have been marginalized at times by those who want to label us in order to defeat our fundamental human rights claim. Were our political, economic, social and policy positions on many issues to be isolated, we would encompass those on the "left", the "right" and all in between. We are "liberal", "conservative" and all of the gradations in between, including the hyphenated versions so popular in contemporary political parlance. Some of us hold deep religious convictions and some of us hold none. However, we are all "Persons for Life" and we must now join together to influence this effort on that fundamental ground. That ground is where we must now stake our claim to ensuring authentic freedom and true solidarity for this Nation.

What we have in common is that as Americans we are committed to the fundamental principles which informed the American experiment in ordered liberty, the chief of which is a belief in the existence of inalienable rights which are endowed by a Creator and not granted by any civil authority. They are, in an intended order, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We must participate in this effort! The President Elect promised to hear the voices of all Americans. We must make ours heard now by shouting out that the first and fundamental right, among all those delineated by our founders, is the right to life. All other rights depend upon it. When it is placed at risk, the entire infrastructure of human rights is also placed in jeopardy. We must come together with a new clarity of conviction and resolve in our shared opposition to the taking of innocent human life at every moment of its existence, from conception, throughout all of life and up to and including natural death.

Calling the Pro-Life Community to Participate and Protect Health Care which includes our youngest neighbors!

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