I do not oppose some solution to assure everyone has reasonable access to health care. I have not been convinced that the national health care plan [Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)] is the answer. When something that sweeping and all-inclusive is adopted all sorts of things “slip in” that are concerning. Here is one example:
A laudable component of PPACA is the emphasis on prevention. It makes sense. If you can prevent sickness or injury that is better than having to treat it when it occurs. It is clear that policy makers have a wide tent under which they classify maladies that can be prevented. One of those odd inclusions is pregnancy.
On August 1, 2011 the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) established new guidelines calling for the PPACA to include free access to contraception under insurance plans. You can view the press release here.
I am not opposed to contraception. I have and continue to write on its rightful place within marriage. I have published articles on the Christian Life Resources (CLR) website which can be viewed here. I also wrote a small informational guide on the topic which is sold through the CLR store website called Family Treasures and Gifts. I am presently wrapping up an extensive effort in publishing a new book on the topic and a companion informational guide. Again, I do not oppose contraception.
What I do oppose, however, is classifying pregnancy as if it should be considered a preventable disease. But, that is how HHS has approached it by saying it is a preventative health measure to make insurance companies pay for contraception costs.
OK – we can leave it right there and already be incensed over this callous and insensitive attitude about pregnancy. But like most things, the ramifications run much deeper.
When HHS announced its judgment that PPACA includes coverage for contraception it was adopting a report released a few weeks earlier by the Institute of Medicine (IOM). You can get a feel for what they do off of the Wikipedia entry here or you can go right to the IOM website.
The IOM report, Clinical Preventive Services for Women: Closing the Gaps, raises the bar of preventive services to include prenatal tests for “genetic or developmental conditions” (page 133). Now – to ask the time-honored Lutheran question: “What Does This Mean?”
In the “old, old days” prenatal testing was the diagnostic effort to ascertain challenges in the developing pregnancy so corrective measures can be taken to protect both the life of the mother and of the child.
Then, in the “old days” (right after Roe v. Wade in 1973) prenatal testing became known as a “search and destroy mission.” The intent of the testing was to see if the developing child in the womb would be anything less than “normal.” If so, testing would reveal it and a mother would or could make a decision to abort her child.
So, under new health care directives, insurance companies must pay for this testing. No longer is prenatal testing focused on protecting both patients – the mother and her unborn child. This new “free service,” paid for by insurance companies, reclassifies the disabled as something dangerously parasitic and harmful – worthy of extermination.
On the Christian Life Resources website I have published articles talking about the eugenics mentality that morphed into the atrocities under Nazi Germany. The reclassification of people as “useless eaters” led to their annihilation.
Today the eugenic spirit is alive and well. The process is sanitized and made to sound sophisticated and even necessary for the good of others. In the end those who may require more love are eliminated, presumable so we can spend that leftover love on ourselves.
One is left to ask, “What’s next?” or perhaps “Who’s next?”
