Rick Santorum has noted many times on the campaign trail that the reason he decided to run for president, primarily, was because of Obamacare which, among other things, will ration care for disabled children and the elderly. The fact that rationing will occur under Obamacare is not really disputed. Even the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has used the term “death panels” in reference to the Democrats’ plans for healthcare in America. This, despite the fact that Sarah Palin was criticized by the Left for using that term. Rick Santorum, like Sarah Palin, has a disabled child and he wants to make sure that other children like her are protected from that large-scale rationing. Nevertheless, Salon has decided to run an article claiming that Rick Santorum’s policy on healthcare is one that would kill children. The writer advances at least a couple of falsehoods to make this claim.
If Rick Santorum had his way, I wouldn’t have been able to get that test, and she most likely would have died. Because according to him, tests that give parents vital information about the health of their unborn children are morally wrong.
The test she is referring to is an amniocentesis test. This is what Rick Santorum actually said.
“People have the right to do it, but to have the government force people to provide it free, to me, is a bit loaded,” he said.
The former Pennsylvania senator was arguing against what he called a mandate in the health care legislation passed by President Barack Obama and Democrats in 2010. He said Saturday at an appearance in Ohio that the law was intended to increase abortions and reduce overall health care costs.
“One of the mandates is they require free prenatal testing in every insurance policy in America,” Santorum, a conservative Roman Catholic, told a Christian Alliance luncheon in Columbus. “Why? Because it saves money in health care. Why? Because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and therefore less care that has to be done, because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society.”
Those are not the words of someone who believes giving parents information is “morally wrong” nor of someone who wants to kill children. Rather, they are the words of someone who wants to save children. Further, he does well to use the term “loaded” defined thusly:
(of a word, statement, or argument) charged with emotional or associative significance that hinders rational or unprejudiced consideration of the terms involved in a discourse.
In other words, people may accept a mandate for prenatal testing while not realizing the very serious implications (the “unprejudiced considerations”) of that for disabled children, when it is mandated on a large scale in the real world.
From the Christian Post:
An obstetrician-gynecologist confirmed on Monday Rick Santorum’s claim that amniocentesis, a type of prenatal test used to detect Down syndrome, most often leads to aborting the fetus if the genetic disorder is detected.
“What prenatal care has developed into is a search and destroy mission,” said Dr. Gene Rudd, who is also senior vice president of Christian Medical & Dental Associations.
At this time in our country’s history, mandating coverage for amniocentesis would result in large scale direct killing of children deemed “unworthy” of life. So, our choice here is really between Obama’s way, which would establish a system of government that funds, with taxpayer dollars, a nationwide search and destroy mission, or Santorum’s way where the federal government takes a back seat on this and which may result in some rare, unfortunate cases where children may potentially die of natural causes if families, churches and civic organizations fail to step up to the plate and help people in need.
I prefer Santorum’s way to Obama’s way, and it is my hope that families, churches and civic organizations do step up to the plate and help people like the woman who makes the ludicrous claim that Rick Santorum would have killed her child.
