National Right to Life Releases Report, "The Affordable Care Act and Health Care Access in the United States"

From the National Right to Life Committee: 

“THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT AND HEALTH CARE ACCESS
IN THE UNITED STATES”
National Right to Life Releases New Report
Examining the Effect of the Affordable Care Act in the United States

WASHINGTON – With a March 31, 2014, deadline impending for open enrollment in the insurance exchanges established by “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (also known as Obamacare), the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics at the National Right to Life Committee today issued a new report, “The Affordable Care Act and Health Care Access in the United States.” The report analyzes four fundamental policy areas of Obamacare and concludes that they will drastically limit access to life-saving medical treatment under the law. These four areas include: the “excess benefit” tax coming into effect in 2018, the current exclusion of adequate health Insurance plans from the exchanges, present limits on senior citizens’ ability to use their own money for health insurance, and federal limits on the care doctors give their patients to be implemented as soon as 2016.

“For pro-life Americans concerned about the impact on innocent human life—both born and unborn—the policies of Obamacare couldn’t be worse,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “Americans are just as concerned with the law’s impact on our ability to access life-saving medical treatment for ourselves, our family members, and our loved ones as with Obamacare’s funding of abortions. Obamacare is bad medicine for America.”

Since it was first debated in Congress, National Right to Life’s Powell Center for Medical Ethics has argued that key provisions of Obamacare would limit what Americans could spend—out of their own funds—to access life-saving medical treatment. As the Center’s new report concludes, Americans will see a significant shift in how they are able to access health care, and just what types of treatment they will be able to obtain.

As documented by media reports and the language of the law itself, Obamacare will limit access to life-saving treatment in four different ways:

1. Obamacare imposes a 40% excise tax on employer-paid health insurance premiums above a governmentally imposed limit that does not keep up with medical inflation. Consequently, insurance companies will be forced to impose increasingly severe restraints on policy-holders’ access to medical diagnosis and treatment—limits that will make it harder to get often-expensive treatments essential to combatting life-threatening illnesses.

2. Under Obamacare, consumers using the exchanges may only choose plans offered by insurers who do not allow their customers to spend what government bureaucrats deem an “excessive or unjustified” amount for their health insurance – regardless of whether the insurers offer such plans inside or outside of the exchanges established by the law.

3. Most senior citizens know that the law will significantly cut government funding for Medicare, but they may not be aware of the law’s provision allowing Washington bureaucrats to prevent them from making up the Medicare shortfall with their own funds by limiting their right to spend their own money to obtain insurance less likely to limit treatments that could save their lives.

4. The “Independent Payment Advisory Board” is directed to recommend measures to limit spending on health care to a growth rate below medical inflation – not just for Medicare, but also for all private, nongovernmental health care spending. The federal Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) is then authorized to implement these measures by placing limits on the treatments providers may give their patients by requiring them to abide by so-called “quality and efficiency standards” imposed by HHS.

“Obamacare authorizes Washington bureaucrats to create one uniform, national standard of care that is designed to limit what private citizens are allowed to spend to save their own lives,” stated Burke Balch, J.D., director of the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics. “We are convinced most Americans do not believe that the government should limit the right of Americans to use their own money for health care necessary to save their lives. Yet, that is exactly what Obamacare does. ”

The report is available from the National Right to Life Communications Department here:www.nrlc.org/communications/healthcarereport.

Founded in 1968, National Right to Life, the federation of 50 state right-to-life affiliates and more than 3,000 local chapters, is the nation's oldest and largest grassroots pro-life organization. Recognized as the flagship of the pro-life movement, NRLC works through legislation and education to protect innocent human life from abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide and euthanasia.

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Do you ever wish you had a list of all the pregnancy resource centers, maternity homes, or adoption agencies at your fingertips? Want to read the text of a pro-life law and see whether your representative voted for it? Need a chart of statistics related to abortion in North Carolina, or maybe some fact sheets to study up on an issue?

Look no further! In January 2014, NCRTL will be releasing its updated Resource Book, a helpful and handy compilation of all kinds of pro-life information. Everything you may need to educate yourself or a friend will be bound into one convenient book available to anyone who wants one. 

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So if you're interested in finding out more, pre-ordering a book, or advertising your organization, check out our website! http://ncrtl.org/resource-book/

Pro-Life 101: The Hard Cases

*This is the sixth installment in a series of posts on pro-life apologetics based on the “When They Say, You Say” talks developed by Olivia Gans Turner and Mary Spaulding Balch. While reading in order is not strictly necessary, you may find it helpful. Post 1. Post 2. Post 3.  Post 4. Post 5.

Rape. Incest. Fetal Abnormality. These constitute what we call “the hard cases,” because they are incredibly personal and emotionally charged. Many people are afraid to talk about them, but you shouldn’t be. Discussing the hard cases requires compassion, sensitivity, and reason, just like everything we’ve talked about so far.

Abortion advocates often bring up the hard cases because they know they carry emotional weight and tend to shake up their pro-life peers. Even those who are otherwise pro-life hesitate when it comes to abortion in the case of rape and incest.

When you look at the statistics, though, you’ll notice that the vast majority of abortions aren’t for the hard cases at all; in fact, rape and incest account for less than 1% of all abortions. In total, rape, incest, life of the mother, and fetal abnormality are the reasons given for only 7% of abortions. It is very important not to downplay the tragedy behind these statistics. You should bring this up to illustrate that there is not an overwhelming need for abortion in these circumstances, but be careful: you cannot reduce the suffering of rape victims to a small statistic in the abortion debate.

So what do we say about abortion in the case of rape? First, remember that rape is a disgusting, violent crime. Whatever you do, start by acknowledging the woman’s pain; she is the innocent victim of a terrible ordeal, and she needs your love, compassion, and support, not your judgment. Pro-lifers are (falsely) accused of caring more about the baby than the mother, and you want to avoid that.  However, when rape results in pregnancy, a second innocent victim is at stake.

Too often, when a woman conceives after rape, counselors encourage her to abort her baby. On the surface, this seems like a reasonable solution since she was forced into her situation. Upon closer analysis, however, this line of reasoning falls apart. Regardless of how he was conceived, the baby is still a unique, innocent human life. Abortion is a death sentence, but it punishes the child for the crime of his father. We forget that the child has two parents—he is also his mother’s, and when we pressure her to abort, we turn her into the aggressor against her own child. Rape victims are already traumatized, and women who have abortions often suffer emotionally, physically, and psychologically for the rest of their lives. When a woman  is pressured into abortion after being raped, then, she often feels like she has been victimized twice.

In the case of incest, which almost always involves the abuse of a minor by an older relative or family friend, abortion not only takes an innocent life and further traumatizes the mother, it also shields the criminal. He pays for his victim’s abortion and resumes his abuse, unbeknownst to those who would protect her. In this way, abortion allows the cycle of abuse to continue, and, again, only adds to the mother’s pain.

But won’t carrying her child to term only distress the mother further? We often hear that women who are pregnant after rape will relive their rape every day. However, studies have shown that women who continue their pregnancies after rape actually heal better than those who abort. Rather than trying to cover up her experience as something shameful, she is able to cope with it in an open, healthy manner. Like grieving, recovering from a rape is a process that takes time. Women reported that although they were afraid at first, in the end they felt that giving life to their child was a special way of redeeming their horrible experience. Instead of compounding the violence of the rape with an abortion, they brought something good and beautiful to the world.

Just as a child conceived in rape has the same dignity, value, and right to life as a “planned” child, so does a baby diagnosed with fetal abnormalities. It’s never easy for parents to hear that their very much wanted baby might have a lifelong disability or perhaps not survive outside the womb, but this does not make abortion the acceptable solution.

We should never judge the worth of a life based upon an arbitrary standard of “quality.” All lives are unique and valuable, and to say otherwise is to establish a dangerous precedent that opens the door to euthanasia. If we say that babies in the womb should be aborted due to disabilities, what’s to prevent us from extending that principle to those outside the womb with disabilities? Modern technology has made it much easier to accurately diagnose problems before birth, but sadly our medical professionals often use this as a means of advocating the abortion of these “less than perfect” children instead of using it as an opportunity to better equip themselves to care for those children’s medical needs.

Even when parents receive a fatal prenatal diagnosis, we know that it’s better for them to continue their pregnancies, just like those pregnant through rape. Many times, parents are excited about their baby and have already picked out names and planned for their future with their baby when they receive the diagnosis. They’re already grieving the life of their baby…before their baby has died. Abortion, rather than acknowledging that baby as a valued family member, turns him into a problem that must be destroyed. In contrast, those with experience at perinatal hospices know that treating the baby as a valuable human being, regardless of how long he lives, brings much greater peace and healing to his family. Families are able to celebrate their newest member’s brief life and are allowed to grieve naturally. Their baby isn’t treated as a problem, but as a blessing.

These cases are all difficult and entail much suffering, but abortion only adds to that suffering. Sympathy, compassion, and love are needed when we talk about them, but so are facts. No matter how a baby is conceived and no matter what disabilities he may have, he is still a unique human life, as fully worthy of our protection and love as his parents.  

Pro-Life 101: Back-alley Abortions

*This is the fifth installment in a series of posts on pro-life apologetics based on the “When They Say, You Say” talks developed by Olivia Gans Turner and Mary Spaulding Balch. While reading in order is not strictly necessary, you may find it helpful. Post 1. Post 2. Post 3.  Post 4.

Abortion advocates often state that if abortions were difficult to obtain or illegal, thousands of women would die or be horrifically maimed in back-alley abortions. They even insist that abortion is safer than childbirth and much less painful. These arguments can be intimidating because they rely, to an extent, upon statistics. No worries! We’ve broken down some basic facts to get you started.

Really?

First, let’s look at the claim that thousands of women will die because of unsafe illegal abortions. Did you know that in 1972, a year before abortion on demand was legal, the Center for Disease Control reported only 39 maternal deaths from illegal abortions? While it’s truly sad that these mothers and their children died in such a horrific way, this statistic doesn’t even come close to the thousands of deaths that abortion advocates talk about.

Furthermore, illegal abortion-related deaths were rare because by the 1960s, most abortions were performed by physicians (yes, even though it was illegal) and medical technology had improved enough to prevent or treat many problems that previously would have been deadly—including complications from childbirth and basic illnesses like the flu. In 1960, Dr. Mary Calderone, former director of Planned Parenthood, wrote “Abortion, whether therapeutic or illegal, is in the main no longer dangerous, because it is being done well by physicians.” In other words, so long as women did not attempt self-induced abortions, their risk of death was relatively low, even 13 years before Roe.

But what about that “5,000-10,000 deaths” figure we always hear about? Simply put, it was a fabricated statistic. In his 1979 book Aborting America, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, former director of NARAL, wrote “I confess that I knew that the figures were totally false and I suppose that others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the ‘morality’ of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics?” As already mentioned, a look at the true figures demonstrates the truth in Dr. Nathanson’s words: relatively few women died from illegal abortions.

Of course, just because thousands of women didn’t die from abortion doesn’t mean abortion is ever “safe.” After all, at the end of every abortion is a dead baby, and many post-abortive mothers suffer from physical, emotional, and psychological complications. We know, too, that even though abortion is widely available and medical technology better than ever before, women still die during abortions, even legal ones. A quick Google search brings up the tragic stories of Tonya Reaves and Jennifer Morbelli, two young women who died after botched legal abortions performed by licensed physicians.

Another point, too, is that many expectant mothers seek abortions because they can. Since abortion is legal, these vulnerable women rationalize that “it’s legal so it must be okay,” even if they know they are taking the life of a child. How many mothers facing unplanned pregnancies opt for abortion just because it’s the fast and “easy” solution to their problem? How many of those mothers would consider abortion if it wasn’t legal and, to an extent, accepted in the United States? Within ten years of Roe, the number of abortions per year shot up from 744,600 (1973) to over 1.5 million. Today, that number has leveled at about 1.2 million abortions per year, but many post-abortive mothers will say that they only had an abortion because it felt like their only choice.

Sometimes abortion advocates will try to make the case that “safe” abortions reduce maternal mortality rates. Fortunately, studies show that it’s not the availability of abortion that saves mothers’ lives, but better access to medicine and healthcare. In fact, countries where abortion is illegal have a lower maternal mortality rate! In the US, the maternal mortality rate actually increased from 10.3 in 1999 to 23.2 in 2009. In Chile, where abortion has been illegal since 1989, the maternal mortality rate dropped 69.2% within 14 years. Chile now has the second lowest maternal mortality rate of all the countries in North and South America. For a fascinating summary of maternal mortality figures around the world, National Right to Life has an excellent handout detailing some of these trends.

Don’t let the numbers scare you! A little research and common sense is all you need to know that abortion doesn’t save lives, it takes them. Although pregnancy and childbirth can be dangerous, they are natural functions of the female body, and with our ever-increasing medical knowledge and availability, there is no reason to believe that abortion is somehow a safety net. 

Some Notable Changes in the 2011 NC Reported Abortions

North Carolina Right to Life (NCRTL) recently updated the abortion information on its website to reflect the 2011 statistics. This resource, which is derived from the current State Center for Health Statistics data, is an excellent tool for learning and sharing the facts about abortions in North Carolina.

The 2011 trends in abortion continue to reflect the same patterns that have developed over the last several years. The majority of North Carolina residents who seek abortion are young and unmarried, and women under the age of 24 account for 45% of abortions. Minorities, 20% of whose total pregnancies end in abortion, obtained sixty percent of the state’s abortions.

One striking difference between the 2010 and 2011 numbers is the overall decline in abortions, which have decreased by 15%. In 2010, there were 25,808 abortions performed on North Carolina residents; in 2011, there were 22,370. This marks the greatest drop in abortion numbers within the past five years. There was also, however, a decrease in the total number of pregnancies, so while there were fewer abortion deaths, there were fewer live births, as well. Other factors affecting this total might include population changes, cultural shifts regarding childbearing and life issues, and more effective pro-life legislation.

Also of interest is a change in abortion procedures. In 2010, suction curettage abortions and dilation and evacuation (D&E) abortions, both surgical methods, were the most frequently performed. In 2011, suction curettage remained as the most frequently used (52%), but medical (chemical/nonsurgical) abortion narrowly topped D&E abortion as the second most common procedure.  Since the majority of abortions take place during the early stages of pregnancy, these chemical abortions are becoming more popular.  This also reflects the growing emphasis that abortion advocates, most notably Planned Parenthood, are placing on quicker and “easier” forms of abortion, as chemical abortions are nonsurgical and require only brief visits to the abortion facilities, unless the chemicals do not work. Then, the mother has to return for a surgical abortion.  
 

While the continual decline in total abortions is a cause for hope and celebration, 22,370 lives are still too many. North Carolina Right to Life is as devoted as ever to working to protect unborn children and their mothers in the coming years.

For more information about the 2011 statistics, visit NCRTL's web page.

Post written by Erin Karlovich, NCRTL Assistant Director.