No. It is specifically different because the pro-choice issue is first and foremost access. It is separate from taxpayer funding altogether and strikes at the unconstitutional efforts to prevent people from getting abortions even if they pay cash.
That is not puh-tay-toe, puh-tot-oh. Your statement is not correct.
You say that -- and then you immediately refute yourself by saying this:
And that means if medical care is being funded for needy people by taxpayers (via Medicaid, for instance) then they demand that ALL reasonable,non-experimental medical care is covered.
I.e., they think the constitution guarantees them the right to stop the public from buying itself a social safety net unless it agrees to buy them an abortion. That's imposing their views upon everyone else. If the fans of private schools claimed vouchers were a constitutional right, but then clarified that they were only saying they had the constitutional right to ban the government from establishing public schools unless it also gave them vouchers, you would have no difficulty recognizing that they were trying to impose their views upon everyone else.
Again, no.
It is saying that if a procedure is medically useful, approved and wanted, no laws should be carving out of public programs things that one person just doesn’t like to make it inaccessible to those using medical care. If the procedure is legal, and needed, it is covered like any other procedure that is legal, needed, and covered.
That's not "Again, no." That's "Again, yes." You're claiming a right to stop the public from buying itself a social safety net unless it agrees to buy abortions. You are in effect using people who need blood transfusions as a human shield against denial of public funding of abortion.
We cannot have Jehovah’s Witnesses saying that blood transfusions must not be covered by public funds because they object to having people’s souls defiled,
True; but blood transfusions are for saving people's lives. Only the anti-abortion movement's lunatic fringe don't make an exception for saving the mother's life.
nor racists saying that birth and delivery will not be covered for interracial pregnancies.
True; but that's because the Constitution guarantees equal protection of the law. A rule that says the government will pay for Protestant abortions but not Catholic abortions would be equally illegal; but a rule treating abortions differently from transfusions is no more subject to "strict scrutiny" than treating banks differently from steel mills.
This is utterly unlike school vouchers, since every one of those voucher-supporting parents has access to everything that the public school parents has access to. Private schools seek to both add and subtract subjects that matter to them.
You are special-pleading up the wazoo. Private schooling is educationally "useful, approved and wanted". Every one of those abortion-wanting Medicaid-eligible women has access to transfusions and the rest of the services Medicaid pays for; you seek to add a service that matters to you. And I'd like to add it too, but that doesn't make it objectively different from vouchers.
Everybody wants to add and subtract government budget items.
But no one is carving out and eliminating certain classes from public school unless they are constutionally prohibited from public funding - like religion. (Not religious history, mind you, but religious indoctrination)
What planet do you live on? People carve out and eliminate certain classes from public school
all the bleeding time. Most infamously, music and art classes. Or, to use myself as an example, I went to public school for most of K-thru-13, but private school for junior high. That was when I took Latin. It used to be considered a mainstay of education, but not one of the public schools I attended offered it.
The medical care issue revolves around people who are unrelated wanting to get in between you and your doctor and decide your care. They want to delete things from the medical practice availability on their whim, not on any constitutional grounds.
And the folks who took Latin out of the curriculum were getting between a student and his Latin teacher on their whim, not on any constitutional grounds. The Constitution doesn't offer any special consideration for the student-teacher relationship that authorizes teachers to bill the government for anything and everything they think a student would benefit from. Likewise, the Constitution doesn't offer any special consideration for the doctor-patient relationship that authorizes doctors to bill the government for anything and everything they think a patient would benefit from. It's up to the people's representatives to vote on what they'll pay for and what they won't, subject to constitutional limits such as nondiscrimination and not establishing a state religion.
Of course they weren't -- that would be illegal under the Hyde Amendment. The point is, an awful lot of "pro-choice" folks want that law repealed. The asymmetry Elixir is asserting is mostly illusory.
Yes they (we, I) want that law repealed because there is no constitutional reason to carve out those procedures from the rest of publicly covered medicine.
But that is not saying “we want abortions to be paid by taxpayers” any more than “we want births to be paid by taxpayers”.
Yeah, I got that -- that is 100% saying “we want abortions to be paid by taxpayers”. You also 100% want births to be paid by taxpayers. 100% is not any more than 100%. How do you figure that supports your case?
In other words, it is not a special add-on, it is part of the whole medical practice. So what makes your statement inaccurate is that it tries to portray the intent of removing the ban on one kind of normal medicine as some sort of special request.
It is not a special request. It is an intent to remove a special request by those opposed to this medical procedure on their own personal grounds.
I.e., you choose to define "whole medical practice" to be a category that includes abortion. Others choose to define the boundaries of "whole medical practice" differently. It's a special add-on in their categorization but not in yours. But outside of particle physics and evolutionary biology, categories are not an objective feature of the natural world. They are subjective mental constructs. You can no more provide empirical evidence for or against including abortion in "whole medical practice" than for or against including Pluto in the category "planets".
As for cold hard pragmatist liberal me, telling a person "You don't like abortion, don't have one." comes off as adding insult to injury when you're making him pay for other people's abortions.
I don’t understand how you can make sense of carving one specific medical procedure out from all other medical procedures that you pay for and then get insulted about it. You don’t even know the reason for the abortion that you’re refusing to pay for. You don’t know if it’s to save someone from death.
It's not me feeling insulted -- I like abortion. As for the fans of the Hyde Amendment, they know something of the reason for the abortion they're refusing to pay for -- they know it isn't to save someone from death since the Hyde Amendment specifically allows the feds to pay for those.
Honestly, "You don't like abortion, don't have one," is truly not intended as an insult.
Of course it isn't. Insults usually aren't intended as insults. Part of what makes them so insulting is how little the speaker puts himself in the recipient's shoes.
So it is interesting that it comes across as one. Pro-choice people think that’s actually an incredibly important statement - no one is in favor of forcing abortions on anyone - we want to make that clear.. Crystal clear. Precedent clear.
Yes, exactly -- but you seem to have dropped some context. Reread what I wrote. It isn't "You don't like abortion, don't have one," per se that's insulting; it's specifically saying it
when you're trying to make him pay for other people's abortions that makes it an insult. You say it, sincerely believing "no one is in favor of forcing abortions on anyone", all the while
being in favor of forcing the unwilling taxpayer to help carry out an abortion. The taxpayer won't get a choice about it, and you don't want him to get a choice about it. From his point of view you're trying to make him complicit in your sin against God -- that's the injury. And then you're telling him he doesn't count as "anyone" -- you'd force an abortion
on him while claiming you aren't forcing abortions on anyone. That's an insult. You are de facto telling him he's a lower life-form you don't have to consider the impact on. That's an insult. You are de facto telling him what he pays for and thereby is a participant in is none of his business, thereby treating him as a beast of burden rather than a fellow citizen. That's an insult. And you're de facto telling him "You don't like abortion, don't have one" is a good reason for him to think an abortion he has to pay for is an abortion he isn't a part of. That's insulting his intelligence.
Are you also insulted if someone says, “if you don’t like novocaine at the dentist, don’t use it.” Are you also insulted if someone says, “if you don’t like blood transfusions, don’t have them.” ?
Those are bad analogies. If you truly want to avoid insulting the other party you need to put yourself in his shoes. From an anti-abortion point of view, a good analogy would be you saying to Thoreau "If you don't like the war in Mexico, don't join the Army.". Do you think Thoreau would have thought that was a valid argument?
Can you suggest a way to convey that
the intent is to use the public safety net of medicaid for procedures that are needed by needy people, and no one will force you to have one that you don’t want, and we get that some of you oppose the social safety net altogether and want people to individually negotiate whether they can afford to have their broken leg set, but as long as we DO have a social safety net of Medicaid, it must be applied without prejudice to one particular religious or ideological group’s feelings
Without having it insult you?
Why do you keep making this is about me? I'm pro-abortion.
If you want to avoid insulting Joe Redstate Sixpack, saying most of that is piece of cake. You just say to him, "Sorry, you have to go along with our wishes on this because we won the vote. There are other controversies where others have to go along with your wishes because you won the vote. Sometimes that stinks for you; sometimes that stinks for me; but democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have ever been tried."
But that doesn't communicate the part about "it must be applied without prejudice to one particular religious or ideological group’s feelings". That's a part you don't get to say without it being an insult, because requiring abortions to be covered
is applying it with prejudice to one particular ideological group’s feelings: yours. "People should pay for other people's abortions" is an ideological position, every bit as much as "Abortion is a sin." There is no non-insulting way to say "My unscientific opinion trumps your unscientific opinion because yours is just an ideology." You might as well try to non-insultingly explain to a Catholic how the difference between Protestantism and Catholicism is that Protestantism isn't a cult.
If your contention is that your view doesn't count as an ideology because a medically unnecessary abortion is the same thing as a medically necessary setting of a broken leg, that is an unscientific opinion.
These are the same people who cut off funding for Planned Parenthood to give cervical exams for cancer because it freed up PP to spend their private money for abortions. “Money is fungible!” Stop the publicly funded cervical exams because abortions happen in the same building!
You think that would fly? I don’t.
What would fly with the activists is a different question from what would fly with the bulk of voters. You think the average American even understands the concept of "fungible"?
And no, I do not this this plan is in any way reasonable or workable even if the money is fungible crowd would agree. You turn constitutionally guaranteed rights into a circus that can be starved. Imagine if we did this with women’s rights to vote. People who are “insulted” by the constitution’s guarantees can undermine it.
I can point out the place in the Constitution that guarantees women the vote. Can you point out the place in the Constitution that guarantees women free abortions courtesy of the taxpayers? They look to me like just another government service the people can vote up or vote down.
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