Jivin J’s Life Links 1-25-11
by JivinJ, host of the blog, JivinJehoshaphat
- William Saletan is still trying to get like-minded pro-choicers to answer basic questions about late-term abortions. He also slaps down the “all late-term abortions are for medical reasons” meme:
We don’t have solid data on elective abortions late in the 2nd trimester, much less the 3rd, but we do have well-informed estimates concerning so-called “partial-birth” abortions. I’m one of many journalists who bought the initial pro-choice claim that these abortions were mostly for medical reasons. Investigative reports subsequently debunked this claim and corroborated the confession of Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, that “in the vast majority of cases” the patient was “a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along.”
The Gosnell grand jury report provides no evidence that women who came to him for post-viability abortions did so for medical reasons. On the contrary, the report indicates he was indiscriminate: One of his employees testified that “she rarely, if ever, saw Gosnell decline to do a procedure because a woman was too far along.” And the only abortion on which the report offers evidence either way seems to have been elective.
- Jill Filipovic takes a stab and says that fetal viability is a “fair place” to limit abortion yet she writes any cut-off time is “somewhat arbitrary.” She never seems to think very deeply about why a woman’s autonomy should be placed second to the child’s life at viability. It’s like she would probably prefer it wasn’t but she’s kinda/sorta okay if it is.
It’s so weird to me how some pro-choicers can shout from the mountaintops about a woman’s autonomy for 20-week abortions (see 20 week fetus shown left) yet barely make a defiant peep about the same righteous autonomy for abortions which occur a mere 5 weeks later.
- AUL’s Clark Forsythe discusses how Roe v. Wade and federal courts have made it difficult to regulate abortion clinics:
Because the Justices who decided Roe foolishly believed that abortion had few risks and that doctors should have complete discretion to decide how to do abortions in the first trimester, they basically said that state and local officials can’t regulate in the 1st trimester, when 90% of abortions are done, and that they can try in the second trimester – if they dare.
But the Justices then empowered the federal courts and attorneys for abortion providers to thwart every effort by public health officials to regulate. Federal courts across the country spent the next decade implementing that edict, and by the end of the 1980s, the federal courts had struck down attempts by Chicago and many other cities to regulate clinics in the 1st trimester. As Edward F. King, the Deputy Director of the Chicago Medical Society told the Chicago Sun Times in 1978, “The courts very effectively knocked the Department of Health out of the picture. We’re not even entitled to cross the threshold of these clinics.”…
If the history of the past 38 years is replayed in Philadelphia, as it has been in Chicago and other major cities, the current furor will die down, some legislative body might pass new regulations, the ACLU or the Center for Reproductive Rights will file suit, the federal courts will strike down the regulations, the state will use tax dollars to pay attorneys fees to the clinics, the papers will turn a blind eye, and the case will never get to the Justices.
- Jill Filipovic takes a stab and says that fetal viability is a “fair place” to limit abortion yet she writes any cut-off time is “somewhat arbitrary.” She never seems to think very deeply about why a woman’s autonomy should be placed second to the child’s life at viability. It’s like she would probably prefer it wasn’t but she’s kinda/sorta okay if it is.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Maybe reasonable regulations on abortion providers would be more feasible if many local and state governments didn’t attempt to abuse their regulatory powers as a political bludgeoning tool intended to drive out abortion clinics completely, or, failing that, to burden their ability to operate efficiently? States like North Dakota, for example, have really left abortion providers and their political allies with little alternative but to assume a defensive posture in response to any kind of government interference or encroachment. It’s seen as a zero-sum game, and justifiably so.
Let me expand on my previous post. I am a believer in the value of reasonable government regulation of both medical practices and private enterprise. It’s a task that is ideally shared by all levels and branches of government. Therefore, I think that something is lost when meaningful, practical regulations of abortion clinics are obstructed for political reasons. However, those political reasons are reactionary: they are a response to efforts by people like the host of this site to make it as difficult as possible within the confines of the law to get a safe, affordable abortion.
North Dakota has one abortion clinic located in Fargo. Your point?
Perhaps the good prolife people of ND want it to stay that way. Easier to blame us though right, Joan?
I grew up there. :)
No such thing as a safe abortion.
joan says: January 25, 2011 at 3:51 pm
“Maybe reasonable regulations on abortion providers would be more feasible if many local and state governments didn’t attempt to abuse their regulatory powers as a political bludgeoning tool intended to drive out abortion clinics completely,”…
==============================================================
Joan,
You should take up writing fairy tales. You do have a flair for fantasy.
Please give us some verifiable corroboration, substantiation, corroboration that ‘many state and local governments abuse their regulatory power as a political bludgeoning tool to drive out abortion clinics’.
They can’t or won’t even deal with blatant violators like Kermit the Fraud Gosnell.
Did you even read the post?
You would fare much better if you went looking for examples where the ‘dead babies r us’ mob uses government regulatory power to prosecute and persecute pro-lifers and particulary crisis pregnancy centers.
Once upon time…..
“North Dakota has one abortion clinic located in Fargo. Your point?”
My point is that abortion regulations in North Dakota are not intended to keep abortion clinics safe and clean. They’re intended to burden their operation to the point where it is no longer financially feasible to even operate there.
“Perhaps the good prolife people of ND want it to stay that way. Easier to blame us though right, Joan?”
And the good white people of Alabama and Mississippi really thought racial segregation was swell, but popular democratic sentiment is not a justification for burdening constitutional rights.
“Please give us some verifiable corroboration, substantiation, corroboration that ‘many state and local governments abuse their regulatory power as a political bludgeoning tool to drive out abortion clinics’.”
Really? You need me to remind you of pointless mandatory waiting periods or statutes requiring doctors to read some prepared statement to women seeking an abortion?
Do you recall that the traveling abortionist in Fargo had an expired license not long ago? No worries, Joan. There were no repercussions for that.
http://www.lifenews.com/2010/11/08/state-5650/
ND is a largely conservative state and passed an abortion ban act in 2009.
Shall we talk NY? The abortion capitol of the US of A?
You doth protest too much.
@joan: Your point is idiotic. The cessation of inspections at Gosnell’s mill due to pro-abortion anti-regulation freak-outs was back in 1993. The pro-life movement at that time was significantly less powerful than it is now, not to mention being busy dealing with Mr. “Safe, Legal, and Rare” himself in the White House.
Pro-abortion regulation-hating has nothing to do with concern that pro-lifers will wipe abortion out entirely and everything to do with an ideology that more abortions = doubleplusgood.
Aside from all of which, the movement that defends the practice is the one that ought to be concerned with making sure that it is undertaken in safe and well-regulated manners. You ought to be condemning the lack of oversight more strongly than any pro-lifer, rather than making excuses for the continued pro-abortion resistance to it. Pro-lifers hate abortion in any form and seek to end legal and illegal instances of it. That’s the whole point. You, as an abortion apologist, ought to be leading the charge for safety regulations and regular inspections, since you defend its legal existence. Since you believe it should be legal, you should, for that very reason, be seeking to create an environment of legal oversight.
But since you are not doing that… Well, I’m not really surprised. I am tossing this onto the pile of reasons why I do not call abortion apologists “pro-choice.” You’re just too busy spreading abortion around as fast as you can to justify that appellation.
“”Do you recall that the traveling abortionist in Fargo had an expired license not long ago? No worries, Joan. There were no repercussions for that.”
That’s interesting, huh? A state that can pass symbolic but meaningless “ban acts” on abortion and go out of its way to inflict every stupid little restriction on abortion providers can’t or won’t punish an actual violation of the law? Could it be that there’s no real opportunity to score political points for fining an abortion doctor for operating on an expired license and so nobody bothered to try? Maybe those state legislators responsible for stupid things like 24-hour waiting periods are actually just show-boating for their easily-fooled constituents?
Brilliant Alice. Thank you so much for saying what was in my head. Brilliant post.
“The pro-life movement at that time was significantly less powerful than it is now”
That’s an awfully dubious claim. What year was Casey v. Planned Parenthood again? You know, where the Supreme Court was one vote away from overturning Roe v. Wade?
“Pro-abortion regulation-hating has nothing to do with concern that pro-lifers will wipe abortion out entirely and everything to do with an ideology that more abortions = doubleplusgood.”
You misrepresent my point. Your movement is responsible for engendering a political climate where both sides view the issue as zero-sum, and so innocuous or even beneficial things like sanitary regulations are viewed as a potential trojan horse for self-serving politicians and their willing dupes in the pro-life movement to gain a foothold and push for less innocent restrictions.
“Aside from all of which, the movement that defends the practice is the one that ought to be concerned with making sure that it is undertaken in safe and well-regulated manners.”
The movement that defends the practice is principally concerned with defending the practice. Abortion is a constitutional right; abortion in a clean, respectable facility is a nice bonus.
“You ought to be condemning the lack of oversight more strongly than any pro-lifer, rather than making excuses for the continued pro-abortion resistance to it.”
I’m condemning the fact that your movement has played a crucial role in making sure that abortion regulations are viewed as a political football by both sides.
“Pro-lifers hate abortion in any form and seek to end legal and illegal instances of it.”
There you have it. You’ve made it abundantly clear that there is no middle ground. With that knowledge in mind, why would any advocate of abortion legality want to risk allowing the government to take a more proactive role in regulating the industry? What happens when the pendulum swings in the other direction and people like you are in charge, with newly-minted regulatory powers?
” Since you believe it should be legal, you should, for that very reason, be seeking to create an environment of legal oversight.”
I’d love to, but the current industry self-regulations (which are better than they are given credit for; there’s a reason why Dr. Gosnell’s clinic was so horrifying: it was the exception to the rule) are the preferable alternative to the onerous burdens people like you would place on the exercise of this constitutional right.
Joan:
We do not need you coming here and showcasing your support for a violent and lethal crime, prenatal homicide, which has killed vast numbers of our fellow human beings over the last half century.
I find your cold blooded and casual support for this killing to be absolutely obscene.
Go to some abortionist website like RH Reality Check where your anti-human beliefs will be much more appreciated and accepted. This is a pro-life website and the great majority of the people here value and respect the lives and rights of all human beings, born and unborn. We, unlike you, have not been taken in by the empty “ideas” and “arguments” of the movement which supports the crime of prenatal homicide.
You, who would have allowed yourself to be destroyed in the unborn stage, who would have allowed me to be killed in the same stage, who would allow the whole of our species to be eliminated by this violence at the beginning of our lives, you have nothing to offer us but fallacies and doublespeak. Please go.
By the way, killing human beings in the unborn stage is a crime. It is NOT a “constitutional” “right”. Actually, there is no such thing as a constitutional “right”. There are only “natural rights” (rights based upon and derived from our nature, discoverable by human reason).
Constitutions can only recognize or fail to recognize natural rights.
Anyway, there is nothing in the Constitution guaranteeing a “right” to commit the crime of prenatal homicide. It was totally pulled out of thin air by anti-human “judges” like Harry Blackmun and the others who signed onto Roe vs Wade.
“Arguing” that ALL human beings can be destroyed in the first nine months of our lives and each one of us can be deprived of our ENTIRE human lifespans is a proposition that is just completely preposterous. It is beyond the boundaries of credibility that any rational person can believe in this utter nonsense.
It is a very sad testament to the weakness of human nature that the absurd and inhuman abortionist mentality could be accepted by so many people.
Joe – the possibility of joan hearing the gospel here are about 1000x more likely than her receiving it at RHRC. You might want to consider Mt 16:19.
If joan is seriously as bad as you say she is, then she needs Love all the more.
The Roe v. Wade House was built on a foundation of sand. It’s no wonder that the bricks will eventually all fall down.
Wow, Joan would hate the abortion regulations in Europe. Talk about waiting periods, how about having to have counseling from an independent physician specifically designed to convince her not to abort.
Check this out:
The two laws had to be reconciled after reunification. A new law was passed by the Bundestag in 1992, permitting first-trimester abortions on demand, subject to counselling and a three-day waiting period. The law was quickly challenged in court by a number of individuals – including Chancellor Helmut Kohl – and the State of Bavaria. The Federal Constitutional Court issued a decision a year later maintaining its earlier decision that the constitution protected the fetus from the moment of conception, but stated that it is within the discretion of parliament not to punish abortion in the first trimester, providing that the woman had submitted to state-regulated counselling designed to discourage termination and protect unborn life. Parliament passed such a law in 1995. Abortions are not covered by public health insurance except for women with low income.
http://secularright.org/SR/wordpress/2009/10/07/its-better-in-europe-again/
“The movement that defends the practice is principally concerned with defending the practice. Abortion is a constitutional right; abortion in a clean, respectable facility is a nice bonus.”
CLEANLINESS A NICE BONUS!!?? Thank you joan, for illustrating exactly why Gosnell was able to get away with what he did for so long. As long as you “defend the practice” you are in the clear, are you? Cleanliness, in case you didnt know, is a necessity for all surgical procedures.
Do you think that regulations requiring clinics to have hospital gurneys (and doors wide enough for them) and admitting privileges at local hospitals are a necessity, especially in facilities performing late-term abortions? Just in case something goes wrong? Or are they just “a nice bonus”? Evidently pro-aborts think they’re just an “extra” because they have fought against these regulations as “too burdensome.” Women’s lives could be lost in such situations.
Thanks for showing us the mentality that cost Gosnell’s women patients their lives.
GO LORI! No need for me to comment, you took the words right out of my mind!
Since Joan told us about 10 times that abortion is a Constitutional right, perhaps Joan could point out to us the part of the United States Constitution that tells us that women have a right to an abortion.
Oh wait, there is no such section of the US Constitution. There are only vague mentions in the Fourth Amendment of our right to be “secure” in our “persons”, as if that has anything to do with abortion. If anything, the US Constitution guarantees a right to life, as the Fifth Amendment states that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law. So I ask you, what capital crime has the unborn child committed that he is executed? When was his trial? What judge sentenced him to death? Tell me, Joan.
You misrepresent my point. Your movement is responsible for engendering a political climate where both sides view the issue as zero-sum, and so innocuous or even beneficial things like sanitary regulations are viewed as a potential trojan horse for self-serving politicians and their willing dupes in the pro-life movement to gain a foothold and push for less innocent restrictions.
The Grand Jury had the best response to this kind of nonsense.
“A second reason proffered by DOH attorneys for not licensing abortion clinics – that abortion is ‘controversial’ – is just insulting. Abortion is a legal medical procedure. Any controversy surrounding the issue should not affect how the law is enforced or whether the Department of Health protects the safety of women seeking health care.”
The movement that defends the practice is principally concerned with defending the practice. Abortion is a constitutional right; abortion in a clean, respectable facility is a nice bonus.
A bonus, is it? A better illustration of the difference in the two sides, I could not have asked for. Pro-aborts are so concerned with getting as many abortions done as possible that they can’t even be bothered with autoclaves. Pro-lifers are so concerned with saving lives that as long as we have to put up with abortions, we’d prefer them to be safely regulated, so that at least the doctors would not end up killing the patients they aren’t intending to. It’s a poor substitute for saving mother and child, but it’s certainly better than calling a sterile surgical facility a “bonus.”
There you have it. You’ve made it abundantly clear that there is no middle ground. With that knowledge in mind, why would any advocate of abortion legality want to risk allowing the government to take a more proactive role in regulating the industry? What happens when the pendulum swings in the other direction and people like you are in charge, with newly-minted regulatory powers?
You would want this because then at least you would have a leg to stand on when you claim to want abortions to be safe! As it is, you could not make it more obvious that you do not want that. And that you are, in fact, much more concerned with keeping this…procedure common than you are with keeping it safe for women. Your so-called “advocacy for women’s rights” would look a lot more convincing if you ever actually cared about women. And the fact that pro-lifers want to end abortion is not a surprise; it is a constant. Abortion advocates should have figured out how to regulate the industry in an unchanging political landscape by now. It’s almost four decades down the road! Appropriate safety regulations, pro-life movement notwithstanding, should be a no-brainer at this point.
I’d love to, but the current industry self-regulations (which are better than they are given credit for; there’s a reason why Dr. Gosnell’s clinic was so horrifying: it was the exception to the rule) are the preferable alternative to the onerous burdens people like you would place on the exercise of this constitutional right.
Yes, the current industry self-regulations that got two women killed (Remember them? Those people that even you claim to think are people? The ones who are supposed to matter to you?) are clearly much better than actually regulating an industry that is clearly dangerous and out-of-control. That is such a murderously ignorant statement that I’m honestly struggling to believe I actually read it.
*sigh* Okay. That’s it. I’m done feeding the trolls. On this thread, at least.
Does anyone remember the clinic recently that closed rather than clean up its act? It was visited by health officials and was found to be so unsafe and dirty that it was fined and told to clean up. Rather than shell out the money needed to meet BASIC standards of health and safety the clinic closed. Had NOTHING to do with pro-lifers but showed the abortion industry’s contempt for the safety of it’s patients.
Where was this clinic, if anyone remembers this in the news. I can’t remember.
ND is a largely conservative state and passed an abortion ban act in 2009.
It’s pretty sparesly populated, too!
Tell me about it, Phillymiss. :)
The Gosnell scandal could serve as the bridge where pro-lifers and pro-choicers could meet and discuss things rationally. Fundamentally, this is an issue about power, poverty, and access. And while Gosnell’s clinic is an extreme case of institutional oversight and neglect, this scandal should make us wary of placing too much confidence in the medical system. Already this issue is being sensationalized as one more tragedy in the “abortion industry’s” history of assaults against sound medicine. But it would be naive to assume that only abortionists are guilty of providing substandard care. What about the fact that maternal mortality rates are extraordinarily high in the US, compared to other postindustrial nations? This is due in part to the exorbitant, and unnecessary, number of C-sections performed every year, in the name of clinical efficiency. What about the fact that vast numbers of children are uninsured in this country? Or the fact that community-acquired MRSA infections are on the rise, attributable to insufficient hand cleanliness among health care workers?
Regardless of where you stand on the abortion debate, I think we can share some collective outrage that in a country with the most well-endowed medical system in the world people are still getting majorly disadvantaged. There’s a little bit of Kermit Gosnell–a man who would privilege profit over patient well-being–lurking not just in the shadows of an inner city neighborhood, but casting a pall over our country’s entire medical system.
How about we stick to discussing abortion on this prolife blog and the fact that there is nothing SAFE or RARE about them??
Gosnell got caught. That is all the abortion industry is bemoaning.(If they are indeed bemoaning. They are strangely silent.)NOT that he killed children at ALL stages of development and wounded women, killing one.
What other “sound medical procedure” kills a growing child for profit??
I find it difficult to discuss Gosnell. I can only picture those precious babies, fully grown and the marks that the scissors left
on the backs of their necks. I can hardly fathom what their first breath of life was like and then their horrifying death. There is NOTHING rational about cold blooded murder, Megan. Surely you must know that.
Joe on 1/25, 5:54pm and 6:08pm:
Brilliant!!!
“Fundamentally, this is an issue about power, poverty, and access. And while Gosnell’s clinic is an extreme case of institutional oversight and neglect, this scandal should make us wary of placing too much confidence in the medical system. ”
Uh, no. Fundamentally this is an issue about a business where children are killed for profit. The same people that want to keep murder-for-profit available to all, are the same people who resist each and every regulatory procedure, and thus those who were supposed to keep an eye on the business, did nothing so as not to make waves. Is it about poverty? Only in so far as Kermit’s employees report that they escorted white patients to a cleaner part of the clinic because they are more likely to lodge complaints.
With only a single exception that I have found online, EVERY pro-choicer is more concerned with the backlash coming from this situation than they are concerned that living, breathing infants were murdered in cold blood. We already know that many of you pro-choicers won’t condemn late term abortions altogether, because you don’t want the pro-lifers to “win.” And who loses? Infants and their mothers.
Pro-choicers can’t just cry foul without paragraph upon paragraph of disclaimers and attempts to deflect and distract. Feminists promised us in 1973 that with legal abortion, the back-alley abortions would never happen again. They promised. I am old enough to remember these promises first hand. Instead, now I hear prochoicers crying, “there will be more of this if abortion is illegal!”. Duh! There’s more of this today. This is where the road of abortion leads, right up to Kermit’s door. It’s on you, pro-choicers.
Are there quacks in other medical disciplines? Yes, but you don’t hear cry after cry from ‘pro-breast-implant activists’ getting upset when stories about quacks hit the news. Pro-choicers are only angry that Kermit got caught, and only angry that the pro-lifers will use this against the entire abortion business.
Darn tootin’ we will! Hey, Abortion, we’re coming for you. Get your affairs in order because your days are numbered.
Megan,
Does it never incense you that day after day, organizations like Planned Parenthood take advantage of the very women who turn to them for support? Does it never bother you that they lie and misconstrue facts so as to swindle these women out of their hard-own income? Do you never get mad that a business like Planned Parenthood that exploits the emotional turmoil of young women then gets to parade around as a not-for-profit? Does it never offend you that young girls are being treated like sex objects and that Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics are covering the abuse? That predatory men are able to take advantage of abortion in order to hide their shameful secret? Do you never feel insulted that you are being very purposely fed a whole lot of rhetoric and misinformation in the hopes that you will feed into a cycle of medication, infertility, and cancer, all to sap you dry of your finances, and to procure further funding from the government?
Doesn’t it at least irritate you a little?
Hey, Abortion, we’re coming for you. Get your affairs in order because your days are numbered.
:) Ninek, I’m afraid I’m going to have to steal that phrase, shamefully and without the slightest regret, one of these days; that was great!
We don’t have solid data on elective abortions late in the 2nd trimester, much less the 3rd, but we do have well-informed estimates concerning so-called “partial-birth” abortions.
….“in the vast majority of cases” the patient was “a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along.”
I imagine that that is true. D & X abortions are done as early as 14 or 15 weeks, as I recall, and up to 24 weeks or so the states don’t have restrictions on abortion, again as I remember, without checking. I’d say that most abortions at 20 or 21 weeks, for example, are indeed “elective,” i.e. it’s that the woman does not want to be pregnant, versus some medical condition on her part that strongly argues for ending the pregnancy.
But as far as the D & X (or D & E, etc.) being done, if it is said that the procedure was chosen “for medical reasons,” it’s because it presents the least risk to the woman, often.
_____
Jill Filipovic takes a stab and says that fetal viability is a “fair place” to limit abortion yet she writes any cut-off time is “somewhat arbitrary.” She never seems to think very deeply about why a woman’s autonomy should be placed second to the child’s life at viability.
I think she did a good job, there – if we are looking to the interest of the baby, it can be served while the woman keeps her bodily autonomy – a pregnancy at viability can be ended via delivery with the baby surviving. yes, it’s somewhat arbitrary because it’s not a sure thing that the baby survives, nor will all pregnancies bring an equal chance of survival at a given time of gestation. It remains a different deal than earlier in pregnancy, however, as then any ending of the pregnancy means the sure death of the baby.
“There’s a little bit of Kermit Gosnell–a man who would privilege profit over patient well-being–lurking not just in the shadows of an inner city neighborhood, but casting a pall over our country’s entire medical system.”
Wow.
What an egregious lie.
You defame the honest workers and the best hospitals in the world.
There is more access in the US than anywhere else on the planet. Yeah, they send you a bill AFTER they save your life, but they save your life first, BEFORE you pay them a dime. That is why healthcare is so expensive. They shift the cost to paying customers. We don’t ration care. In every socialized system they evaluate whether you are worth saving BEFORE they treat you. That is the goal of those who lie and say they want to extend coverage to everyone, even though everyone already has access right now. What they really want is to ration care so it will cost less. Less service costs less money.
hippie says:
In every socialized system they evaluate whether you are worth saving BEFORE they treat you.
Just to be fair, this statement is NOT TRUE.
I live in the UK for 5 years now and before that I lived in Lithuania. Both have universal health care. My husband is an american.
In all my life noone has ever tried to “evaluate” if they should give health care to me or not – whenever I had any kind of problem, I made an appointment and saw a doctor, including the specialists and emergency treatments. My husband had a surgery in the UK and was amazed at the quality of health care! And he’s not even EU citizen and is here on a work visa! NOONE asked any questions, just gave the treatment that was needed.
There’s just too much negative propaganda about socialized health care that is circulating in the US.
Well good for you Vita. But my brother-in-law is Canadian and my sis and her husband let us know about the wait for any kind of appointment and treatment and the cost in taxes to support such a system. And the care is substandard. So I don’t think its all negative “propaganda”. I could call your statement “propaganda”. Would the mudslinging make it so?
And isn’t the British people trying to dismantle their own socialized hierarchy now? A whole bunch of Brits are speaking out now that they do NOT want socialized medicine and also want their guns back. Socialism is a nice concept but its been tried time and time again and it does NOT work. Learn from history or you’ll be doomed to repeat it.
Bottom line, most Americans do NOT want socialized medicine. We want reform but not government take over of our healthcare system. What you do in the UK is your business. What we do in America is ours.
“Just to be fair, this statement is NOT TRUE.I live in the UK for 5 years now and before that I lived in Lithuania. Both have universal health care. My husband is an american.”
Yes, it is true. They evaluate you before they treat you for anything. I am guessing you are well under 70. Just because you aren’t aware of their rubrics and rationing schemes, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.