The More Things Change...

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  Thinking of  efforts to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from doing its work of protecting air, water, land, and thence, the people, in order instead to protect industry's profits from natural resources, power plants, and factories, brings to mind the work of John Evelyn, in 1600.  He was doing his best to protect inhabitants of London from black smoke caused by coal burning.  "But," he wrote, "Parliament and the King were too occupied re-establishing a monarchical England to worry about such trivialities as the effects of smoke."

Gramma Windy

Assault on Woman

[I originally wrote this last year during the debates over health care.  Just updated it.]
Abortion is a legal medical procedure.

As such, it should be eligible for insurance coverage just as is any other legal medical procedure.

The same voices that warn about government interference with health care decisions would deny coverage for abortion.

The same voices that claim government would be deciding who would be covered, and what procedures would be covered, would deny coverage for abortion.

The same voices that decry government controlling or regulating insurance companies would deny private insurance companies, about 85% of which presently provide coverage for abortion, the right to provide abortion coverage in their policies if they participate in the exchange.

The same voices that say that people morally opposed to abortion should not have to pay taxes to cover abortion, do not say that people who are morally opposed to war should not have to pay taxes to cover war.

To deny a woman coverage for abortion is tantamount to the private insurance industry denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, or denying claims for services they don’t consider needful or appropriate.

Because woman is unique, she has unique medical needs.  It is discriminatory to deny her the right to make her own decisions about those needs.  It is even more egregiously discriminatory to deny coverage of this procedure to the poor, but not to the rich, who can easily pay for the procedure if they lack insurance.

Allowing insurance coverage for abortions is hardly equivalent to the government, or taxpayer dollars, funding abortions, because the insured will be paying premiums for this insurance, with only some of them requiring subsidies for partial payment of premiums.

The government does not exist to make moral judgments about private decisions.  Yet that is what they do if they deny insurance coverage for abortion.  The Ninth Amendment to the Constitution says it well:  “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

All of the Republicans and many of the Democrats who voted for the Stupak Amendment last year voted against the health reform bill anyway.

Now there are states chipping away women’s rights, to the amount of about 180 various measures going through state legislatures, making death by a thousand cuts.  

What a price women have to pay for progress.

Gramma Windy

Eric Cantor's America?

Last week House Majority Whip Eric Cantor’s (R-VA), in an address to the conservative Hoover Institution, speaking about Social Security, remarked: "So we've got to protect today's seniors. But for the rest of us? For - you know, listen. We're going to have to come to grips with the fact that these programs cannot exist if we want America to be what we want America to be."

I wonder what it is they “want America to be.”

Gramma Windy

Response to Thoerig and Roberts re bigotry and tolerance

[This is a letter I sent to Cumberland Times-News in response to commentary by Nancy Thoerig and column by Cokie and Steve Roberts.  Note link to Thoerig's letter, not to Cokie.]

http://times-news.com/opinion/x598322900/Authentic-Catholics-do-not-support-gay-marriage

What an amazing juxtaposition of viewpoints in  Wednesday’s, March 30,  edition, between Nancy Thoerig’s  bigoted screed “Authentic Catholics do not support gay marriage,” targeting liberal Catholics, gay legislators, gays who want to marry, gay adoptive couples, children of lesbian couples, and atheist legislators (did I leave anyone out?), and Steve & Cokie Roberts’s op ed headlined, “America becoming more tolerant nation.”  What a contrast!

I would like to ask Ms Thoerig how she dare set herself up to judge who is or is not an “Authentic Catholic.”  “Judge not, that ye be not judged…”  Well, strike that.   Did someone grant onto her the same infallibility attributed to the Pope?  She is incensed at the people who promoted the bill to allow same-sex marriage in Maryland, especially those who are “liberal Catholics,” and you can almost hear her scathing tone as she refers to the eight openly gay members in the legislature—who let them in, anyway?    She forgets that our government is secular; it is neither to control, nor to be controlled by, any church.  Of course, citizens have every right to call, visit, and write to their legislators about an issue that concerns them, but the Catholic Church seems to believe that the government should be guided by their doctrine.    Who recalls when John F Kennedy had to face down fears that if a Catholic were elected president, the Pope would be taking over our government?  How far have we come now, when Catholic priests forbid communion to any politician who advocates for women’s reproductive rights, or to anyone who voted for Obama unless they go to confession and pray forgiveness; now, I suppose it will be to any politician who advocates for gay marriage.  Although the same strictures do not seem to apply to those who support the death penalty or the war in Iraq, even though the Vatican opposes both of those policies.

To cap it all off, when Ms Thoerig brings up Senator Jamin Raskin (D-Montgomery) leading the floor debate on the issue, she has to take a gratuitous slap at him for being an atheist.   Well, I guess that is worse than being an unauthentic Catholic.   What book did he get sworn in on?  By the way, speaking of books, you could do worse than to read Jamin D Raskin’s “Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court vs. The American People,” New York, Routledge, 2004.  Written, as you can see, before the infamous Citizens United ruling.

By contrast, there are Cokie and Steve Roberts, married 45 years, he Jewish and she Catholic; they have written a book “Our Haggadah:  Uniting Traditions for Interfaith Families.”   They discuss the greater acceptance today of interfaith marriage, and then state: “Social acceptance of diversity extends far beyond interfaith marriages,” citing a Washington Post/AB C News poll that shows 53 percent of Americans supporting gay marriage, up from 36 percent five years ago.  They point out that same-sex couples are seen as bringing the same devotion to their relationships as do heterosexual couples.

Our government, and our Constitution, exist to protect individual rights and liberties, not to deny them.

POEM--APRIL

THE DAY BEFORE APRIL

                Mary Carolyn Davies

The day before April,

Alone, alone,

I walked in the woods

And I sat on a stone.

I sat on a broad stone

And sang with the birds.

The tune was their making

But I made the words.