is there anyone else who is pro-life AND pro-gay rights, or is it just me?

[bryantm3]

Well, my whole point was that if abortion is absolutely necessary, it's still available in every state under those 3 conditions, and for other reasons you can travel outside of your state and have an abortion done, it's just a lot less convenient, giving a disincentive for having an abortion, allowing the mother to think about other options that may be available. I'm certain that not all 50 states will ever entirely ban abortion. I have thought this out over a very long period of time and have come to the conclusion that the amount of people who have abortions out of convenience outnumbers the amount of people who have it done because they're in danger of losing their life. I know you're arguing that there are many different cases, but allowing individual states to decide both gives a considerable disincentive to those considering abortion out of convenience, while still allowing those who really feel there is no other way out, like in your special cases, to have an abortion in a different state.

if it helps prove my point, i'll specifically respond to the situation you posed

let's imagine a girl who accidentally gets pregnant in your ideal world, where women are forced to carry pregnancies unless her life is in danger. let's call her mary. mary is a recent college grad in a bad economy who can't find work in her field. as a result she takes a job as a waitress at TGI Fridays. part time, no health insurance. she starts dating another server at that same establishment, let's call him matt. neither one has insurance. they're careful about birth control but after several months of dating one slips past the goalie and she finds herself staring at a pink plus sign on a pregnancy dipstick.

I know that there is no realistic way to prevent people from having sex before marriage. It would be great if things were that simple, but they aren't, and situations like this do happen a lot. I won't give a lecture about 'they shouldn't have been having sex' because it is so common that to dismiss this situation is to dismiss the entire problem. Therefore, the rest of my argument assumes that situations like this can and do happen.

now, as noble as matt may be, bearing "equal" responsibility for this pregnancy doesn't get her even one step closer to health insurance. still, they scrimp and pinch and get her to her first OB GYN appointment to make sure things are normal. by the way, this first OB GYN appointment costs $500 for the uninsured. That gets her a blood test to confirm the pregnancy, some lab tests to make sure hormonal levels are healthy, and a consultation with a doctor. this doesn't afford an ultrasound to confirm the implanted embryo but let's pretend they're willing to throw that in.

first ultrasound at 8 weeks: whaddya know, there are two babies in there. still no health insurance. oh and by the way, these twins are identical so she's only got one placenta. which takes her from a "high risk" category to a "very high risk" category. she's now obligated to monitor her health and the babies' health very closely, which translates to bi-weekly ultrasounds with a perinatal specialist, alternating with bi-weekly visits to the OB GYN. if it was $500 for that first consult, how much do you think they're now having to afford for these visits? we're talking thousands and thousands of dollars before she even hits viability at 24 weeks.

now let's give her my health complications. gestational hypertension, which equals extra monitoring. at 24 weeks she starts going to the perinatal specialist every single week. and she sees her OB GYN every single week. which means she's shelling out hundreds of dollars on tuesday and hundreds of dollars on thursday. oh, and by the way, she's been forced onto bed rest because of the hypertension and risk of premature delivery. so no more waitressing at TGI fridays, which means they're down to matt's meager income.

let's also give her my delivery story. she's rushed to the hospital a month and a half prematurely and she spends a week bedridden, hooked up to monitors. finally when she's informed that she may start seizing and her liver is on the verge of failure they admit her for an emergency c-section. she's also received two very expensive shots of steroids to help develop the babies' lungs at this point. they rush her into the OR where the standard double surgical team is standing by to deliver. there is literally twice the staff in this delivery room, standing by to receive two premature babies.

what do you think that costs?

the babies are lucky, they get good APGAR scores, but because they arrived on planet earth before 35 weeks they're rushed to the NICU. they're too little to have the jaw strength to eat so they have to be tube fed for several days before they learn to successfully drink from a bottle. 13 days in NICU for baby A, 18 days in NICU for baby B.

how much do you think that costs?

i'll tell you. the NICU alone, which ended up providing little more than warmth and feeding assistance (so no extra surgeries or equipment needed) costs $250,000. read that number carefully. the NICU alone costs a quarter of a million dollars. add in all of the prenatal care costs, the hospital expenses, the surgery expenses, and you've got a total bill for this one pregnancy of nearly half a million dollars. yeah. half a million for one pregnancy.

this is exactly the reason that i support a premium based voluntary national health care plan, and the reason that i support s-chip (minus the crooked cigarette lobbyist addition 'tax loose cigarette tobacco $50 a pound while taxing cigarettes only $1 a pack to run competitors out of business... but that's a whole different story.) and medicare programs to pay for the bills people have to encounter in situations like this.

i have heard others argue that 'you pay when your car gets repaired, why not pay to go to the doctor?' the reality is that medical costs are completely unreasonable and it's turned into the biggest racket ever created by mankind, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars for people to get treated. pregnancy is only one of the things that needs to be covered under such a plan. however, after the health care bill is passed and matt and mary cannot afford a health care payment, they almost certainly can apply for medicaid, which does pay for pregnancy costs.

in addition, at this point, if mary's life was in danger, the doctor could perform an abortion. if mary's life was not in danger and she felt she had no other option, she could have matt drive her out of state and get an abortion.

now. mary and matt didn't want this pregnancy. they were forced by law to carry it to term (or as close as they could get). who bears the burden of the expense? even if they could afford it, why should they? why should they be forced by law to bear the physical burden and the health risks as well as the financial ruin? do we put the half million tab on the taxpayers? does the hospital have to eat the cost?

i ask you this because too often the "pro lifers" want to paint the pretty picture of healthy pregnancies and adopted children. but realistically there are very ugly, dirty details to be managed. who pays for the unwanted pregnancies?

this is where we get down to a moral issue rather than a practical issue. why should they pay the cost, even if they could afford it? they should because it's their child. and i'm not being judgmental— there's a two year old at our church that has a terrible heart defect and is having to have thousands of dollars of surgery. why do his parents want to pay that amount of money? because it's their child. they want to do everything they can to save him. whether they've seen their child or not, it's still their child. it doesn't change the fact that he is still a human being.

if they are on medicaid, the taxpayers are already paying it. and to be honest, i think $500,000 for a child whose parents are under the poverty line is a much better use of money than building a $200 million bridge in alaksa- that's why medicaid isn't a mainstream political football.

more later, have to go.