Posted on 09/30/2008 4:12:38 PM PDT by wagglebee
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Barack Obama claims he is the best candidate when it comes to improving health care for Americans and he touted better health care during the first presidential debate. However, his record is blemished with a vote against extending a health care program to cover pregnant women and their unborn children.
The State Children's Health Insurance (SCHIP) is a federal program that provides funds to states to provide health care services to children of low-income families.
Under a Bush administration proposal, states have the option of extending that coverage to unborn children -- which automatically qualifies pregnant women for coverage as well during their pregnancy.
Because this is an administrative rule and could be changed by a future president, like Obama, Senator Wayne Allard of Colorado offered an amendment earlier this year to put the rule in existing law and make helping pregnant women and children permanent.
The Allard Amendment would have written explicit language into the SCHIP statute to guarantee coverage for women and children.
"When a pregnancy is involved, there are at least two patients; there is the mother and there is the baby. It only makes sense to cover the unborn child under a children's health program," Allard said during the debate. "The bill before us modifies the SCHIP statute to allow to cover pregnant women of any age."
"There are many conditions that can affect the mother's health during pregnancy that are not related to her pregnancy," he added. "We should be allowing mothers to stay healthy so they will have healthy babies."
While senators from across the political spectrum -- including Democratic Sens. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Ben Nelson of Nebraska-- voted for it, Obama opposed the measure.
The vote provided another clear contrast between Obama and Sen. John McCain, who supported pregnant women and their unborn children by backing the amendment.
Senator Joe Biden, Obama's running mate, also voted against the health care coverage.
Allard said the coverage would have led to reduced costs associated with premature or low birth-weight babies.
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Barack Obama is a liberal, and liberals are reluctant to do anything that might encourage a woman not have an abortion. Even socialist programs, like government-funded health care, take a backseat to killing the unborn.
Hard-core abortion rights advocates are very wary of anything that smacks of extending “personhood” or “humanity” to the fetus, figuring it would be later used to limit or prohibit abortions. Obama has, if nothing else, demonstrated he is a hard-core abortion rights advocate so this vote is hardly surprising. If he has innate compassion for pregnant women and unborn babies, he has most certainly subliminated it for “the greater good”. I hope this gets into advertisements before the deadline for 527 ads kicks in.
That is exactly it. If the unborn is the “insured” he/she must be a person. Can’t have that !
Although this is different than most insurance coverage. During my pregnancy, I was the covered one. The baby became a covered dependent the moment she was born.
He certainly wouldn’t want to do anything that might help reduce the number of abortions.
Doubtless the liberal spin is that had the program been phrased as coverage for the mother, then they would have voted for it. But this was a program intended to cover children, and pregnancy coverage was incidental to the fact that the covered person was inside the pregnant woman’s womb. I know they are zealously guarding their principles here, even when it appears to be draconian. I wish conservatives were as zealous in protecting their principles from incursion by increments. For example, so many people say that legalizing same-sex marriage is no big deal but, as the liberals show, little deals can lead to big deals which no one can really prevent once the little deal is in place.
Good article; Google, ‘Obama, the most pro-abortion candidate ever.’
_____________________________
If McCain doesn’t take off the gloves, we’re done.
To h*ll with bipartisian BS, to h*ll with PC, to h*ll with ‘running a respectful campaign!!
This is the presidency of the United States we’re talking about!
If McCain doesn’t get on the stick and hit this sob hard,
we’ll have a Marxist/Muslim in the White House!
Flood him with emails! TELL him.
MCCAIN WEBSITE
http://www.johnmccain.com/Contact/
According to records, Obama voted yes for the Allard Amendment.
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