Yesterday at a Congressional hearing, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made two outrageous claims:
During the subcommittee hearing, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) said that contraception provided by insurance companies to people employed by religious organizations under the future form of the rule Sebelius described would not be was not free.
“Who pays for it? There’s no such thing as a free service,” Murphy asked.
Sebelius responded that that is not the case with insurance.
“The reduction in the number of pregnancies compensates for cost of contraception,” Sebelius answered.
Murphy expressed surprise by the answer.
“So you are saying, by not having babies born, we are going to save money on health care?” Murphy asked.
Sebelius replied, “Providing contraception is a critical preventive health benefit for women and for their children.”
Murphy again sought clarification.
“Not having babies born is a critical benefit. This is absolutely amazing to me. I yield back,” he said.
Sebelius responded, “Family planning is a critical health benefit in this country, according to the Institute of Medicine.”
Quite aside from the fact that nobody is incensed that the government is now directing private industry to provide goods and services for free, the twin claims that decreasing the population offsets the cost of such mandates to industry, and that contraception is a, “critical preventive health benefit for women and for their children,” tell us all we need to know about the depravity of the political left in this nation.
Lowering cholesterol and salt intake are “critical preventive health benefits” as they prevent disease states such as atherosclerosis, hypertension, etc.
Eliminating tobacco is a “critical preventive health benefit” as it reduces chances of developing lung and throat cancer.
Now we are told by the HHS Secretary that pregnancy is a potential health risk not only to women, but their existing children as well. This is the trajectory the twin evils of abortion and contraception have had us on all along. No less a prophet than Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta saw this coming decades ago:
America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts — a child — as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters
And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being’s entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign.
~Mother Theresa — “Notable and Quotable,” Wall Street Journal, 2/25/94, p. A14
While it is axiomatic that families and nations do not grow and prosper by shrinking, the question needs to be asked. What is behind the political left’s emphasis on reducing the size of our population, especially in light of the dwindling numbers of employees who will be available to support retirees on Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare?
It seems to me that the Obama crew has it entirely wrong. The only way to fix the funding shortfalls for senior citizen programs is to increase the size of the nation, her tax-paying workforce, and the size of her economy. Having aborted 54 million citizens over the past 39 years, as well as the offspring they’ll never have, has devastated our senior entitlement programs.
Again, it is axiomatic that growth and prosperity are tied to…
Growth!
There is no logical, economic, political, or philosophical explanation for the model of stewardship espoused by the left. Sebelius has revealed, again, the pitting of the mother against the child of the womb and has now added the pitting of the child of the womb against its siblings. She has reduced pregnancy to the level of a disease state in the Federal system of health management.
It is classic radical feminist agitprop. It also echoes Margaret Sanger who famously decreed,
The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it. The same factors which create the terrible infant mortality rate, and which swell the death rate of children between the ages of one and five, operate even more extensively to lower the health rate of the surviving members. Moreover, the overcrowded homes of large families reared in poverty contribute to this condition. Lack of medical attention is still another factor, so that the child who must struggle for health in competition with other members of a closely packed family has still great difficulties to meet after its poor constitution and malnutrition have been accounted for.
From “Woman and the New Race,” page 63. Book can be read online here.
Such sentiments from two prominent Catholic women arise from the crosscurrents of poorly formed morality and ethics, and encountering human suffering. It would seem that in the Sanger-Sebelius circles not much has changed in 90 years. Their response to suffering and death is not charity and expanding economic opportunity. The response is more death.
It is a cramped worldview that sees human struggle and only envisions death, or nonexistence as the solution. We can do better than these people.
We must.
Coming Home 
Just looking at this woman’s face speaks volumes. She is a very unhappy lady. Is it Maggie’s shadowy image I see surrounding this poor woman? It must be because Mags’ ideas were pretty much the same as Nance’s! We MUST do better than these people. When will our nation WAKE UP????
Are we not backtracking to the 1960’s or 1970’s when pregnancy was considered a DISEASE by the medical community and insurance industry, Do CPT-4 Codes still code this way? I seem to remember that the insurance industry had to change it’s stance regarding pregnancy. And now we are headed back to those days….all part of the agenda. Feels like we’re in the beginning days of Nazi Germany. Exterminate those that don’t fit the agenda and only keep those “fit” according to the elites/government bodies. Is this not where we are at???? So sad for Mrs. Sebelius. She needs to open her heart and mind to the Lord. Praying for her conversion.
Wonder if she ever had an abortion – she seems so against family and children. As if she’s trying to justify her position in her mind…..I wonder if she ever comes down with a life threatening illness, if she will choose to end her life or want to work toward saving it no matter what? How much does she love life really? Or does she only love her life and everyone else’s doesn’t matter.
More to come I’m sure!
You nailed it – I remember when having a baby cost us only the co-pay – now – it has gotten expensive – but the gov’t is willing to foot the bill of an abortion for everyone…… helping to making the “CHOICE” for some people……
She is a disgrace as a Catholic. Although I agree with Nicole to some extent that we need to pray for our conversion, I think she needs to be removed from the Catholic Church…I said it…Excommunicate her! If she finds our Lord and repents of her horrific statements and actions, then we will welcome our back into the fold. Until then, she and every other politician (left or right) who has said such things needs to find their way out the door.
I am sorry if this comes across as harsh and uncharitable, but if we don’t fight back, we will have Nazi Germany and Communist Russia (two governments that embraced Margaret Sanger’s “ideas”) in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
Welcome her back into the fold…
[…] to save money on health care?” Murphy asked.Dr. Gerard Nadal, a molecular and microbiologist, has more to share on that bit of fuzzy logic. Mammon isn’t too keen on the plan not to pay him like we’ve promised, remember?Joanne […]
Did you have to make the picture so large? It took me a few moments to recover from the impact of that photo before I was able to read your entry. I have been shouting from the rooftops a warning about Sebelius since I first heard of her in 2008. We should have known that the woman from “Bleeding Kansas” would only help drive us to becoming “Bleeding America.” Many of us did.
For those who say she should be excommunicated, she was told by Archbishop Joseph Naumann that she should not receive Communion until she publicly repudiates her support for abortion rights and confesses her error back in 2008. To my recollection, since that time she has not identified herself, at least publicly, as a Catholic. No information or pictures have surfaced about her attending Mass or receiving communion.
Any friend of the late Dr. Tiller is no friend of anyone with whom I would associate. I’m sure that Jesus would agree.
If she can say that and not realize how much like Hitler she sounds, she’s too far gone
All I can think about is the Fatima prayer…”Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, and lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of your mercy.” I really believe KB has never stopped to consider that her intransigence will lead her straight to hell (literally). She really needs prayer. Not surprised she hasn’t been photographed receiving communion…I would think that her conscience has to stop her from doing so. Who knows? I think about my life and my sins, and I am grateful for God’s forgiveness in the Sacrament of Confession. Where would I be without Confession? I pray that KB is moved to realize she has excommunicated herself by her actions, and that she allow the Holy Spirit in and turn away from this craziness. However, I think she might be giving in to the Enemy and only exorcism can save her now. I’m not being hyperbolic, either. I just can’t see any other reason than demonic infestation in her position. She goes beyond the radical feminist nonsense into the realm of collaboration with evil. God gives us freedom and we need to use it well. KB needs to be educated in the true meaning of freedom: Holy Mary’s Fiat.
This editorial reminded me of two other quotes:
“Abortion kills twice. It kills the body of the baby and it kills the conscience of the mother. Abortion is profoundly anti-women. Three quarters of its victims are women: Half the babies and all the mothers.” …. Blessed Mother Teresa.
“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has first destroyed itself from within.” ….. Will Durant. (Historian)
Dr. Nadal,
Does anyone else hear the similarity between KB’s statement and a quote from Joseph Goebbels?…
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
(Just in case no one remembers Goebbels, he masterminded Kristallnacht…)
…we are just waiting for the appearance of the führer…Jesus help us…
[We won’t need to wait long if BO gets reelected. GN]
two thoughts: Nancy looks like she has a heart of stone in this picture. Very revealing indeed. She is spouting rhetoric that seems impossible to believe but basically it’s abortion and contraception at any cost because these are now consider a woman’s “right to health care”. When the question is framed in this way, well it makes Catholics (and others opposed) look stupid and archaic.
Second thing: the Mother Theresa quote is amazing. Simply amazing. A prophet to tell us what we are doing to ourselves and each other.
[MC, I like the picture because it’s candid, not airbrushed and posed. It comports with her deep, abiding proabort beliefs. GN]
In “A Christmas Carol” Ebeneezer Scrooge made a similar remark when told that thousands were dying of hunger in poorhouses in Victorian England. “Well, then they should die and be quick about it, to decrease the surplus population.”
Eugenics changes forms but the aim is always the same.
I find no one living willing to give their life to make it better for anyone else. On the contrary a selfish few(and growing number) believe it is best to kill off anyone that stands in their way of a life free from restraints, obligations or decency.
We as Christians have been sucked into paying for every perversion known to man. Abortion, free and rampant sex, sexual perversion preferences, tolerance only for the liberals who can attack conservatives while screaming tolerance.
Rush Limbaugh is attacked for calling a woman a slut for pushing for America to pay for her birth control. But no word about Rolling Stones speaking horrible profanities over recently deceased Andrew Breitbart. He actually said about Breitbart’s death, “Good! F*** him. I couldn’t be happier that he’s dead.”
The goats and sheep are parting. Let us stay close to the Shepherd to hear only HIS voice. I love Mother Teresa’s quote-a woman who did give her life for all those around her.
The look on that face is frightening. Like a character out of Dickens.
Proving that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I actually think she’s attractive. She looks a little bit like my grandmother.
Next is the dying-with-dignity health benefit for the elderly. Free euthanasia busses (built by GM) will come right to your home.
Notice the “Women for Obama” button. This is a glimpse of the tactic this administration will use (effectively, I think) in their campaign. Polarizing people into groups “for Obama” (implying that the right is not “for” your particular group–we’ve seen this with the creation of “African Americans for Obama), and turning this into a “women’s health” campaign (as we’ve seen with Obama trying to seem sypathetic by phoning the Georgetown student). We are getting a clinic in propaganda, people.
Please pray that Ms. Sebelius has a change of heart and rejects her pro-abortion politics.
REMEMBER, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly to thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother; to thee do I come; before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me. Amen.
Nicole is correct when she reminds us to pray for her conversion. More things are accomplished through prayer than the world realizes. In “The Scarlet and the Black,” the Irish priest manages to obtain the grace of conversion for the head of the SS in Rome. Check out the movie; it is based on a true story!