• From Neil’s blog: Twelve hundred Britons have died from the deplorable conditions at state-run hospitals.
• From Camp of the Saints: the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, who chose to get health care in the United States, stated that he did so because it was better for his health.
• Finally, an abortionist in Philadelphia has had his medical license revoked; his “safe, legal, and rare” activities were not any of the three.

The Philadelphia abortionist used unlicensed assistants, put women on recliners to recover, performed abortions through the eighth month of pregnancy, and left women bleeding (sometimes to death) without proper medical attention.  Things worked out no better for the babies.

In England, nursing staff refused patients’ requests to use a bathroom and shower, with the result that they were left to wallow in their own filth for days or weeks at a time; discharged patients who were not medically prepared to go home; and did not clean blood and other bodily fluid out of rooms.

Rather than helping women and children be happy and healthy, abortion leaves one dead and the other, mangled and heartbroken (and, sometimes, dead as well).  It is no surprise that a person who makes a living off of ending life would show no more regard for the born than the unborn. Likewise, it is no surprise that a system which is premised first on an empty notion of equality (equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity) would be worse for everyone than one premised on excellence.

These scandals are the logical consequences of a system of “health care” that has a primary aim of vindicating some warped notion of social justice, not of making people healthy.  That an abortionist would leave women to haemorrhage and that socialised medicine would leave people with equal access to third-world care is not an aberration, but the fruition of the Left’s demented notion of “health care”.

Much as Neil often says that he is too pro-science to be pro-choice, this blogger will say that she cares too much about women’s health and access to quality care to be pro-abortion or pro-socialised medicine.

Jonathan Adler links to Prof. Tribe’s discussion of the non-justiciability of climate change litigation.

Neil finishes the sentences of the critics of Tim Tebow’s Superbowl ad.

William Jacobson calls upon President Obama to back up his SOTU criticism of the Supreme Court by prosecuting those who illegally take foreign campaign contributions – and start with the issues in his own election.

Obama discourages companies and people from going to Vegas.  Now, decreased busines travel hurts the economy, espeically low-income workers (e.g. waitresses, cooks, hotel staff). There is no rational reason why a  hotel cleaning lady in Vegas is any less deserving of a steady job than is a hotel cleaning lady in New York, yet that is the intended result of our President’s words.

Da TechGuy (aka Sicilian gentleman extraordinaire) links to Andrew Sullivan’s sort-of mea culpa  for ignoring John Edwards’ indiscretions.   Anyone care to try to make a drinking game out of that article that doesn’t kill you by the end of the first paragraph?

Truth is stranger than Sullivan’s fiction: Patterico mentions how Jim Treacher was hit by a government car while walking in a crosswalk, then given a ticket for jaywalking.

Dan Collins’ book is out! Buy it here.

Bob Belvedere discusses a new study showing that some people who are severely disabled after accidents retain their brain function.  Mr. Belvedere’s analysis:

[B]ut the thing that is very clear is that taking such people off life support should be halted immediately.  If there is the slightest chance that these people are not brain-dead, we have a duty to keep them alive.

Disagreement with heavy-handed government action is often a good way to unite conservatives, libertarians, and liberals.  Let me know who can possibly be for the government taking samples of every single child’s DNA, without either parental consent or notification; running tests on that DNA; giving the results to insurance companies; storing that DNA indefinitely (with the child’s name attached); and, for kicks, giving the DNA to researchers (sometimes, with the child’s name attached).

This underscores one of the oft-ignored issues in values teaching: traditional morality helps the most vulnerable among us.  African-Americans, who are three times as likely as their white peers to abort and several times more likely to give birth out of wedlock, stand to benefit the most from traditional values teachings; it is no coincidence that they – second-class citizens until a generation ago – have suffered the most from liberalism.

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Bob Belvedere at Camp of the Saints first lauds Israel for its service to Haiti and then for its relationship with America:

Israel is one of the few allies we have that is vibrant and robust.  They are the lonely outpost of freedom and liberty in a despotic and desiccated Middle East.

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Russ asks why conservative women are hotter than their liberal counterparts. This gives me a perfect excuse to quote a passerby at Scott Brown’s victory celebration: “You can tell that all the women here are Republicans.  Liberal women all wear clothes made out of yarn.”

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Da TechGuy links to a horrible story about a Planned Parenthood escort’s attack on pro-life activist Lila Rose.  Note that the escort is a male.  In my experience, liberal men treat pro-life women like something foul that they found on their shoes. Perhaps the antipathy stems from actual condescension; alternatively, they may hate and degrade us because we make it difficult for them to pursue their anti-life agenda in our name.

On the abortion subject, Dr. Zero at Hot Air has a beautiful tribute to the sanctity of life.

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Michelle Malkin points out that, contrary to his SOTU address, Obama will be fulfilling one campaign pledge: to end the use of nuclear power in the United States.  Can we lay to rest the notion that global warming is about anything more than political power?

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From Total Transformation: UFC champion Brock Lesnar stridently opposes Canadian health care.  Due to the low quality of care and unavailability of diagnostic machines, he came close to dying. His wife drove him over the border into an American hospital, which saved his life and his career.  Let’s be clear: socialised medicine will do nothing but ensure that the high-quality care which is currently available to middle-class Americans will be the exclusive provence of the upper class and the politically connected.

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The indomitable Stacy McCain smacks a NYT columnist for linking only to liberal blogs, even while pointing out the flaws in their reasoning.  Even Douthat’s federalist missive misses the heart of the issue: beyond the propriety of treating sex ed as if it were an academic subject, there is much more at stake than subtle teenage pregnancy rates.  This experiment in a sexual revolution has given us nothing but 1.3 million abortions per year (despite a copium of inexpensive and available methods of birth control), 40% of children who are born out of wedlock, a lower marriage rate, and a higher divorce rate.  Last time I checked, most teenagers want to fall in love, marry, have children, and stay married – pretty much in that order.  Liberalism is not designed to produce that result.

In 1997, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution does not include a right to assisted suicide (Washington v. Glucksberg). Aside from the fact that the Court’s rationale (that assisted suicide is not so deeply rooted in our legal tradition as to constitute a fundamental right, which would implicate Due Process issues) applies equally well to abortion, Chief Justice Rehnquist’s opinion eloquently outlines the value of all human life and how these types of laws only hurt the most vulnerable among us.

Furthermore, as the Obama Administration has done its best to pass a health care bill whose cost-cutting mechanisms consist primarily of reducing care to the elderly, as as we’ve learned from Oregon’s example that state-run health care can often lead to state-encouraged assisted suicide*, we should be mindful of the reality that what the state condones, the state may accomplish by force:

This concern is further supported by evidence about the practice of euthanasia in the Netherlands. The Dutch government’s own study revealed that in 1990, there were 2,300 cases of voluntary euthanasia (defined as “the deliberate termination of another’s life at his request”), 400 cases of assisted suicide, and more than 1,000 cases of euthanasia without an explicit request. In addition to these latter 1,000 cases, the study found an additional 4,941 cases where physicians administered lethal morphine overdoses without the patients’ explicit consent. Physician Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia in the Netherlands: A Report of Chairman Charles T. Canady, at 12-13 (citing Dutch study).

As Rehnquist goes on to point out, this harms the most vulnerable people among us: the elderly, those without family to fight for them, the indigent (who cannot pay for care), those with mental disorders, and those who have just lost spouses.

It is not a coincidence that those who face the greatest harm from assisted suicide also face the greatest harm from abortion: women who are pushed into abortion are those who are either very young or very old, those without familial support, and those who are on the periphery of society.  The babies that are most likely to be denied the chance to live are those who are “deformed” or “abnormal.”  Abortion, like assisted suicide, is society’s referendum on who is worthy of life: neither one has a place in America, a nation built on the idea of individual dignity and unalienable rights, and a land of unparalleled prosperity and charity.

*As a Greek language nerd, I despise the use of  ”euthanasia” to refer to assisted suicide: there is nothing good nor noble about hastening  the death of another human.

Blog for Life Must-Reads

Neil discusses Tim Tebow’s pro-life Superbowl ad.

Why Pro-Life Presidents Matter, from First Things.  It is rather tempting to be cynical and believe that nothing we can do will make a difference – not electing pro-life leaders, nor working on the local level to advance the cause – but that is often only because we take our hard-won victories for granted.

From LifeNews:  younger Americans are more pro-life than their Baby Boomer counterparts.

A lovely editorial in the Chattanoogan newspaper about respecting all forms of life and truly being for life, rather than against abortion.

A young pro-lifer,  Katie Walker, discusses abortion in the context of social justice and historical discrimination.

Sarah Palin’s pro-woman, pro-life message: Marching for a Beautiful Life.

Americans United for Life has live coverage of the March for Life.

Stacy McCain has the live video of the March for Life’s conference.

Massachusetts Citizens for Life is holding an Assembly for Life on Sunday.

(While I’m dying to hear all about the March from those who attended, I would be shocked if anything could match the spectacular beauty of the 2008 March.)

Beyond the implications for medical science, this woman’s ability to lead a normal life has profound implications for the pro-life movement.  Whether the subject be unborn children who have Down’s Syndrome or a cognitive impairment or adults like Terri Schiavo, the diagnosis of mental deficiency should be thought of as a temporary one.  Those who advocate for abortion and  euthanasia are not only ignoring the inherent dignity of every human being, but demonstrate a profound ignorance of medical science as well.