I've pilloried this guy enough times on this blog, and for perfectly good reasons. But transgressions aside, his remarks at the closing of last night's yuckfest really slapped me upside the head---not that I agreed with every agenda item he mentioned, but because, well, I couldn't find a lot to fault with the principle underlying them:
All of us reverently recall a man of deep Catholic faith and ringing patriotism, who had a tear in his Irish eyes for what we would call, the “uns”:The un-employed;
the un-insured;
the un-wanted;
the un-wed mother, and her innocent, fragile un-born baby in her womb;
the un-documented;
the un-housed;
the un-healthy;
the un-fed;
the under-educated.Government, Al Smith believed, should be on the side of these “uns,” but a government partnering with family, Church, parish, neighborhood, organizations and community, never intruding or opposing, since, when all is said and done, it’s in God we trust, not, ultimately, in government or politics.
Let that sink in for a moment. Government has a moral obligation to provide comfort and assistance to the unemployed, the homeless, the sick, the poor, the indigent and the immigrant---the weakest and most vulnerable of its citizens. It's such a novel idea, it's amazing no one's ever thought of it before. Oh, wait.
Granted, we can quibble over the meaning of "intruding or imposing," and at times we probably should, but it's hard not to be moved and impressed by the overarching principle at play here.
What's more, if our government actually did do these things, I am guessing that the "unborn baby" issue might, just might, recede into the distance since it's been established that more highly educated women who earn a living wage at jobs that provides affordable health care are far less likely to ever rely on abortion services than women who have none of these things. Not that the zealots won't cease their crusade for control of women's bodies---that's been a constant in our patriarchal social order for thousands of years---but over time, it'll be that much more difficult for them to be taken seriously in polite company for railing against a medical procedure that's becoming increasingly rare.
I guess for me, it breaks down like this: You'll never get me to agree with the Church's absolutist stand on abortion. But if a few more folks in the so-called "pro-life" movement actually expressed the same protective concerns for people who've already been born into this world that they do for clumps of embryonic stem cells, I'd give their moral argument a lot more respect than I currently do---which is to say, none at all---and so, I imagine, would most people who consider themselves "pro-choice." Maybe some pro-life Catholics would consider retaking possession of their movement from the clutches of the zany brigade?
---Vitelius
Government has to take necessary steps for providing the insurance to the citizens, because it makes them to lead a healthy life.
Posted by: Womens Health | October 22, 2012 at 11:09 PM