As Live Action News has been covering, President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of pro-life Rep. Tom Price to head his administration’s Department of Health and Human Services has abortion advocates throwing conniptions, with the latest batch coming courtesy of Rewire’s Ally Boguhn. Their hysteria is, of course, not only unfounded but highly ironic:
[National Partnership for Women & Families president Debra] Ness said Price’s “opposition to contraception coverage and abortion care harms women whose economic security, health and dignity is tied to their ability to plan whether and when to have children.” She encouraged the U.S. Senate to “refuse to confirm a nominee who poses such a significant threat to the health and well-being of women and families.”
Price in a 2012 interview with ThinkProgress discussed his opposition to the ACA’s birth control benefit, which mandates that employer-sponsored health insurance plans cover contraception as preventive care with no cost to the consumer. Price claimed “there’s not one” woman who would have trouble affording contraception without it.
Price was exactly right. As has been the case for years, contraception is readily available for prices ranging from free to $9 per month without Planned Parenthood or Obamacare. Whenever Ness and her fellow propagandists scream about pro-life policies “threatening” women’s “economic security,” this is what they mean. That’s it. The more immediate threat to the abortion industry is that women are proving they don’t need it, because they’re stronger and smarter than abortion advocates give them credit for. Boguhn’s article continues:
“Price has voted for extreme bans on abortion care and coverage and vowed to end Obamacare. This nomination is yet another signal that Trump plans to make good on his promise to repeal Obamacare, defund Planned Parenthood, and punish women who have abortions by making the Hyde Amendment permanent,” Destiny Lopez, co-director of All* Above All, said in a statement. “Trump has no mandate to take away women’s basic rights and we plan to fight these heinous proposals every step of the way.”
So many revealing goodies to unpack here! First, it’s a lie to claim Price “has voted for extreme bans on abortion care” for the simple fact that Congress hasn’t voted on any pro-life legislation that could plausibly be deemed “extreme” since Price took office in 2005. It’s all been mainstream, incremental measures that it would take a true pro-abortion extremist to oppose—parental notification, taxpayer funding of abortion, born-alive infant protection, sex/race-selection abortions, and late-term abortion bans containing exceptions.
Second, Lopez has done us a tremendous favor by confirming that “punish women” no longer means anything of significance in today’s pro-abortion parlance. It’s been so cheapened that repealing the Hyde Amendment, which would do nothing but prevent abortion seekers from forcing someone else to foot the bill, now constitutes “punishment”? Punishing Planned Parenthood’s profits, maybe…
Third, Lopez reminds us that abortion advocates have no idea (or interest in) what a “basic right” actually is. Here’s a hint: the Constitution actually mentions the right not to be killed. The power to kill another human being growing inside you? Not so much. The article goes on:
“Tom Price is entirely unfit to be secretary of health and human services and follows a troubling pattern of Trump appointees who have shown complete disregard for the challenges women in this country face,” [EMILY’s List president Stephanie] Schriock said. “This Republican Congress must defend the women it claims to protect and hold Trump and his nominees accountable for their anti-woman agendas.”
“Entirely unfit”—the quote Rewire chose to headline their hit piece—is a particularly interesting attack, given that unlike Kathleen Sebelius, the Obama HHS Secretary who presided over the enactment of Obamacare, Price has extensive medical qualifications, including twenty years’ experience as an orthopaedic surgeon and a stint as Medical Director of the Orthopedic Clinic at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. Sebelius, by the way, was so much more “fit” for the job that she admitted to Congress that she didn’t bother reviewing the constitutionality of her administration’s contraception coverage mandate before proceeding with it.
But sure, actual doctor Price is “unfit” to oversee healthcare policy because he opposes abortion (never mind that most of the medical profession wants nothing to do with the practice). More:
“Tom Price is someone who has made clear throughout his career that he does not trust women to make our own decisions about our health care. Instead, he wants to punish us for the choices we make for our bodies, our futures, and our families,” [NARAL senior vice president Sasha] Bruce said. “For the seven in 10 Americans who support legal access to abortion, this is an incredibly alarming pick.”
First, it’s downright scandalous that we’ve allowed the likes of NARAL to get away with pretending that supporting abortion means they’re fighting for the power “to make our own decisions about our health care” as they fight to preserve a law that is all about denying people every other decision over their healthcare.
Second, the 7-in-10 statistic is an old saw NARAL’s been falsely claiming for years. It doesn’t matter what more detailed and objective polls consistently show; “most Americans agree with us even when they decisively reject us at the ballot box” is an article of faith they have to constantly reinforce to keep up their cultists’ spirits.
Pro-aborts losing their minds this badly before Trump’s even taken office seems to be a pretty good indicator that Tom Price as Health and Human Services Secretary will be just what the doctor ordered.
