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Karen Spears Zacharias

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Obamacare: The Pro-Choice Hypocrisy

Obamacare: The Pro-Choice Hypocrisy

Last updated on: January 27, 2014 at 1:41 am by Karen Spears Zacharias

Obamacare: The Pro-Choice Hypocrisy 2014-01-27T01:41:25+00:00 Karen Spears Zacharias

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The pro-abortion and right-to-choose segment of our society has all but co-opted the term “Women’s Choice” to be defined as the right to terminate a pregnancy: the right to end a life. Let me say by way of full disclosure that in 1974 I had an abortion. I wrote all about that in ‘After the Flag has been Folded.’ Thus, one might assume that I align myself somewhere between the pro-abortion and right-to-choose groups; anything else would be hypocritical of me, right? I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

Time, abortion clinic bombings and an onslaught of legal cases has taught us that the discussion over Women’s Choice was not decided once and for all in Roe v. Wade. And now along comes Obamacare contributing to the oftentimes vitriolic discussion.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee caused a ruckus recently when he suggested that Democrats are holding women hostage to their libidos. And Dr. David Green, CEO of the nationwide chain Hobby Lobby has turned to the courts to determine how far-reaching the feds may be allowed when pressing private industry to comply with Obamacare, even when it means violating the company’s religious beliefs. Green explained his family’s position in a column published in 2012 in USAToday:

A new government health care mandate says that our family business must provide what I believe are abortion-causing drugs as part of our health insurance. Being Christians, we don’t pay for drugs that might cause abortions. Which means that we don’t cover emergency contraception, the morning-after pill or the week-after pill. We believe doing so might end a life after the moment of conception, something that is contrary to our most important beliefs. It goes against the biblical principles on which we have run this company since day one. If we refuse to comply, we could face $1.3 million per day in government fines.

The pro-abortion and pro-choice contingent is rankled by Green’s position, by Huckabee’s remarks and by almost anyone or anything else challenging a woman’s right to choose.

Nobody it seems, not the pro-choice contingent, not the pro-abortion component, not even the pro-lifers have zeroed in on a glaring flaw inherent in Obamacare. Where is the right for a woman to choose to have a baby? Where is coverage for the infertile woman who wants desperately to have a child? Where do the rights of infertile women come into play?

Currently, only 15 states nationwide require insurance coverage for infertility treatment. Most insurance companies do not cover any of the procedures to determine why a couple cannot conceive, nor do they cover any of the fixes to that problem.

In other words, a woman’s right to choose is only worth fighting for when her right is to terminate a pregnancy. When it comes to the creation of new life, few if any are willing to go to bat on behalf of the infertile couple.

Infertile couples are left out in the wild to fend for themselves, cut off from a society who fails to recognize their inability to conceive as a legitimate medical problem, even though resolutions often requires extensive medical intervention.

Expensive medical intervention.

Oh, I know what you are thinking, infertile couples should just adopt. There are plenty of kids in need out there. What you may not be aware of are both the prohibitive state regulations and expenses involved in all that, too. And, no, medical insurance does not cover an infertile couple’s attempts at adoption.

The infertile couple without financial resources is left with little choice. Infertile women all over this county lack a right to choose because of money. The very same argument the pro-choice and pro-abortion groups tout as the reason why Obamacare needs to provide for abortions and abortion-inducing drugs. Ironically, the costs for abortions or abortifacients are a fraction of the cost of most fertility diagnoses and treatment. Yet, it seems the Right-to- Choose forces are only on one side of the financial hardship hurdle: termination assistance.

The infertile couple is expected to refinance their home, jack up their credit cards, take out a baby loan, sponsor a Kick-starter campaign, get a second or third job, all in an effort to have a shot at becoming parents.

Infertility is not an inconvenience – it is a disease of the reproductive system. Just like kidney disease or diabetes. An estimated 7.3 million women and their mates suffer from the disease of infertility: about 12 percent of the reproductive-age population, according to the Center for Disease Control. And, yet, under Obamacare those millions of the voting infertile public are simply ignored. Obamacare doesn’t specifically address infertility and it doesn’t require health insurance plans to cover treatment, says Sean Tipton, director of public affairs for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. “The Affordable Care Act is completely silent on infertility,” Tipton says.

In other words, Obama, and all those vehemently defending a woman’s right to choose, do so only when that choice is about ending life, not creating it.

That’s the height of hypocrisy if you ask me.

Karen Spears Zacharias is the author of Mother of Rain (Mercer Univ. Press). For more information find her at karenzach.com or on Twitter @karenzach.

Center for Disease Control

https://www.asrm.org/detail.aspx?id=68

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