This is what “Single Payer” inevitably leads to:

Ed Morrissey pegs it:

We knew it would come to this when Oregon insisted on passing its assisted-suicide laws. It doesn’t take much for assisted suicide to go from a humane option to a cost-saving device, especially when the state pays for the medical care. One patient in Oregon got a letter that made this all too clear, when in the same letter rejecting her request for life-extending chemotherapy, Oregon offered her “physician-aid-in-dying”. In other words, Oregon offered their customer a heapin’ helping of death:

Just a little preview of the nightmare that will be Obamacare.

Sign the petition — Your very life will depend upon stopping this abomination of Obamacare!

This morning at the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas, the late-term abortionist George Tiller was murdered by an assailant who was later apprehended in a Kansas City suburb. Mark my words, all hell will break loose now with the pro-abortion lobby accusing those of us that are Pro-Life with being nothing but a bunch of homicidal lunatics and will present Tiller as a fallen warrior for a noble cause. Wait, that’s happening already:

Today, [Dr. Ann Kristin] Neuhaus said that she had expected further violence after Tiller’s acquittal. “I knew it was going to antagonize these people that he quote, unquote, got off the hook,” she said. “Dr. Tiller really was a warrior. He was a quiet, persistent, capable visionary, a true leader. Even if he had known it was going to end up this way, he wouldn’t have been deterred.”

{…}

Kelli Conlin, president of NARAL Pro-Choice New York, echoed that sentiment in a statement about Tiller’s death: “It is cold-blooded, vicious actions like today’s assassination that make it hard for those of us in the pro-choice community to find common ground with those on the other side. It is lawless, violent behavior like this that makes us fear for our lives and our families. When they sit down across from us, they have no reason to believe that we come to the table with violent intentions. Today is a brutal reminder that we are not privileged to have the same sense of security.”

[Update: Also see here, and here.]

President Obama’s reaction:

“However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion,” he said in a statement, “they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.

{…} “The fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable.”

This is not going to get the job done on the Pro-Life side. Tiller belonged in prison, or removed from the medical profession — not gunned down like an animal.

You watch, though. The person that did this heinous act is probably quite disturbed. However, unlike a “disturbed” killer of young women or children, those of the most liberal bent will not be cutting Tiller’s assassin any slack. They’ll cry for his head, and would take his soul, too — if they believed that we had souls. As Michelle Malkin writes:

Unfortunately, it’s too much to ask the cable news networks and hyper-partisan snipers on the Internet to have the decency to restrain themselves.

Prepare for a wall-to-wall onslaught of gleeful finger-pointing on the Left and heated responses on the Right.

Prepare for whitewashed hagiographies of Tiller’s career as an abortionist.

Prepare for DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano’s defenders to gloat about vindication.

Prepare for collective demonization of pro-lifers and Christians — and more gratuitous attempts to tar talk radio, Fox News, and the Tea Party movement as responsible for the heinous crime.

Prepare for the continuing redefinition of any and all sharp political disagreement as “hate” — a ruinous trend that inevitably comes back to haunt the hysterical accusers decrying “hate” the loudest.

Mark my words . . .

Visit The Anchoress’ blog to catch up on Heather, Kim and Little Faith. Then you will comprehend the significance of this excerpt:

I am absolutely astounded, instructed, edified and in all ways humbled in the face of faith this open, courageous and hearty. In a world where society encourages us to avoid the painful realities of life (and all the terrible beauty found therein) to shut ourselves off and remain comfortably anesthetized throughout our lives, these young women and their husbands – with the help of family, friends and faith – say “yes” to the difficult, “yes to the pain, “yes” to what comes their way.

What I see, over and over again in their stories is a peace the world cannot fathom, the “peace beyond all understanding.” As with the Gospels, where a rich young man was attracted to Christ but unwilling to give up his material things, we see here a peace many want, but few have the courage to pursue.

“Abortion Is A Blessing“

Reverend — Do you really know of what you speak?

When a woman finds herself pregnant due to violence and chooses an abortion, it is the violence that is the tragedy; the abortion is a blessing.

When a woman finds that the fetus she is carrying has anomalies incompatible with life, that it will not live and that she requires an abortion – often a late-term abortion – to protect her life, her health, or her fertility, it is the shattering of her hopes and dreams for that pregnancy that is the tragedy; the abortion is a blessing.

When a woman wants a child but can’t afford one because she hasn’t the education necessary for a sustainable job, or access to health care, or day care, or adequate food, it is the abysmal priorities of our nation, the lack of social supports, the absence of justice that are the tragedies; the abortion is a blessing.

And when a woman becomes pregnant within a loving, supportive, respectful relationship; has every option open to her; decides she does not wish to bear a child; and has access to a safe, affordable abortion – there is not a tragedy in sight — only blessing. The ability to enjoy God’s good gift of sexuality without compromising one’s education, life’s work, or ability to put to use God’s gifts and call is simply blessing.

These are the two things I want you, please, to remember – abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Let me hear you say it: abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.

A speech like this is not God’s work, but surly the opposite. The Anchoress pegs this woman dead on:

Actually, in this scenario, there are several tragedies “in sight.” There is – lest we forget – the ripping and shredding up of a human life (come on, Rev. Ragsdale – it’s a baby – a living being, species human, not vegetable, not wolvine), and more tragically a weird societal validation of the supremacy (and stagnation) of the beloved self, which compromises for no one and nothing, and puts nothing else before it. This is the ultimate, intimate idolatry, whereby one has made oneself a godling, a facsimile I AM. It is very tragic, indeed. It is also a lie and an illusion.

Damain Thompson, who’s piece in the Telegraph.uk is the source of the speech I’ve excerpted, reminds us:

Do not, please, make the mistake of assuming that she [Rev Katherine Hancock Ragsdale] is an unrepresentative extremist: liberal Anglicans in America are among the most fervent supporters of abortion in the world, outstripping even atheists in their enthusiasm for this gruesome procedure.

As a 57 year-old adoptee I “know” that, if abortion had been legal, cheap or paid for by the state back in 1952, I would not be here to write this today. I’m still a bit stunned by any “Christian” reverend that would make these statements or have these beliefs.

Evil is as evil does.

Technorati Tags: Abortion Is A Blessing, Rev Katherine Hancock Ragsdale

In his post, The Obama Lie Machine, Laer at Cheat-Seeking Missiles sums up our new Prez and nails him:

Respectfully, the man just makes things up; whatever sounds good and sooooothing, he’ll say it. Less respectfully, he’s a liar and smart folks will question everything he says.

I wholeheartedly agree, except for one teeny, tiny little thing — well, not so little in orders of magnitude for the soul of our nation. Obama doesn’t lie about abortion. He’s always been an advocate of a mother’s right to choose to kill her unborn child, and he’ll work overtime to rend asunder all the efforts that the Bush administration undertook to stop this horrendous travesty of nascent human carnage. The LA Times puts it this way:

‘Conscience’ rule on abortions may be overturned
The Obama administration wants to clarify a Bush policy that lets healthcare workers deny services because of moral beliefs.

Taking another step into the abortion debate, the Obama administration today will move to rescind a controversial rule that allows healthcare workers to deny abortion counseling or other family planning services if doing so would violate their moral beliefs, according to administration officials.

The rollback of the so-called conscience rule comes just two months after the Bush administration announced it late last year in one of its final policy initiatives.

The new administration’s action seems certain to stoke ideological battles between supporters and opponents of abortion rights over the responsibilities of doctors, nurses and other medical workers to their patients.

{…}

Supporters of the rule say it protects doctors from being forced to prescribe treatments including birth control pills.

Just it straight in your minds — Obama doesn’t care if you religious beliefs can’t coexist with abortion rights. If you work for a health care provider or in any type of ‘family planning’, you WILL offer abortion as an option. No if, ands or buts. The Anchoress definitely has President Obama’s number when she writes:

This is not a president who is all about freedom, like the last American president.

Control, yes. Lots and lots of control. But freedom…not so much.

I wonder…once health professionals are compelled to prescribe or to abort, against their consciences, it won’t be a very big step toward demanding that they kill “compassionately put-to-rest” those whose quality of life is deemed “insufficient” by the government’s measure. Or, you know…those who are simply becoming too expensive to keep alive on “the taxpayers dime.”

Because when it comes down to Socialized Medicine “universal health care” a Ted Kennedy – who is useful, rich and connected – may be deemed worth treating and saving. But you and I, mere peons without “friends, money or connections” – we’d be a drain on the taxpayer’s dear purse.

If we become a drain on the “public purse” and they can no longer tax us into servitude — we will be of no use to the likes of the Supreme Ruler and Co. Just more Lightworker dictated CHANGE that we’ll all have to take up the _ss!

Technorati Tags: Obama, abortion, ‘Conscience’ rule on abortions

[Updated:]

I’m a bit slow on this one but it still bears commenting about. Last Thursday Aasiya Z. Hassan, wife of the prominent Muslim businessman Muzzammil Hassan was killed by beheading.

The killer? Good ol’ prominent Muzzammil, of course.

Why? Evidently because she had the temerity to try to divorce this Islamic TV magnate and got a restraining order to keep her safe from the violent SOB.

Was this murder committed in Saudi Arabia? Somalia? Iran? Pakistan? Sounds logical — why not try Buffalo, New York? From the Chesler Chronicals: Beheaded in Buffalo: The Honor Killing of Asiya Z. Hassan

On February 13, 2009, in Orchard Park, a suburb of Buffalo, 44 year-old Muzzamil Hassan, a prominent Muslim businessman was arrested for having be-headed his wife, 37 year-old Aasiya Z. Hassan. Yes, he beheaded her. Aasiya’s crime? She dared to obtain an order of protection which forced her violent husband out of their home.

We are now sadly familiar with some high profile Islamic beheadings of infidels in Muslim lands; Daniel Pearl, Nicholas Berg, immediately come to mind. Sadly, we are also familiar with the practice of beheading, dismembering, burying alive, and stoning Muslim (and sometimes Christian) women to death in Muslim lands. But this took place in a suburb of Buffalo, New York, in America, Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

She goes on to relate why this “honor” killing in Buffalo is so important.

Muzammil Hassan was an educated, powerful, creative, and living in freedom in the United States. In fact, he may have viewed himself as a spokesman or even role model for other healthy, assimilated, Muslims who also live here.

In 2004, Muzzamil Hassan founded Bridges TV, an English-language Islamic network to combat alleged anti-Muslim bias in the American media. {…}

Hassan considered himself a role model for “healthy, assimilated, Muslims”, and so he slaughtered his wife by hacking off her head, like a farmer would kill a chicken that was doomed to be tonight’s dinner.

Where is the cry of outrage from C.A.I.R.? Where are the calls from the “healthy, assimilated, Muslim” community for Hassan to pay the price for butchering his wife?

[Crickets chirping.]

I’m just sayin’ . . .

[Update]

My buddy Laer at Cheat-Seeking Missiles notes that this story isn’t showing up on “CNN, ABC, CBS – or even the home state paper, the NY Times. (MSNBC does have the story.)” In a related post he addresses the fact that the NY Times has featured a story about a church killing in Tenn. three (3) times but not the beheading of a New York woman by her husband, a media mogul that is trying to shed a better light on Muslims in America. Laer writes:

The Chmielewski theory that the NYT doesn’t bother with local crime stories elsewhere falls apart here, since two killed with a shotgun, even in a church, isn’t as newsworthy as one person killed by beheading, Muslim or not. No, what makes it newsworthy is that Adkisson had a “stated hatred for the liberal movement.” Had a Unitarian shot up a Baptist church because of a “stated hatred of the conservative movement” – newsworthy as that would be on its face – rest assured the NYT wouldn’t have covered it.

The conclusion is irrefutable: The NY Times will take any opportunity it can to discredit conservatives, particularly conservative Christians, and it will avoid any opportunity to paint Muslims in a negative light.

The sad fact is that along with hatred of conservatives, Dhimmitude is alive and runnin’ rampant at the New York Times.

Technorati Tags: Aasiya Z. Hassan, Muzzammil Hassan, Orchard Park, Islamic beheadings

This story sounds like a bad horror flick. Unfortunately, for the infant, there were no special effects and its death was an all too real horror. With 23-week octuplets fighting for life out here in CA, the news of this 23-week fetus turned born-alive infant that was tossed out like garbage should chill anyone not wholesale bought-in to the Culture of Death promoted by the secular Left. From A/P writer Christine Armario:

Eighteen and pregnant, Sycloria Williams went to an abortion clinic outside Miami and paid $1,200 for Dr. Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique to terminate her 23-week pregnancy.

Three days later, she sat in a reclining chair, medicated to dilate her cervix and otherwise get her ready for the procedure.

Only Renelique didn’t arrive in time. According to Williams and the Florida Department of Health, she went into labor and delivered a live baby girl.

What Williams and the Health Department say happened next has shocked people on both sides of the abortion debate: One of the clinic’s owners, who has no medical license, cut the infant’s umbilical cord. Williams says the woman placed the baby in a plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.

Police recovered the decomposing remains in a cardboard box a week later after getting anonymous tips.

Totally disgusted yet? As the Ginsu commercial says, “Wait, there’s more!”

The complaint says one of the clinic owners, Belkis Gonzalez came in and cut the umbilical cord with scissors, then placed the baby in a plastic bag, and the bag in a trash can.

Williams’ lawsuit offers a cruder account: She says Gonzalez knocked the baby off the recliner chair where she had given birth, onto the floor. The baby’s umbilical cord was not clamped, allowing her to bleed out. Gonzalez scooped the baby, placenta and afterbirth into a red plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.

{…}

An autopsy determined Williams’ baby – she named her Shanice – had filled her lungs with air, meaning she had been born alive, according to the Department of Health. The cause of death was listed as extreme prematurity.

OK, now if you aren’t totally disgusted what can I say? The doc has multiple settled suits for malpractice and is restricted to performing abortions only with another physician in attendance — not that he paid any attention to that edict.

Abortion? Readers of ‘Okie’ know that I’m against it, big time! For unwanted pregnancies “adoption” should be the preference. During the fall election there was some fallout over Barack Obama’s failure to vote for the Illinois legislation, the “Infants Born Alive Bill”, that would have compelled those in attendance to administer aid to babies born alive during botched abortion attempts. Gianna Jessen, herself the product of just such a botched abortion, was very much upset over the positions of then candidate Obama.

This case in Florida looks a lot like murder. I sure hope that the D.A. feels the same way.

Technorati Tags: Sycloria Williams, Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique, abortions

British ethicist Baroness Warnock, “Britain’s leading moral philosopher”, has a message for the aging in Britain — Dementia sufferers may have a ‘duty to die’.

The veteran Government adviser said pensioners in mental decline are “wasting people’s lives” because of the care they require and should be allowed to opt for euthanasia even if they are not in pain.

She insisted there was “nothing wrong” with people being helped to die for the sake of their loved ones or society.

You just can’t make this crap up, folks. I get all squeamish and my flesh crawls when those advising to the powers-that-be begin advocating for death instead of life. I can almost, almost comprehend those in constant pain being allowed to end their own lives — almost. But I keep getting back to the point of — That ain’t right! We’ll see how that holds up if I ever get a terminal, debilitating, horrendously-painful illness. However, I will never get to where the Baroness goes next.

The 84-year-old added that she hoped people will soon be “licensed to put others down” if they are unable to look after themselves.

{…}

“I think that’s the way the future will go, putting it rather brutally, you’d be licensing people to put others down.”

“[L]icensing people to put others down.” That’s what you’ll finally end up with folks from socialized medicine. It’s not your getting all the care that you can afford, or that a doc will do for you pro bono. Hell no, it’s only all the care that the state is willing to dole out to you. Once you are no longer contributing to the public coffers, you have no value to the state. That makes giving you medical care a lose-lose proposition, a negative on the balance sheet, a distinct and ever increasing liability; See where this is going?

Barack Obama and the Dem wits are promising all of us single payer health care — so that we will all get the medical care that we deserve. Just put 2 & 2 together . . .

Technorati Tags: Baroness Warnock, socialized medicine

[H/t: Hugh Hewitt]

STATEMENT OF HIS EMINENCE, EDWARD CARDINAL EGAN CONCERNING REMARKS MADE BY THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Like many other citizens of this nation, I was shocked to learn that the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of America would make the kind of statements that were made to Mr. Tom Brokaw of NBC-TV on Sunday, August 24, 2008. What the Speaker had to say about theologians and their positions regarding abortion was not only misinformed; it was also, and especially, utterly incredible in this day and age.

We are blessed in the 21st century with crystal-clear photographs and action films of the living realities within their pregnant mothers. No one with the slightest measure of integrity or honor could fail to know what these marvelous beings manifestly, clearly, and obviously are, as they smile and wave into the world outside the womb. In simplest terms, they are human beings with an inalienable right to live, a right that the Speaker of the House of Representatives is bound to defend at all costs for the most basic of ethical reasons. They are not parts of their mothers, and what they are depends not at all upon the opinions of theologians of any faith. Anyone who dares to defend that they may be legitimately killed because another human being “chooses” to do so or for any other equally ridiculous reason should not be providing leadership in a civilized democracy worthy of the name.

Edward Cardinal Egan

Archbishop of New York

August 26, 2008

As Hugh remarks, the MSM doesn’t find any of this newsworthy . . .

Technorati Tags: EDWARD CARDINAL EGAN, Speaker of the House of Representatives