The picture on the left is a 3D ultrasound image of my son Grayson at 30 weeks gestation. The one on the right is him now, at 6 years old. Grayson lives with Leigh Syndrome, a form of Mitochondrial Disease with no treatment or cure. He is medically dependent, and his ongoing needs include private duty nursing, frequent hospitalizations, medical supplies and equipment, therapy, and special education. If you are a pro-life Republican who is vocal about passing legislation that would protect the sanctity of life of the baby on the left, but are silent regarding legislation that will strip health care benefits for the child on the right, you are not pro-life.
If you are willing to accept a law that will make a C-section a pre-existing condition (and thus make future health care harder to get and more expensive), then morally demand that a woman carry a baby who is incompatible with life to term, you are not pro-life.
If you want a woman to be legally obligated to bring a baby into the world who is diagnosed in utero with profound medical needs, but then won’t accept any responsibility as a member of society to care for those needs, you are not pro-life.
If you clutch your pearls at the mention of comprehensive sex education or get riled up about “paying for someone else’s birth control” because your moral code is abstinence, you are part of the abortion problem. It has been shown over and over again that abstinence-only programs do not work in preventing unwanted pregnancies. Contraception works. You are not pro-life.
If you support the latest version of the AHCA, you are literally incentivizing abortion. There are women who will now abort for fear of themselves or their child being considered a “preexisting condition” and unable to get insurance. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t call yourself pro-life and stand by idly while millions of people are stripped of their health care benefits. If you think the right to be born is a basic human right, but access to health care is not, you are not pro-life.
If you are truly pro-life (womb to tomb), please call your senators today and demand that they vote NO on the ACHA. It takes just a few minutes. Please. There’s too much at stake to be apathetic about this issue.
