Thank you, Mark Shea…

…for saying what I should have said a long time ago: “Just as I would not torture the innocent in order to save my skin, so I will not support a health care ‘reform’ that says ‘Sacrifice your children and for you it will be well.'”

I’ll acknowledge what many (particularly our more conservative readers) have probably noticed: between my very real desire for authentic health care reform, my disillusionment with both the tone and the substance of the Republican Party’s attacks (many of them personal and untruthful) on President Obama and his administration, and my frustration with the pro-life movement’s willingness to buy into conservative talking points about “socialism” and “big government” without recognizing that universal health care (with a preferential option for the poor) is indeed a moral imperative, I have not been as zealous as I should in speaking for the unborn on this issue. So let me here and now add my voice to Mark’s: I support health care reform. I believe that health care is a human right. I believe that those who are more angry about “big government” than they are about Americans dying because they can’t pay for health insurance have drastically screwed-up priorities. I believe that it is perfectly legitimate to expect our elected government to address this situation. And I believe that all of this is consistent with the highest ideals of Catholic social teaching, and wish that fewer Catholics would buy into right-wing talking points to the contrary. But with all of that said, all Catholics, regardless of party affiliation or political philosophy, must draw a line in the sand and insist that we will not be forced to choose between the born and the unborn. If the final health care bill does end up loosening restrictions on abortion funding (which is far from certain), we cannot equivocate. We must oppose the bill, no matter how disappointed we may be at losing the opportunity to support truly meaningful health care reform. Abortion funding is not health care; it is the opposite. Woe to us if we ignore or downplay this truth. Woe to us if, for the sake of the poor, we sacrifice the poorer.