Very interesting proposal, I can see why the abortion advocates see it as the thin edge of the wedge, it probably is.
It is interesting, indeed, and very clever, IMO. Right now there are separate programs that provide medical help to the poor. One is the standard Medicaid, which covers pregnant women. The other is SCHIP, which covers children. What they propose to do is to cover unborn children under SCHIP rather than Medicaid, which makes the fetus the patient rather than the pregnant woman.
If their interest were simply to provide better pre-natal care, they could just pump up the existing program that already does that rather than create a new kind of access for the fetus or they could allow the funds for the two programs to be fungible. Therefore, since there's an existing and easier way to provide pre-natal care, one can only conclude it's a clever gimmick to get the fetus recognized as a person. I don't know why they don't take credit for their cleverness. I'm certainly impressed.
Karen
P.S. I can just see it now. Fetus Smith arrives for its medical appointment. It gets its own record in the data base with its own ID. It order to do that, maybe each fetus will need to have a name and Social Security Number to participate. Lots of kids will be named Leslie or Sydney because they can be names of both boys and girls and, after all, they need pre-natal treatment before they are far enough along to have their sex determined. So the woman shows up with little Leslie aboard, takes a seat in the waiting room, and the nurse calls "Leslie Smith, the doctor will see you now." It's even more interesting when you think about twins who have two different doctors or two different appointments. What a hoot! |
