From the Wool-sack
| Jurisdiction | United States,Federal |
| Citation | Vol. 12 No. 9 Pg. 1470 |
| Pages | 1470 |
| Publication year | 1983 |
1983, September, Pg. 1470. From the Wool-Sack
One of the problems with being President of the United States is that you are so terribly busy making important decisions, you do not have time to make sure they are all consistent. Thus, if you take positions which are inconsistent, you have to rely on the likes of me to point out their inconsistencies to the public. Since I have great sympathy for anyone who is President of the United States, I am glad to be able to do this when the opportunity presents itself and, accordingly, this column.
The inconsistency addressed here is that posed by the President's position on the role of the federal government with respect to the creation of and, once created, preservation and care of human life.
Stated in somewhat over-simplified terms (something my readers encounter in this column from time to time), the President's position that whether or not a woman should carry a baby to full term, thus giving it life,(fn1) is a highly personal question that should be decided exclusively by the woman, her physician, 100 senators and 435 congresspersons.(fn2) However, whether or not a car should have airbags, devices designed to save lives of those who indisputably already possess life, is a highly personal question that should be decided by a car owner and his car. The President opposes any governmental interference in that decision.
If the foregoing were the end of Mr. Reagan's inconsistency, that would be the end of this column. It isn't, and it isn't. A corollary to life is how do you maintain it and, more pertinent, how do you pay for such maintenance? The latter question assumes great importance when its possessor is confronted by large repair bills. My readers will say there can be no disagreement with respect to that. They will say that no one can believe that any living person in our society should be deprived of medical care simply because he or she happens to be indigent.(fn3) They will say that the Department of Health and Human Services should issue a regulation requiring every hospital in the country to post a notice saying, "Discriminatory failure to feed...
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