Ted Kennedy’s Death Further Used to Promote Pro-Abortion Health Care Bills
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 31, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Ted Kennedy’s death continues to be used as a springboard to promote the pro-abortion health care bills pending in Congress. Numerous elected officials and activists invoked his name over the weekend changing the term "Obamacare" into "Kennedycare," which may not attract more support.
Al Gore and Bill Clinton were in Tennessee to pump up Democratic activists and share their conviction that Ted Kennedy’s dream of government-run health care indeed will never die.
Clinton urged Democrats to counter pro-life advocates who oppose the bills and attempted to rebut one of the criticism of the legislation.
“You need to back these congressmen and let them know you’re not going to let them be steamrollered by a bunch of people who have been frightened,” Clinton said. “Don’t let anybody tell you that President Obama wants to ration health care. We are rationing health care in America.”
“I’m not a very good politician any more; I just say what I think,” Clinton said. “But I have been waiting for this for 40 years … to recreate the American dream.”
Gore extolled Kennedy and called him “by far the most effective member of the United States Senate that I ever served with.”
He played off of the focus of the Kennedy funeral in telling the crowd that Congress must pass the health care bill to “the least of us."
Congress has “a moral duty to pass health care reform. This year," he said.
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts also joined in on perpetuating the KennedyCare mantra and told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week” that Senator Kennedy would have fought hard for the government-run plan.
"[W]hat Teddy would do is he would fight for that public option … He would fight for it, and he would do everything in his power to get it," Kerry said.
Even former Sen. Tom Daschle joined in the chorus, evoking Kennedy’s terms in saying that there should be a "moral" push for health care.
"I think we have to do better at making this issue a moral imperative. I don’t think we’ve succeeded at that yet. I think the more we can bring everybody to an understanding about how this in many respects is the civil rights battle of the early part of this century," he said.
Lawmakers on the right responded to the new play to energize support for the pro-abortion health care plan under Kennedy’s name.
"You’re not going to get this big, broad Democrat spending bill — you’re not going to get Republican support," Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican and close friend of Kennedy’s said.
And former republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee mentioned Kennedy, but in a different context.
On Sunday he defended his remark last week suggesting that Kennedy would have been told to “go home to take pain pills and die” if he had been covered under the current bills and their pro-rationing components.
“I spoke on my radio show and pointed out that when Senator Kennedy was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he chose to fight with all that was within him and to do that for life instead of choosing the pain pill that President Obama spoke of in his answer to James Stern during his White House town hall meeting,” Huckabee said.
“What did I say that wasn’t true?” he asked. “Listen to what I said. It was actually a tribute to Senator Kennedy and an observation that he did what Americans would want to do, follow the best healthcare they can find.”
“The irony is that the final months of Senator Kennedy’s life are the very reason we shouldn’t let government take us to the Pelosi, Frank plan,” Huckabee said.
“When diagnosed with brain cancer, Senator Kennedy didn’t do as President Obama suggested and take a pain pill and ride it out at home. He went to the best medical facilities in the world, had surgery and sought to live as long and as strong as possible," he said.
Huckabee said all Americans deserve the same sort of care instead of encouragement to end their lives.
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