If you are pro-life why are you against universal health care?

Anyone else seen this meme floating around the internet? I have. It's catchy and it seems to hit hard to the pro-lifers out there, but does it really?  Is it a sound argument? When I first saw this meme, I asked myself if I am being hypocritical. I'm pro-life, but I'm against government run health care. So, I sat and thought about this statement for a long time and I've come to find that the argument is faulty and here is why.

1. First off, this is a clear cut example of someone presenting only two possibilities. That being, that if you are pro-life you must be for universal health care or you aren't really pro-life at all. This argument is saying that it naturally follows that if one says they are pro-life that they must embrace universal health care. However, that's not the only option. I can be pro-life and have the opinion that government-run health care is not the answer. I am of the opinion that there is a better way to get people quality care that isn't handled by a bureaucratic, burdensome, disconnected government. There are other possibilities and just because a pro-life person doesn't jump on the government-run health care bandwagon, doesn't mean they want people dying in the streets.
2. I have a question for pro-choice people. To what end do I have to go in order to be "fully" pro-life in your eyes? It's clear you want pro-lifers to adopt universal health care in order to be legit pro-lifers. But, that's not where you stop. We get accused all the time of not "really being pro-life," because we aren't feeding all the poor people of the world, don't take in every orphaned child, we don't give all our money to ensure every poor child is given a higher education, and so on. So, to what end? How much money can I donate to a charity that would suffice in your eyes? How many mission trips do pro-lifers need to go on to help those in need to suffice? How many children do we need to bring into our homes? I can tell you, that at least, every pro-life person I know donates to charity and volunteers in some capacity. I know many pro-lifers that go on mission trips and give of their time to pregnancy resource centers. I know of doctors that give of their time to provide services to those in need. When you accuse us of not feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the poor, and reaching out to those in need, do you know for a fact that we aren't already doing that? Can you see into our souls and know for certain that we are only "pro-birth" and not "pro-child?" Before you make such a vast sweeping claim, be sure you know for certain. My guess is that, in your mind, pro-lifers will never do enough, because you keep finding some other area where we fail to live up to your arbitrary standards 110%.
3. To add to the one above, I think it's important to note that I have yet to encounter a pregnancy resource center that doesn't help a woman and her child after the baby has been born. The pregnancy resource center my family supported in Virginia provided baby clothing, baby supplies, job placement help, after birth counseling, support groups, food, and, yes, prayer. They didn't abandon these women after they gave birth, in fact, most of the time it was after the birth of the baby that they helped the most. You would be hard pressed to find a pregnancy resource center that doesn't help a woman after the birth of her child.

Let's look at this a different way. Imagine back when our country first started up. Go back to the beginning when our government was just a baby. Were their hospitals? Were there doctors in every village?  Maybe, but it was unlikely. So, if you got sick, what did you do? Did you run from door-to-door screaming--demanding--that you had a right to health care? I guess you could have, but it probably would have gotten you nowhere. You could have run to a neighbor and demanded that they treat you, but it's likely they weren't trained medically and would have no idea what to do. You could run down to the local apothecary and ask them to do something, but medicine was still pretty primitive at that point and you weren't guaranteed recovery. You could have run to the Founding Fathers in Philly and demanded that it was your right as an American citizen to be treated, but what could they have done?

‍(As an interesting side note, most "hospitals" that were started in this country where started by Catholic nuns. They had little to no medical training, but they set up homes to take care of the sick. Mostly they just offered them as much comfort as they could and tried to ease their pain. They did all this for free because they chose to give of their time, attention, and what little resources they had.)

‍The point I'm trying to show here is that the Founders said that we all have a right to life; a right to not have our life taken from us. Abortion does exactly that--it takes a life. Small though it may be, it is still human and given time, nutrients, and space it will continue to grow. It is a growing being and all things that grow are alive; to stop that growth takes away its life.

The Founders did not, however, grant us a right to health care. Why not? Well, you could argue that because the medical field was still rudimentary at that point, they didn't include it in the Constitution. But, they didn't include that we all have a right to education either and educational systems had been around a long time. With healthcare and education, someone has to give you something. They don't take anything away, but they have to give. When you go into a hospital, you are not assured of anything. You could be treated and you could still wind up dying from sickness. You could go in and the doctors could do their utmost best and still, you could remain sick. What if they couldn't figure out what was wrong with you? You could live in an area that doesn't have hospitals and doctors and then what is your right? Does the government have to build a hospital in every town because it's a human right to have access to health care?

Health care is a privilege because it involves others who are willing to train themselves to understand and execute medical procedures. It's a privilege because you need those that want to work in the field and provide the care. You need people who want to build hospitals. You need people to train themselves in engineering so that they can make medical equipment. You need people who want to educate themselves as scientists so that they can make new medicines and work to get rid of certain diseases. In our country, we have the freedom to decide if these are the fields we want to go in to and people usually do it because they want to help their fellow man. Healthcare is a privilege, because if no one went into these fields, what would that mean with regards to our right to health care? The government could force people into these fields and they do that in some countries, but I don't think we want to travel down that road. We are always better when we give freely of our time, talents, and treasure than when the government tells us we must.

"Yes, but a woman has to give of her body to a baby," some may say.

The difference is, is that that baby did not ask to be created. Ninety-Nine percent of the time, the baby was created out of a choice to engage in the very act that brings babies into existence. Once the baby has been created, it has a right to life--to not have its life taken from it. You are taking away something the baby has--life.

Healthcare is something different--it's not something you are born with. The health care system is a man-made institution and that is why it isn't a right, it's a privilege. You aren't born with it. There could be times when you don't have access to it and then what? Can you still holler about your right to health care? There are times when you may be in a place where there is no doctor. What then? That "right" does nothing for you. There are tons of things we do to jeopardize our health--smoking, eating the wrong food, using drugs, etc. Do we have a right to misuse our bodies and at the same time demand that the government take care of our misuse? That would be like spending my money frivolously (it is your right), but then demanding that a bank take care of me and pay all my bills. There are times when we get sick through no fault of our own. Think of all the children at St. Jude's hospital, all the cancer patients in hospitals around the country and how much money is freely donated to those places. People do want to help.

As a pro-life Catholic, I believe it is our duty to help our fellow man; to provide food, clothes, shelter, water, and healthcare when we can do so. This country has been the leader of quality healthcare in the world and we got there without having socialized medicine. We got there because we are a free people. It is our moral obligation to make sure we take care of each other. This is not the government's job, it is our job, as citizens. Granted, the private sector healthcare system has issues and it's not perfect. It does need some looking at, but that doesn't mean you take it and completely scrap it. The answer isn't always that the government can do it better. In fact, there really isn't much that the government does better than the private sector. I don't hear anyone talking, on either side of the issue, about how they just want people to die in the streets. Some people think the government is the answer, others don't. I think both sides have intentions of wanting to help people and that is good and noble. For me, though, I don't trust the government to truly look after us. Socialized medicine gives them more money (which they obviously can't handle correctly given our debt) and more power over our lives. I don't want that and that doesn't mean I'm not pro-life.

Interestingly, this year, so far, there have been almost 886,000 abortions performed in the U.S. There is disagreement from a lot of people, but most sources say that the number of annual deaths of people who die from lack of health care because they aren't insured is between 20,000 to 45,000. I see a big disparity in numbers here. One obviously is a bigger problem--abortion. How about we address this most basic of human rights--the right to life--first and then we can lay out on the table the best options for taking care of people through health care?

The government has already shown that it can't and won't protect those humans that are most vulnerable by legalizing abortion. Forgive me if I lack confidence in the government to dutifully and morally be in charge of our health care.