Grains of Truth

This morning I heard Paul LePage on the radio raging on about some (likely mythical) woman from "overseas" who had traveled to Maine during her 6th  month of pregnancy so she could have her baby delivered at the expense of Maine taxpayers and so she could raise her children "on the dole" thereafter. She had done this for each of her three children,( And then, presumably, for some reason she had gone back home, in which case she was not raising her kids on the dole in Maine. Did not make a lot of sense on that point.)

Scourge of the welfare queens

This is the Paul LePage version of Ronald Reagan's "welfare queen" the woman who lives the good life by exploiting the welfare state the Democrats would so love to establish.  It speaks to all those folks who believe they are the hard working citizens supporting a bunch of undeserving slackers.

The problem is, now that I'm seeing patients near Lawrence, Massachusetts, where there is a substantial immigrant population, with one large group from the Dominican Republic, I can now see there is a grain of truth underlying the big lie.

Every day I see people who speak little or no English, who have moved to the USA to join family members in a subsided apartment, who, when asked about their job say, "Disabled" the one English word they know and who can afford any of the most expensive drugs I might want to prescribe because "Mass Health" covers these, while my hardworking auto mechanic is severely restricted by his own health insurance to a much smaller number of choices for medications. I can see from where the resentment arises. 

Of course, I'm getting the worm's eye view, as are the resentful Republican truck drivers and factory workers who hear about the welfare bums from their friends at the bar who had friends who knew about the bums. And the fact is, I never saw this population across the state line in New Hampshire, a state which is ungenerous, which simply refuses to care for its disabled and unemployed and unfortunate.  It may be true that people who are looking for a hand out know where to find it and where it won't be found.

Commenting on the LePage tirade, one of his supporters said, "You can't have a welfare state with open borders--they'll just pour in and bankrupt you."

"They" being those freeloading immigrants. 

Is his head really that pointy? And that tie!

Another uncomfortable moment: At the Planned Parenthood inquisition a Republican Congressman, Trey Cowdy, asked Cecile Richards if she could understand his revulsion over "partial birth abortions."  She said that wasn't a medical term. He did not not know enough to rephrase: "Late term"abortions. 

I could understand.  When I was a 3rd year medical student I saw a "salting out" procedure in which a fetus which was maybe 21 weeks, maybe older, was delivered after its mother was given an infusion of hypertonic saline into her uterus and what came out sure looked like a human being. I don't know if it had a heart beat, but I wouldn't doubt it. The nurse took it to the utility room and we stood there staring at it and I thought, "How is this not infanticide? This thing looks a lot like a baby."

In all the discussions of abortion since, I cannot shake the image of that fetus, conceptus, baby whatever you want to call it.  At 4 weeks, even 8 weeks the fetal material, when you see it on a gauze pad is pretty unrecognizable as anything that might, visually, qualify as a human being, but at 21 weeks, at least visually, it looks human and "alive." So I'm with the right to lifers at a certain point. Somewhere the fetus crosses a line to human being for me.  

It's all about where you draw the line. 

The thing is, the Republicans who are out there now are so repugnant, it's hard to agree with them, even when you agree with part of what they are saying. If they were Edward Brooke or Everett Dirksen Republicans, you could say, "Look, let's see where we have common ground. I might be willing to vote for a ban on abortions after say, 20 weeks--we can argue about where the line should be--but you have to agree on abortion up to a certain point. The moment of conception just cannot be it. 

 And, yes, we should tighten up the benefits for people who avail themselves of government welfare and health programs to be sure we are not simply acting like a magnet for those who simply find it easier to move than to work. 

But those discussions are not possible when you are facing the extremists sent to Congress by the dim witted citizens of Kentucky and South Carolina.