Choices

You’re in your house with your family.

It’s late at night.

You just had a baby three weeks earlier.

Your husband hears some automobiles pull up and stop directly in front of your house.

Cautiously he looks out the window.

Armed police officers are getting out of their vehicles and headed to your door.

Terrifying thoughts race through your mind.

Why are they here’

What have we done’

Perhaps there is a mistake.

Sure, that’s it, a mistake, we haven’t done anything wrong, they must have us confused with someone else.

But the ranking officer produces a warrant for your newborn child.

A warrant’

How can this be’

Our baby is only three weeks old, what reason could you have for him’

Your cries are to no avail and your child is taken from your arms and driven away.

Where is this you might ask’

Germany in the late 30’s’

Iraq while Saddam was in power’

Russia after World War II’

Nope, not even close.

How about Omaha, Nebraska this month’

Omaha’Nebraska’

Yes, dear friends it seems that a child was born in Omaha in September and the parents did not wish to have the child subjected to a blood test for certain illnesses while the baby was in the hospital. They objected to this test for religious reasons.

The State of Nebraska sends them a letter advising that they needed to have the child tested and that the child was in ‘immediate danger’. The parents ignore the letter and do not wish to have the child tested.

The state then decides to issue a warrant, make the child a ward of the state, then seize the child and ask questions later. The child was grabbed, tested and placed in foster care for ten days until the test results were returned. These were negative and the child was allowed to be returned to its parents.

Point to be made:

If this is an example of how our future medical system is supposed to work, stop the world I want to get off. With all of the talk being bantered back and forth between the potential presidential candidates concerning universal health care, it appears to me that the state (our government) is getting a little too much involved in our health situation.

I’m all for good health coverage, and medical treatments, but not any treatments that would be mandatory or else. In order for me to travel to certain parts of the world I’d have to have a series of shots or I can’t go. Fine with me, I don’t want the shots so I’m not going. If I really wanted to go, then I’d have to take the shots’but it’s my option to choose if I wanted them or not, not some judge sitting in some courtroom where I can’t see him when he makes a decision that affects my life.

No, my friends, once they get to the point where a judge can decide what medicine or treatment I need to take or else face jail time, then we are headed in the wrong direction. Once common sense is thrown out the window of justice then who is to determine how I should be treated’Will it get to the point where the court gets to make a decision as to whether or not I can live or die’What if some judge in the future decides that all old people over the age of say, eighty five are a burden upon society and need to be put down’

Where is the fairness in this type of activity’Do we want a country where a judge, not a jury, but a judge has the right to issue a warrant and take a child away without any hearing to determine if the circumstances warrant such action’Seems like I remember that this situation existed a long time ago in England. As I recall, the sheriff and King were going around the countryside arresting people for one spurious reason or another and locking them up for long periods of time. There was no jury, only a judge until the people got enough of it and wrote a paper called the Magna Charta.

I also recall that we had something like this in the country called the Bill of Rights.

Don’t small three week old children and their parents have rights any longer’

Or are we past that point and headed off into the great blue yonder of socialized medicine for the good of all at the expense of a few’

Hitler was ahead of his time and in the wrong country.