Denali Kid Care Now! (Photos)
Several dozen protesters showed up yesterday at noon at the Legislative Offices in downtown Anchorage to show their support for Senate Bill 5 which would restore the level of inclusion in the Denali Kid Care program (SCHIP) to where it was in 2003. Last session, a bill was introduced that would have restored health care services (matched 70% by the federal government) to more than 1200 poor children and infants, and 200 pregnant women.
The bill was vetoed by Governor Sean Parnell because the Alaska Constitution, according to a Supreme Court decision, provides that medically necessary legal abortions. Abortion related services constitute a mere .18% of Denali Kid Care’s budget.
Senator Bettye Davis, the prime sponsor of the bill spoke a few words to the crowd and reminded them that helping Alaska’s kids was something that both sides of the aisle had supported, and laid the responsibility for the fact that these vulnerable women and children have no health care firmly on the governor’s desk. She reminded us all that if this is important to us as people, we need to contact our legislators and ask for their full support of SB5, because it’s the right thing to do.
Parnell spokeswoman Sharon Leighow said Thursday Parnell would veto the bill again if the Legislature passes it in the coming legislative session.
“The governor’s position on Denali KidCare has not changed. He will not support expanding a program that funds abortions in Alaska,” she said.
Even if 99.82% of the money will help with prenatal care, and children’s doctor visits, even if those services will actually save lives of real children both inside and outside the womb, the governor would rather those people go without than potentially, maybe spend a tiny fraction of the total on legal and medically necessary abortions. And he will veto the will of the body that citizens elected to represent them to do it. Behold your governor, folks.
It’s not about the will of the people. It’s not about the will of the legislature. It’s not about the money.
It’s about an extreme far-right religious ideology that dictates decisions which affect the very lives of Alaskans. Even when Sarah Palin was elected governor, she assured the people of the state that her religious convictions would not affect her governance of the state. Her replacement seems to have no qualms about forcing the people to live with the consequences of religious convictions they do not hold and that have no place in state government.
Kudos to Senators Bettye Davis, Hollis French, and Johnny Ellis who showed up for kids, and continue to do the right thing by the people of Alaska.
I sent comments to the Governor, my Representative and Senator, and I was so upset that night to hear the Governor still said he would veto it again. All those children not having the right to have health care, etc., due to his vetoing it because of a decision made between a doctor, his patient, and God. I have held a crying sick child in my arms with ear infections that needed medicine. Luckily, I was able to go to a doctor to get that medicine as hearing was being affected. It all follows that poor health will affect learning, etc. I pray for all those children and hope there is a way for the legislature to over ride that veto.
Should be fixed now – the pictures were a little too big. 🙂
Thanks for the explanation, Snoskred. It was funny. Yesterday, I had steam coming out of my ears at the thought that Alaskans actually elected the flaming pants slimeball known as SP 2.0. That he would veto legislation because his “conscience” would not allow a dying woman to get an abortion to save her life lit a fire in me (I think I got too close to those flaming pants).
Today, however, I’m serene again, so I’ll just state that he’s a tool of the faux-Christians who want to tell the rest of us how to live.
Please don’t get serene about this.
This flows from neoliberal economic policy and it’s marraige with right wing libertarian thought just as much as it does the phony-Christian meme.
That these seemingly disparate POVs find common ground in requiring the poor to take responsibility for their poverty and just die if necessary should scare the bejabbers out of all of us. It does me.
Perhaps Parnell should read “A Christmas Carol” and pay particular attention to certain sections….
Ignorance and Want
“‘Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,’ said
Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe,’ but I see
something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding
from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw.’
‘It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,’ was
the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. ‘Look here.’
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children;
wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt
down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
‘Oh, Man. look here. Look, look, down here.’ exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling,
wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where
graceful youth should have filled their features out, and
touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled
hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and
pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat
enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No
change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any
grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has
monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him
in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but
the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie
of such enormous magnitude.
‘Spirit. are they yours.’ Scrooge could say no more.
‘They are Man’s,’ said the Spirit, looking down upon
them. ‘And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers.
This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both,
and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy,
for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the
writing be erased. Deny it.’ cried the Spirit, stretching out
its hand towards the city. ‘Slander those who tell it ye.
Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse.
And abide the end.’
‘Have they no refuge or resource.’ cried Scrooge.
‘Are there no prisons.’ said the Spirit, turning on him
for the last time with his own words. ‘Are there no workhouses.'”
– A Christmas Carol, Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits
And thank you Snos and AKM-
in a fit of self-centrism I had decided it was a sensible plot to enforce taking a deep breath and keep me from saying terrible awful things I couldn’t take back 🙂
Cap’n Torpedo is not worth stroking out over but some of his behaviors towards the people who hired him are so condescending, thoughtless, and disgusting it’s hard to hang onto that thought.
Dear Governor Parnell-
Pfffftttt!
The personal-responsibility meme is wearing thin.
Whatever is right about it has equal parts what-is-wrong-about-it stuff when you carry the logic to it’s extreme, as you are doing here.
Bully for you and your values, buster buns.
How about you confront in that set of values what constitutes a medically necessary abortion?
People go on and on about how little of this money goes to medically necessary abortions and ask you to think about the vast numbers of children and mothers benefit from the Denali Kid Care program.That is very important. Super important.
But I ask you to step up from behind your spokesperson and tell all of us just why you think we have no reason to fund medically necessary abortions. The fruitloops in the House in DC have just passed a piece of garbage law which I hope dies a quick and sudden death in the Senate which carries similar personal-values and personal-responsibility baggage as your horsepunky on this subject does.
Step up and tell us why it is ok to deny women their lives so you can sleep at night.
I’m waiting.
And while I wait I will continue to donate to PP and other such endeavours to make sure there is some avenue for poor women to receive care they NEED while twits like you wrestle with your tiny consciences.
Thank you
Angrily, sincerely sick of you,
Pi
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Sorry to break in, but it seems that the comments on this piece have somehow gotten broken… Sorry for the inconvenience. Not sure what’s going on. I’m posting an open thread early, so hopefully they’ll work there, and you can comment on this piece, or anything that moves you. Sorry! Thanks for your patience, AKM
Pi… quit holding back, will ya ?! How many of these children are in need because their mothers CHOSE to have them, and Parnell won’t step up to the plate to meet Alaska’s Constitutional obligations ?
Who makes the choice when it comes to teens getting pregnant? Young mothers of fifteen or sixteen don’t have the reasoning ability at that age. We’re watching a cycle out here in Rural Alaska, teen mothers having babies because their mother was a teen too. It’s becoming traditional in some families. Then they become Welfare babies. Then they become neglected when they grow out of the cute baby stage and start demanding things their peers have. It’s a cycle that needs to be broken.
“The lack of a single rigorously evaluated program designed
specifically for Native youth suggests that more resources are
need both to develop culturally appropriate programs and to
evaluate the programs that currently exist. Given the recent 12%
increase in the teen birth rate among AI/AN teens, it is critical to
focus on this important population of teens.”
http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/resources/pdf/SS/SS39_NativeAmericans.pdf
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Yes, we have much work to do.
We have too many neighbors right now who do not and refuse to understand that ‘Young mothers of fifteen or sixteen don’t have the reasoning ability at that age.”
That is a very important part of the fight, a part we need to confront on all levels.
Dear Governor Parnell-
Before you hide behind your spokesperson again, how’s about you come clean about how hard you think it is to deal with all these darn people who choose to have kids when you think they should know better ? You know, the ones who use Denali Kid Care?
While you flap on about Choose Respect, a very worthy and important idea, how about you share the strange disconnect you harbor when it comes to everyday people who play by all the so-called rules and can’t and won’t gain any traction in this state or elsewhere in this country?
Why don’t you come clean that you are in the camp which, when it finally absorbed the notion of birth control and choice to have children . decided people should only have kids when they could afford them under rules you get to set with your ponzi scheme hoo-bobby about wealth flowing down from the 1%?
Why won’t you own your part in the disrespect of vast numbers of Alaskans who work hard and yet can’t get ahead or even on par with the shifting landscape of burdens “personal responsibility” of the neoliberal variety place on them?
Seriously, don’t you operate from that tiny lil patch of neoliberal economic hogwash which holds that everyday Americans/Alaskans are the ones to blame for not seeing the crash of the housing boom coming? The one all but a few economists didn’t see coming?
Don’t you think it irresponsible that people are trying to plan their futures without understanding they will continue to be asked to take less money for more work ?
Don’t you wash your well fed lil hands of all the silly people who have kids when-they-can’t-afford-them while you work hard to keep them from affording them? Mmmmm?
Pffft.
angrily, sincerely sick of you.
Pi