Who Should be Allowed to Live?

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Maybe somebody out there can explain some puzzling questions I have. I
really don't understand the positions most Catholics and Christians hold
about a number of things -but especially these two.

The first. We claim to be Right to Life, but sadly this seems to imply only
to the helpless babies being aborted. Truly wrong and I subscribe to their
right to life, but what about the right to life of 45 million Americans who don't
have any health insurance at all?

Aren't we a bit selfish in this regard? I've been hearing a lot from them on
the news and in e-mails re how worried and even angry they are because they
don't want health care reform. They say they don't want socialized medicine
and they also say that they don't want to lose their favorite doctor or their present
health care plans which they are satisfied with. But what about the 45 million
souls who don't have health care? Can't we give a little so that they will receive
health care too?

And by the way - your health care benefits may not be as great as you think.
Some people who have had to have expensive procedures lost their homes to
pay for them. Some have had to declare bankruptcy. Can you tell me why a
pace maker operation costs $45,000 dollars? If I would need one - my house
would immediately have to go on the market because I don't have $45,000 and
I doubt that my OPERS medical insurance will cover it. My friend's wife has to
get a replacement pace maker- which will be paid for by Medicaid. She is one
of the lucky ones.

Then my second concern about our "Right to Life" philosophy. I asked a fervent
lady who goes to daily mass as I if she likes animals. Without hesitation, she
replied no. I am always saddened by people like her and by a generally silent church
which says next to nothing re our suffering farm animals. If the animals don't
have a right to life - surely they have a right to compassionate treatment as long
as they live. But for the past 30 plus years -with the introduction of CAFOs (Confined
Animal Farm Operations) sanctioned during the Reagon Administration, they have
been treated as articles of production - denying them the basic rights which they
share in common with us.

I hope the verbal picture of the atrocities which happens to thousands of cattle
every week in our nation's slaughterhouses will horrify you. It did me. I hope
it will make you take action of some kind: "Imagine being hit on the head and
finding yourself dazed but still fully conscious. A chain is attached to one of your
legs and you're hoisted upside down onto an assembly line. As you lash out in
terror, gigantic clippers are used to snip off the lower parts of your arms and legs.
Completely helpless, you feel workers cutting into your thighs, belly, and sides
as they strip your skin from your legs to your neck. Even with the skin peeled
back all the way up to your head you are conscious enough to struggle."

I am ashamed with any church which does not speak against such atrocities. I am
also ashamed of a nation which allows them.