# Republicans don't give a CHIP about children's health care

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-dont-give-a-chip-about-childrens-health-care/799986
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [October 27, 2017, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-dont-give-a-chip-about-childrens-health-care/799986 "2017-10-27T12:29:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 158

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### Author: ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)
#### Post date: [October 28, 2017, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/republicans-dont-give-a-chip-about-childrens-health-care/799986/158 "2017-10-28T18:22:32Z")

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> [@RTFirefly](#):
>
> Good point! Because though your church has a great deal to say about social policy, you seem to ignore any of it that would be left-of-center here in the U.S.

I’m ignoring all of it. No religious considerations for social policy.

> [@](#):
>
> Well, sure. But a wide range of policy prescriptions are feasible, in the limited sense that they won’t sink the Republic anytime soon if implemented. And at least specious secular justifications can be found for pretty much all of them.

So?

> [@](#):
>
> If you’re morally guided by your Church, and your Church urges policy prescriptions that are somewhere within that range of feasibility, why exactly are you not supporting them?

Because your ilk use them as weapons. You cherry-pick guidance when it suits you and screech like frightened geese when faith is used to advance a policy you don’t like.

But that’s not the principal reason. The principal reason is: because those teachings are not intended to be applied piecemeal. People wring their hands at the Church’s rejection of birth control, not understanding that the Church also teaches that sex is reserved to a marital act and in that context alone does the rule exist.

> [@](#):
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> Prohibiting abortion might not _establish_ a theocracy, but it IS an inherently theocratic policy. While it has the facial secular justification of protecting the lives of human persons, that justification rests on a very non-secular set of beliefs about when human personhood begins.

Not really. It’s perfectly possible to imagine a secular, atheistic affirmation of the need to protect human life in the womb, and more so not even necessary to imagine it: there are pro-life atheists.

> [@](#):
>
> It is not good secular policy that has Christian moral justification as well - it’s strictly an imposition of religious beliefs on believers and unbelievers alike, like laws against dancing.

No. It’s policy you don’t want, so it’s swept away as theocratic, your supposed interest in religiously based social policy a mere wisp of a memory now that we pick something you disfavor. Keep your theology off my biology!

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