This is my daughter:

She doesn’t have a name yet, but her brother is already smitten with her. She appears to be healthy so far, and we’re hoping to meet her around Halloween.

This is my son:

His name is Lucas. He loves fire trucks, Star Wars, and Neil Diamond. He just turned 4.

If you refuse to protect the life of my son as fervently as you would protect the life of my unborn daughter, you cannot claim to be pro-life.

You see, Lucas has a pre-existing condition. He happened to be born with gastroschisis – a randomly-occurring congenital condition that left a hole in his abdominal wall – and as a result he has short bowel syndrome. It cost more than $3 million to keep him alive in the first few months after he was born, and several hundred thousand more since then, thanks to 11 surgeries, daily at-home intravenous nutrition and tube feeds, home nursing care, frequent visits to medical specialists and various kinds of therapists, and so many hospital admissions that I’ve actually lost count.

You claim to be pro-life, and yet you have voted for a bill that would make it impossible for us to afford coverage for the medical care my son needs to stay alive.

Gastroschisis often results in a C-section in order to protect the baby’s organs during birth. You claim to be pro-life, and yet you have voted for a bill that would make mothers question whether they should have a medically necessary C-section and would threaten the future health of any mother who has had a C-section for any reason, because you’ve classified having had a C-section as a pre-existing condition that will price many families right out of the market.

You dangle the impossibly unrealistic carrot of “freedom of choice” in healthcare as though it were a pinnacle of American values, and yet you would force a woman to carry to term a child who is incompatible with life.

You claim to be pro-life, and yet you have voted for a bill that would make expectant mothers think long and hard at the end of the first trimester, when many congenital conditions are discovered, about whether they can afford to carry to term a life-long pre-existing condition. You have set parents up to make that decision based on their finances rather than their beliefs or prognoses.

You claim to be pro-life, and yet you would throw essential health benefits to the wind, leave 23 million more Americans uninsured, raise premiums for the elderly by as much as 800 percent, and cut $834 billion in Medicaid benefits for low-income Americans in order to give tax cuts to the wealthy. You did this without even caring enough to wait for the CBO’s assessment of the ramifications of the bill you have voted for.

You claim to be pro-life, and yet you have thrown the living to the wolves.

If you voted in favor of the AHCA, you are not pro-life.

Now that the CBO score has been released, the AHCA can pass on to the Senate. If you believe that people’s right to life should not depend on their wealth, call your senators and demand they vote no on the AHCA.

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