Daughter Cat sends an article by David D Kirkpatrick from the Times. It seems that some of the Catholic hierarchy is preaching against health reform because it might just make funding for abortion a little bit easier and also because it might help people to decide not to use absolutely every bit of high tech medicine to prolong their lives in pain and misery.

Which presents some interesting moral questions. First when did it become mandatory to use all available treatments, regardless of the futility or of the pain inflicted. Does God really want us to live as long as possible and suffer as much as possible? If so why did he create pneumonia?

And which is more moral? A society where kids die of the flu because their parents can't afford to take them to a doctor and where adults die on the floor in underfunded emergency rooms or a society where sometimes even Catholics accidentally fund some abortions?

And kids and adults do die and the Catholic Church - for all its wonderful efforts - doesn't save them.