When the ANA PAC called me for a donation I declined and took the time to explain why. I have been an ANA member since I graduated in 1991, have been actively involved in many ways over the years, and am a fairly reliable donor. However, I believe that the ANA failed us when they showed up for a photo op with President Trump. It ignored the early failures of the COVID-19 response and the harm it had caused to nurses, in fact the death of nurses. Those early failures were only the beginning of what what has now been the worst response in our history with over 154,000 deaths including the deaths of many nurses, physicians, and other healthcare workers who are still reusing N95 masks despite the evidence that it isn’t safe. Nurses in some hospitals are even being told they only need a surgical mask when caring for COVID patients if the patient isn’t getting an aerosol treatment.

I went on to explain that by not supporting a candidate for President they in-fact did just that by their silence. Through their silence they are ignoring children who were locked in cages and separated from parents, the gassing and beating of peaceful protesters in the streets, the call for the delay of the elections by the President which is a clear threat to our democracy. They ignored it when the President did nothing as bounties were placed on the heads of our soldiers defending us abroad. And they are silent as the President continues to disrespect women, people of color, and anyone that disagrees with him. This administration has been all our code of ethics opposes. By their silence ANA is saying the code of ethics is meaningless words. They are silent as nurses and their patients die.

Last night I received another call from the ANA PAC and this time from someone in a leadership position who heard I was not happy. She tried to convince me that I should overlook this because they didn’t want to alienate Republican nurses to which I must ask what they would have done not to alienate Nazi nurses in Germany? I want to make clear there are many Republican nurses that don’t support Trump or his tactics. This isn’t about a party but a particular candidate that is evil.

The representative went on to say that they had members that were friends of Al Gore to which I replied that is like saying I have a black friend so I can’t be racist. Not giving up she told me that the decision was made two years ago by a task force. Really? Who selected the task force and under the current conditions when children are caged, citizens are gassed and beaten in the streets, white supremacists are referred to as some good people, reporters are surveilled by the Department of Homeland Security, citizens are arrested without charges and thrown into unmarked vehicles, and our President thinks he can delay the elections isn’t it time to reverse that decision? Does ANA not recognize that if you are silent in the face of evil you become part of that evil?

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. – John Stuart Mill

Finally, she tried to tell me that ANA PAC post on their website their view on issues and that she had been to Homestead and been at a protest. Mind you I’m an active person on social media and ANA PAC is shockingly uninvolved on any form of social media and silent in the news. If it were not for the nursing unions, other nursing organizations, and individual nurses our voice would not even be heard on these critical issues.

My question is not whether I think ANA PAC has lost their moral compass, I do. The question is whether I’m willing to stay a member of the ANA if they are not willing to take a stand during the greatest moral challenge of my lifetime. ANA is notable by their silence and by being silent in the face of inhumanity you are indeed taking a stand. You are saying rather than offend those that support caging children, gassing and beating people in the streets, surveilling the media, not providing a national response to a pandemic, grabbing people off the streets in unmarked cars and holding them without charges, and even delaying our presidential election, you will be silent and let the myriad forms of abuse continue.

You are not the ANA I joined. I don’t know you.

The American political parties produce platforms that loosely guide the politicians in their approach to governing. The platforms are important documents that outline the vision of a party and in so doing provide a beginning point for analysis of the candidates. Anyone who votes should read the platforms carefully because they are free of media bias, social media hysteria, and the often hate filled rhetoric of the politically uneducated.

There are many topics that deserve attention during the political season. The ones that matter most to me are the following:

• Abortion
• Death Penalty
• Gun Control and Gun Safety
• National Defense
• Healthcare
• Economic justice
• Equality
• Freedom (religious, self-determination, from undue influence, etc.)

All parties except the Republican party believe at the least government should stay out of reproductive decisions and at the most the government should ensure that access to abortion is not impeded. The Republican party is firmly opposed to abortion, support of abortion, and the use of any products of abortion for research. All sections of the party platforms related to abortion are below with links and where available page references.

Each individual must read and determine what party comes closest to his or her personal beliefs. Let your decisions be guided not only by your conscience but by your intellect.

Abortion

Each of the four main political parties addresses abortion in their platforms. Yet, they give unequal attention to the issue.

Green Party

Reproductive Freedom: People should be free from government interference in making their reproductive choices, including abortion, which should be covered by all publicly funded medical insurance programs. (https://www.greenparty.org/Platform.php)

Libertarian Party

1.5 Abortion Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on all sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration. (https://www.lp.org/platform#1.5)

Democratic Party

Appointing Judges

We will appoint judges who defend the constitutional principles of liberty and equality for all, and will protect a woman’s right to safe and legal abortion, curb billionaires’ influence over elections because they understand that Citizens United has fundamentally damaged our democracy, and believe the Constitution protects not only the powerful but also the disadvantaged and powerless. (p.26)

Securing Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice

Democrats are committed to protecting and advancing reproductive health, rights, and justice. We believe unequivocally, like the majority of Americans, that every woman should have access to quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion—regardless of where she lives, how much money she makes, or how she is insured. We believe that reproductive health is core to women’s, men’s, and young people’s health and well-being. We will continue to stand up to Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood health centers, which provide critical health services to millions of people. We will continue to oppose—and seek to overturn—federal and state laws and policies that impede a woman’s access to abortion, including by repealing the Hyde Amendment. We condemn and will combat any acts of violence, harassment, and intimidation of reproductive health providers, patients, and staff. We will defend the ACA, which extends affordable preventive health care to women, including no- cost contraception, and prohibits discrimination in health care based on gender.

We will address the discrimination and barriers that inhibit meaningful access to reproductive health care services, including those based on gender, sexuality, race, income, disability, and other factors. We recognize that quality, affordable comprehensive health care, evidence-based sex education and a full range of family planning services help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions.

And we strongly and unequivocally support a woman’s decision to have a child, including by ensuring a safe and healthy pregnancy and childbirth, and by providing services during
pregnancy and after the birth of a child, including adoption and social support services, as well as protections for women against pregnancy discrimination. We are committed to creating a society where children are safe and can thrive physically, emotionally, educationally, and spiritually. We recognize and support the importance of civil structures that are essential to creating this for every child. (p.37)

Women and Girls

We will support sexual and reproductive health and rights around the globe. In addition to expanding the availability of affordable family planning information and contraceptive supplies, we believe that safe abortion must be part of comprehensive maternal and women’s health care and included as part of America’s global health programming. Therefore, we support the repeal of harmful restrictions that obstruct women’s access to health care information and services, including the “global gag rule” and the Helms Amendment that bars American assistance to provide safe, legal abortion throughout the developing world. (p.46) (https://www.demconvention.com/platform/)

Republican Party

Fifth Amendment

We oppose the use of public funds to perform or promote abortion or to fund organizations, like Planned Parenthood, so long as they provide or refer for elective abortions or sell fetal body parts rather than provide healthcare. We urge all states and Congress to make it a crime to acquire, transfer, or sell fetal tissues from elective abortions for research, and we call on Congress to enact a ban on any sale of fetal body parts. In the meantime, we call on Congress to ban the practice of misleading women on so-called fetal harvesting consent forms, a fact revealed by a 2015 investigation. We will not fund or subsidize health care that includes abortion coverage. (p.13)

We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.

We affirm our moral obligation to assist, rather than penalize, women who face an unplanned pregnancy. In order to encourage women who face an unplanned pregnancy to choose life, we support legislation that requires financial responsibility for the child be equally borne by both the mother and father upon conception until the child reaches adulthood. Failure to require a father to be equally responsible for a child places an inequitable burden on the mother, creating a financial and social hardship on both mother and child.

We applaud the U.S. House of Representatives for leading the effort to add enforcement to the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act by passing the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which imposes appropriate civil and criminal penalties on healthcare providers who fail to provide treatment and care to an infant who survives an abortion, including early induction delivery whether the death of the infant is intended. We strongly oppose infanticide. Over a dozen states have passed Pain-

Capable Unborn Child Protection Acts prohibiting abortion after twenty weeks, the point at which current medical research shows that unborn babies can feel excruciating pain during abortions, and we call on Congress to enact the federal version. Not only is it good legislation, but it enjoys the support of a majority of the American people. We support state and federal efforts against the cruelest forms of abortion, especially dismemberment abortion procedures, in which unborn babies are literally torn apart limb from limb.

We call on Congress to ban sex-selection abortions and abortions based on disabilities — discrimination in its most lethal form. We oppose embryonic stem cell research. We oppose federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. We support adult stem cell research and urge the restoration of the national placental stem cell bank created by President George H.W. Bush but abolished by his Democrat successor, President Bill Clinton. We oppose federal funding for harvesting embryos and call for a ban on human cloning.

The Democratic Party is extreme on abortion. Democrats’ almost limitless support for abortion, and their strident opposition to even the most basic restrictions on abortion put them dramatically out of step with the American people. Because of their opposition to simple abortion clinic safety procedures, support for taxpayer-funded abortion, and rejection of pregnancy resource centers that provide abortion alternatives, the old Clinton mantra of “safe, legal, and rare” has been reduced to just “legal.” We are proud to be the party that protects human life and offers real solutions for women. (p.14)

We respect the states’ authority and flexibility to exclude abortion providers from federal programs such as Medicaid and other health care and family planning programs so long as they continue to perform or refer for elective abortions or sell the body parts of aborted children. (p. 24)

We renew our call for replacing “family planning” programs for teens with sexual risk avoidance education that sets abstinence until marriage as the responsible and respected standard of behavior. That approach — the only one always effective against premarital pregnancy and sexually-transmitted disease — empowers teens to achieve optimal health outcomes. We oppose school-based clinics that provide referral or counseling for abortion and contraception and believe that federal funds should not be used in mandatory or universal mental health, psychiatric, or socio-emotional screening programs. The federal government has pushed states to collect and share vast amounts of personal student and family data, including the collection of social and emotional data. Much of this data is collected without parental consent or notice. This is wholly incompatible with the American Experiment and our inalienable rights. (p. 34)

We will return to the states their historic role of regulating local insurance markets, limit federal requirements on both private insurance and Medicaid, and call on state officials to reconsider the costly medical mandates, imposed under their own laws, that price millions of low-income families out of the insurance market. To guarantee first-rate care for the needy, we propose to block grant Medicaid and other payments and to assist all patients, including those with pre-existing conditions, to obtain coverage in a robust consumer market. Through Obamacare, the current Administration has promoted the notion of abortion as healthcare. We, however, affirm the dignity of women by protecting the sanctity of human life. Numerous studies have shown that abortion endangers the health and well- being of women, and we stand firmly against it. (p.36)

Protecting Individual Conscience in Healthcare

America’s healthcare professionals should not be forced to choose between following their faith and practicing their profession. We respect the rights of conscience of healthcare professionals, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and organizations, especially the faith-based groups which provide a major portion of care for the nation and the needy. We support the ability of all organizations to provide, purchase, or enroll in healthcare coverage consistent with their religious, moral, or ethical convictions without discrimination or penalty. We support the right of parents to determine the proper medical treatment and therapy for their minor children. We support the right of parents to consent to medical treatment for their minor children and urge enactment of legislation that would require parental consent for their daughter to be transported across state lines for abortion. Providers should not be permitted to unilaterally withhold services because a patient’s life is deemed not worth living. American taxpayers should not be forced to fund abortion. As Democrats abandon this four decade-old bipartisan consensus, we call for the codification of the Hyde Amendment and its application across the government, including Obamacare. We call for a permanent ban on federal funding and subsidies for abortion and healthcare plans that include abortion coverage. (p.37)

To continue our headway against breast and prostate cancer, diabetes, and other killers, research must consider the needs of formerly neglected demographic groups. We call for expanded support for the stem cell research that now offers the greatest hope for many afflictions — through adult stem cells, umbilical cord blood, and cells reprogrammed into pluripotent stem cells — without the destruction of embryonic human life. We urge a ban on human cloning for research or reproduction, and a ban on the creation of, or experimentation on, human embryos for research. We applaud Congress’ ban on the FDA approval of research involving three-parent embryos. We believe the FDA’s approval of Mifeprex, a dangerous abortifacient formerly known as RU-486, threatens women’s health, as does the agency’s endorsement of over-the-counter sales of powerful contraceptives without a physician’s recommendation. We support cutting federal and state funding for entities that endanger women’s health by performing abortions in a manner inconsistent with federal or state law. (p.38)

China’s behavior has negated the optimistic language of our last platform concerning our future relations with China. The liberalizing policies of recent decades have been abruptly reversed, dissent brutally crushed, religious persecution heightened, the internet crippled, a barbaric population control two-child policy of forced abortions and forced sterilizations continued, and the cult of Mao revived.

Critics of the regime have been kidnapped by its agents in foreign countries. To distract the populace from its increasing economic problems and, more importantly, to expand its military might, the government asserts a preposterous claim to the entire South China Sea and continues to dredge ports and create landing fields in contested waters where none have existed before, ever nearer to U.S. territories and our allies, while building a navy far out of proportion to defensive purposes. The complacency of the Obama regime has emboldened the Chinese government and military to issue threats of intimidation throughout the South China Sea, not to mention parading their new missile, “the Guam Killer,” down the main streets of Beijing, a direct shot at Guam as America’s first line of defense. Meanwhile, cultural genocide continues in Tibet and Xinjiang, the promised autonomy of Hong Kong is eroded, the currency is manipulated, our technology is stolen, and intellectual property and copyrights are mocked in an economy based on piracy. In business terms, this is not competition; it is a hostile takeover. For any American company to abet those offenses, especially governmental censorship and tracking of dissenters, is a disgrace. (p.48)

Our continued participation in the United Nations should be contingent upon the enactment of long-overdue changes in the way that institution functions. American taxpayers, the chief funders of the U.N., deserve full transparency in the financial operations of its overpaid bureaucrats. We should no longer tolerate its managerial scandals, its Human Rights Council composed of some of the world’s worst tyrants, and its treatment of Israel as a pariah state. The U.N.’s Population Fund has, from its origin, been rooted in no-growth policies that limit economic development in the countries needing it most. Its complicity in China’s barbaric program of forced abortion led President Reagan to set a wall of separation — his Mexico City Policy, which prohibits the granting of federal monies to non-governmental organizations that provide or promote abortion. We affirm his position and, in light of plummeting birth rates around the world, suggest a reevaluation of the U.N.’s record on economic progress.

Precisely because we take our country’s treaty obligations seriously, we oppose ratification of international agreements whose long-range implications are ominous or unclear. We do not support the U.N. Convention on Women’s Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, as well as various declarations from the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development. Because of our concern for American sovereignty, domestic management of our fisheries, and our country’s long-term energy needs, we have deep reservations about the regulatory, legal, and tax regimes inherent in the Law of the Sea Treaty. We emphatically reject U.N. Agenda 21 as erosive of U.S. sovereignty, and we oppose any form of Global Tax.

To shield members of our Armed Forces and others in service to America from ideological prosecutions overseas, the Republican Party does not accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. We support statutory protection for U.S. personnel and officials as they act abroad to meet our global security requirements, and we deplore the current inaction of the Administration in that regard. Our service members must be subject only to American law. (p.51) (https://ballotpedia.org/The_Republican_Platform_and_RNC_Platform_Committee,_2016)

I have never been as proud of what it means to be an American as I was when I watched how we responded as a nation on 9/11 and how we continued to come together as a country. It was a moment in history when we were all One Nation Under God, Yahweh, Elohim, and Vishnu. We were one Nation for the believer and the non-believer alike. Our politicians stood side by side with our President and put away childish behavior and remembered what it meant to be a Patriot. Young men and women marched off to war. They volunteered; rich and poor, children of Senators and Governors, professional athletes and promising college students, and citizens and immigrants not yet citizens. They did it because they recognized a common enemy and he was evil. Yet war did not kill the evil and removing the many heads only seemed to result in its spread and each time coming back as something more evil that what had existed.

Our policies failed. Neither the Bush or Obama administrations headed the advice of others. They believed we could fight evil with violence and in return the evil spread.

Now the evil has attacked our oldest friend. Instead of being proud of our response I’m unsure if I’m shocked, disappointed, or disgusted. Politicians rather than supporting our President publically ridicule him. One hopeful Presidential candidate suggested the solution to the problem in Paris was for all the people to have guns and yet the emergency room physicians said they rarely see more than one gunshot wound a year. Every two days in the U.S. we have more people killed with guns than were killed in the ISIS terrorist attack in Paris. Our political hopefuls and many of our citizens rather than wanting to help suggest we impose the same plague on France we have imposed on ourselves.

Simultaneously, this Jihadist plague that is reminiscent of the Nazis is killing people by the thousands in predominantly Islamic countries. The majority of their victims are Muslims and now those people are fleeing for their very lives. There was a day when we looked back on our unwillingness to save more Jew during WWII due to anti-Semitism and said never again. Yet here we are with the opportunity to redeem ourselves, and again many of the Governors and our citizens are cowering in fear, unwilling to save those fleeing terror, and wanting to reinstitute the type of policy that was a national embarrassment by closing off immigration to those who are being killed and tortured. Racism is not a legitimate policy. Whether we call it anti-Semitism or Islamophobia the result is the same. Driven by fear we are willing to let the innocent die.

Land of the free and home brave is dead if we let those filled with fear continue to make policies that do not respect life and there is no respect for life in an individual that would lock the door and leave the weak outside with the terrorists. 

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”