Good get for Politics Daily:

We teach that health care is a basic human right, an essential safeguard of human life and dignity.... Health care reform especially needs to protect those at the beginning of life and at its end -- the most vulnerable and the voiceless. It is essential that reform include long-standing and widely supported federal restrictions on abortion funding and mandates and uphold existing conscience protections for health care providers.(...)Universal coverage should be universal, including everyone. Health care reform cannot leave people out because of pre-existing conditions, chronic illnesses, their place of work or because they cannot afford insurance. Reform should not leave people out because of where they come from or when they arrived here.(...)Our political leadership faces both a challenge and an opportunity. We hope and we also pray that all in this debate will remember that what is really at stake are the lives, dignity and health care of all our people. Securing health care that protects the life and dignity of all is a moral imperative and an urgent national priority.

Read the rest right here.Update: Our own Dave Gibson responds to the Archbishop's column elsewhere at Politics Daily.

Grant Gallicho joined Commonweal as an intern and was an associate editor for the magazine until 2015. 

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