Thread by @aliranger29

It was nice to feel relief and hope for a couple of days, but the future of kids like my son, Ethan, is being argued in front of the Supreme Court today, so it’s back to fight mode. #SaveTheACA

I’ve never really known an America without the ACA. I was covered on my parents’ insurance before I headed overseas, and while I was in West Africa, Obama was elected and his signature legislation passed.

When we left our floating home and found ourselves cut adrift and scrambling to find solid ground after Ethan was diagnosed with heterotaxy syndrome and multiple critical congenital heart defects, the ACA was my lifeline. #SaveTheACA

No matter how many diagnoses they threw at him, how many surgeries and hospitalizations and tests and procedures and medications stretched out in front of him, no one would be able to say that it cost too much. #SaveTheACA

Knowing that the ACA was the law of the land, we were able to choose life on that awful, wrenching day when the doctor say across from me and quietly told me that what she was going to say would be hard to hear. #SaveTheACA

Knowing that the ACA was the law of the land, we were able to pursue the absolute best care for our boy so that he was born inside one of the best children’s hospitals in the world and immediately received lifesaving care. #SaveTheACA

Because the ACA existed, as soon as my husband got his green card and secured a job, our baby boy was covered under his insurance, insurance that would help pay for his third and fourth open heart surgeries, the ones that made a whole heart from the half he was born with.

The ACA has been the foundation that secures my ability to live out my pro-life ideals. It has protected my boy and allowed us to run full-tilt towards a life that we never even let ourselves hope for. #SaveTheACA

To argue against it is to look my son in the face and tell him that his life is less valuable simply because it costs more to maintain. #SaveTheACA

I have been ‘pro-life’ my entire life. But I’ll be honest: I didn’t really examine my stance before Ethan. And I’m ashamed that it took a personal experience with the fragility of life to make me understand what it really means.

I talk a bit about that here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dis…

But what I’m trying to say is that I get how hard it is to really look outside yourself if you’ve never been faced with reality. It almost makes me understand why people can stand in court and argue that no one should have to pay extra so kids like Ethan can live.

Almost.

Because heart defects and bypass and pacemakers and a scar that’s fading but will never quite disappear … those are things that happen to Other People, right? And you shouldn’t have to worry about their kids, right? Just your own?

Except you never know when you’re going to be Other People, when you’ll be thrust without warning across the divide and into a world you never asked for. One accident. One illness. One diagnosis, and everything changes.

Or maybe it doesn’t.

Maybe it doesn’t matter which side of that line you find yourself of. Maybe, just maybe, your life is equally valuable regardless of the arrangement of your internal organs or your mode of transportation.

Maybe that’s what it means to be truly pro-life.

To care equally about your neighbor’s life as your own because you recognize the infinite value of both.

That’s what the ACA boils down to. It casts a wide umbrella of protection over all of us, you and me and my son with his Picasso heart beating brave. #SaveTheACA

I think that’s all I have to say about it for today. I’m going to go homeschool my kids and try to unclench my jaw and hope against hope that we can all learn to care about each other.

#SaveTheACA