Some Medicaid records now open to public | GreenvilleOnline.com | The Greenville News
More than 800,000 South Carolinians receive Medicaid, which covers about half of all births in the state, or 33,314 of the 60,822 births in fiscal 2007, he said.

I met with a guy from the Heritage Foundation a while back, and he gave an interesting discourse on the history of hospitals and we had a scintillating discussion on the future of charitable health care. He posited that the idea of a charitable hospital, once crucial (in the beginning hospitals were only for the poor–those who were well off received health care at home) for charity, is no longer viable. Instead, he said, pro-life Christians should focus at beginning and end of life issues. This is the point at which a Christian philosophy of health care is under the greatest attack. Abortion and euthanasia. If Christians became the best at births and hospice, and did both in a charitable, consistently pro-life way, we could return to an era of completely private, Christian charity in health care.

Right now that market is available. If medicaid in South Carolina is paying for over half of all births, (see article linked above, HT: StateHouseCall.org) it seems likely that the pattern is similar in the other 49 states. If Christian ministries were to be started that provided low-cost birthing centers for the poor (perhaps even funded by higher cost births for the more affluent, or by straight fundraising), then a pro-life ministry can take back ground that the government health care system now holds. And private charity, privately funded, can be truly ministerial, and Jesus receives the glory.

This might be the first step in starting a distinctly pro-life counterpart to Planned Parenthood. I will be writing more on practical ways we can start this in the future.