Two North Carolina Democrats have joined 17 other conservatives from their party in opposing coverage for abortions in the health care reform bill being hammered out this summer in Congress. Reps. Heath Shuler and Mike McIntyre signed on to a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi detailing their objections to including abortion in the bill’s covered medical procedures. Part of the letter states that “funding restrictions save lives by reducing the number of abortions.” Really? The reps’ evidence for that claim is a sentence from a report by a pro-choice research group that says, “about one third of women who would have had an abortion if support were available carried their pregnancies to term when the abortion fund was unavailable.” Think about that. Does that mean the baby was wanted? Cared for properly? Who knows? What is known is that those women “would have had an abortion if support were available.” And what about the two-thirds of the women who had an abortion even though “support” wasn’t available? Did they find someone to pay for an abortion? Did they get a “back alley” abortion, and if so, how are they now? Did they perform abortions themselves, and how did that work out for them? Again, who knows? Well, apparently, Heath and Mike think they know. So don’t worry about those messy questions, Heath and Mike say it’s OK because reducing funding for poor women to have abortions “saves lives.” Those women don’t count anyway, right?
This article appears in Jul 7-14, 2009.
Well if two thirds are still having abortions, that’s still one third that aren’t. Giving a third of these babies the fundamental right to live seems pretty important to me, but I guess that’s just because I’m the kind of person that values a human life, be it a pregnant woman or her unborn child.
Perhaps the one third made the CHOICE of adoption. I hope your not suggesting that because there may be a question the baby will be cared for properly if carried to term, that means the government should pay for and perform abortions… not much logic in that.