“11/18/2009, 11:16am EST”
On the whole Stupak, Abortion, Healthcare thing…
If Health care reform/public option happens, I’m cool with not having abortions be publicly subsidized. If that’s all we have to give up, no problem here. I’m not talking making a judgment of legality on abortion, just who pays for it. Although, I do agree with John Stewart’s “zoo analogy”, if people can get all the major things that go along with health care, to not subsidize abortion, to me, is small potatoes. Am I wrong?
Hey Mike, I’ll give one reply that is perhaps expected and another that is perhaps unexpected.
Reply A (the smaller [still bigger than most] picture)
I agree that incremental improvement is better than no improvement — on paper. But we should ask ourselves what the consequences are for writing it into law that abortions are not valid medical procedures. And we should consider the future cost of setting a legislative precedent that will continue to be very difficult to overcome. A just Supreme Court might be a nice extra-legislative check on that provision of the law, but we do not have a just Court. On the other hand, making fence-sitters and even very ardent “pro-lifers” pay for their own abortions may push them to the pro-choice side. Even though abortion rates are highest in the states where “pro-lifers” are most concentrated, this sounds like a risky gamble to me. Finally, abortion coverage is not “all we have to give up” — Democrats have already done a lot of that to no avail.
Reply B (the big picture)
I’m pro-choice as a matter of public policy, but morally I’m pro-abortion. It’s a witty dinner party joke when that topic of conversation comes up, but I’m actually serious. The planet is in critical condition, and the only genuine mitigation is human depopulation. If failing to provide abortion coverage in this healthcare bill would do more harm than good in this regard, I cannot support a bill with the Stupak-Pitts provision.
Never leave home without it.
