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| Yes | 66% | 49 votes | Total: 74 votes | |
| No | 34% | 25 votes |
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Add to FavoritesWe live in warped times. Environmentalists, "greenies" and feminists are more concerned about the Great Ape Protection Act than our unborn children. Chants of "my body, my choice" still echo from the Roe vs. Wade decision of 1973. Since then, 1,000,000 babies per year have been slaughtered, most sacrificed to the god of inconvenience.
To soften the blow of killing an unwanted child, the unborn is called a fetus. Interestingly enough, the definition of fetus is: a developing human from approximately eight weeks after conception until the time of its birth. And therein lies the problem. Call the "clump of cells" what you will, abortion kills an innocent human life.
Americans as a whole are not supportive of federal tax dollars being funneled into supporting abortion on demand. The federal government does not restrict individual states from using tax dollars to fund elective abortions. According to the National Right to Life website, four states fund abortion voluntarily, and 13 others fund abortions because of court orders.
However, the Hyde Amendment, named after the late pro-life Republican Rep. Henry Hyde, has been a provision added each year to spending bills preventing federal or state dollars associated with Medicare to be used for elective abortions. Rep. Lois Capps of California has proposed a provision to see that changed.
According to Charmaine Yoest, the President and CEO of Americans United for Life, "The Capps Amendment would side step the Hyde Amendment and other provisions in federal law. If it becomes law as part of health-care reform it would make abortion coverage a part of the public option, funnel tax dollars to private health plans that cover abortion, and ensure that every area of the country will have at least one health insurance plan that covers elective abortion. If this should happen, for the first time in more than 30 years the federal government would be in the business of funding the destruction of unborn human life."
A majority of Americans are not supportive of such a provision in a government health bill. A Rasmussen poll released in September revealed that only 13 percent want the health care bills to make it a requirement that abortions are funded. In April of this year, the Pew Research group discovered that support for abortion in all cases has dropped from 54% to 47%.
Those who believe that abortion should be illegal in most cases has risen from 41% in 2008 to 45% in 2009. Americans once asleep to issues of morality are awaking from their slumber and informing Congress that if abortions are going to continue in America, they don't want these procedures to be on their dime.
A risk to federally funding abortions is that the number of abortions will potentially increase. This should cause all of Congress to rethink slipping abortion coverage into the bill. The Democratic mantra has been, "Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare." Liberals call the claim that abortions will rise under a federally funded plan "hogwash", yet the research does not lie.
Revealed on the National Right to Life website, a Guttmacher Survey from 1994-95 discovered the following: "in states where Medicaid pays for abortions, women covered by Medicaid have an abortion rate 3.9 times that of women who are not covered, while in states that do not permit Medicaid funding for abortions, Medicaid recipients are only 1.6 times as likely as non-recipients to have abortions."
If pro-choice adherents truly want abortions to be rare, then federally funded abortions should be renounced and the provisions of the Hyde amendment should be the Congressional battle cry.
Should the federal government approve federal dollars to support an issue that is so divisive, it will be as if Congress and the President are slapping those with pro-life convictions in the face. Almost 90% of Americans do not support a mandate to fund abortions attached to the government's health bill.
It's time for the federal government to yank off the blinders and support the will of the people. Until abortion is abolished, federal tax dollars should be excluded from funding abortion coverage.
Learn more about this author, Bryan Ridenour.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
No
I would first like to take the emotional appeal out of this debate by putting the shoe on the other foot. Should life saving blood transfusions be covered in the federal health care proposal? According to Jehovah's Witnesses, receiving blood transfusions is immoral.
What if Jehovah's witnesses were the majority? You might be living in a world where you die because of a car accident, a blood transfusion would have saved your life, but you won't be able to get one because it's immoral.
If the government is allowed to decide whether or not we can get an abortion because its a moral issue, you have to wonder what kind of procedures they will be able to ban in the future on moral grounds. The morals of the majority will change over time, you may in the future find yourself in a world where the morals of the majority are harsh, and that your rights are being trampled on simply because it is what most people think is right. Only you, with the advice of your doctor, should be able to decide what medical procedures you should or should not get.
The issue is not one of morality. Regardless of what you do people will get abortions. If their health care plans cover abortions, then they will be able to get one under the best circumstances, with a medical professional performing the procedure to insure that disease is not spread and that the health of the mother is not endangered.
The alternative is women jumping up and down a lot, smoking, or drinking alcohol in order to have an "abortion", the kind they can afford. When this happens it can be worse if the baby is born, it could develop birth defects effectively handicapping it. It's hard enough to compete for jobs in our society, more handi-capped children are not the answer.
Writing laws on moral grounds is a slippery slope. If we allow the government the power to tell us what kind of medical procedures we can get today, they are going to tell us what medical procedures we have to get tomorrow. If your an authoritarian this may be a good thing, but for the rest of us who don't want to be told that we have to get implants or tracking devices for our own safety, this would be a tragedy.
You might think abortion is wrong, or right. Thats not important. What is important, is whether or not you think the government should be able to pass laws based on subjective value systems. One person might think its immoral to have an abortion, I think its immoral to bring a child into this world without the love of at least one of its parents.
Regardless, do you really want to give the government the power to pass laws based on morals? The baby boomer generation is on the way out, you'll soon find out what kind of values the next generation has. The question is whether or not you'll find out about the values because they are legislated.
Learn more about this author, Andrew Smeja.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
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