Mermaid Musings

Of all things. The Christian Defense Coalition started a campaign this month, “Abortion is not health care” in order to keep public money from paying for abortion in any health care reform that actually gets passed. These people really are a bunch of crackpots. If abortion is not health care, why are only doctors (and some nurse practitioners, depending on where you live) allowed to perform them? Why is it the safest outpatient surgery available in the United States today? If abortion is not health care, what the hell is it? Oh I know all the standard responses: it’s an abomination in the eyes of god (so are blood transfusions and immunizations according to some folks), it is an act of ‘genocide’ against the now persecuted ‘pre-born,’ and, of course, it is murder.

It is disturbing to me how much anti-abortion folks are controlling the discourse on health care reform these days. Truly, I don’t think it’s so much about abortion as it is about blocking any reform of the health care system. Which is so sad because the only ‘people’ who don’t stand to benefit from serious reform are the health insurance corporations. Which, for the record, mostly pay for abortions with the money they get from premiums from people in the Christian Defense Coalition (and others). This whole argument of not wanting your tax dollars to pay for abortion is specious in my opinion. My tax dollars pay for all kinds of things that I don’t want to pay for: long range nuclear missiles, the bombing of villagers in Iraq and Afghanistan, bailouts and subsidies to oil corporations and car manufacturers who destroyed the electric car. I don’t understand why I have to pay for things that I find immoral, but people who want to curtail my human rights are allowed to decide they don’t have to pay for things that they disagree with.

Unlike bombs and wars, public funding for abortion is a matter of justice. Refusing to allow women to access public funds discriminates against low-income women and denies them their human rights, as well as equal protection under the law. Denying public funding for abortion, says to poor women you can’t exercise your right to an abortion, because you can’t AFFORD it. So only women with money are apparently allowed to have reproductive rights in this country.