Abortion: The fight over federal dollars

Why do Republicans think they can treat “a woman’s pelvis as public property?” said Dianne Williamson in the Worcester, Mass., Telegram. Now that the GOP controls the House of Representatives, it has launched a full-fledged attack on women’s legally established right to seek an abortion. For years, federal law has restricted the use of taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions—except in cases of rape, incest, or when the woman’s life is endangered. Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) would go much further with his “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” which would impose tax penalties on private insurance policies that cover abortions. Smith even proposed limiting the rape exception in current law by specifying it had to be “forcible rape”—meaning that raped women couldn’t get abortions if no one put a gun to their heads. Although an uproar forced Republicans to remove the word “forcible,” said Renée Loth in The Boston Globe, their intentions are clear. They’ve also proposed authorizing hospitals to refuse to perform abortions even if a pregnant woman is hemorrhaging or suffering from some other life-threatening condition.

The Republicans’ goal is indeed clear, said Kathryn Jean Lopez in National Review Online. They’re simply seeking to “make sure federal taxpayer money isn’t going toward abortions.” That’s been the law of the land since the Hyde amendment was passed in 1976. But groups like Planned Parenthood have found ways around it, exploiting the exceptions and ambiguities in the law, so that taxpayers like me, who see abortion as a form of “eugenics,” have been forced to subsidize this horror, directly or indirectly. This isn’t a covert war on women, as Planned Parenthood’s scaremongers contend. “With all the talk about a need for civility lately, here’s a great test case. Chill with the anti-woman rhetoric.”

Fine—let’s talk about reality, said Amy Sullivan in Time.com. Republicans would like to make Americans think Medicaid is paying for thousands of abortions under exceptions to Hyde. But in 2001, the last year for which I could find figures, Medicaid paid for a grand total of 81 abortions—critically ill women, and victims of rape and incest, all in the first trimester. “People who have a principled opposition to abortion have every right to work to see it outlawed,” said Leah Anthony Libresco in HuffingtonPost.com. But trying to restrict it out of existence puts congressmen in the role of doctors—and women’s lives in jeopardy.

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