ecl@ahuta.UUCP (ecl) (12/26/84)
I have been reading some of the discussion going on in this category and I would like to make a (possibly heretical) point. Yes, I agree that for a woman with an unwanted pregnancy, abortion is best for the woman and probably best for society. I would like to add, however, that I do not consider the parents blameless in the situation. (Yes, that's "parents" in the plural, and it is a pity that it is physically possible that only one be present at the abortion and that one is always the woman.) Nor do I consider the woman to be at fault in cases where she has been raped, is mentally incompetent, and perhaps not even if birth control devices were denied her. I am angry at the parents who had some choice in the question of whether the woman would become pregnant and through negligence or because they thought differently at that time allowed it to happen. I feel this way, not because I think the abortion is immoral, but because of the comparative expense to public funds of using abortion as a means of birth control. The political reality is that in the years to come there will be efforts to balance the budget and at the same time minimize the effect on taxes. This will mean that every social program will be in competition with every other program for funds. Programs will have to be made as cost-effective as possible. The way to do that will be to make birth control devices available to the public at cost and at funded discounts (up to 100% where necessary) to the poor. Funding should also go to sex education. Then categorize pregnancies as involuntary (due to rape, ignorance, mental deficiency), and voluntary (due to negligence, change of mind, etc.). Only abortions for the involuntarily pregnant would be publicly funded. It is from the money saved that the birth control discounts and sex education would be funded. I would expect there would be funds left over to put into helping to eliminate hunger in this country. Of course, at the heart of what I am saying here is that a tax dollar spent on aborting an avoidable pregnancy is better spent than many tax dollars spent in this country, but would be much better spent on a number of other social programs. Many of these programs are far worthier than abortions of pregnancies that could have been avoided with some forethought. But the advocates of these programs do not have political clout that the pro-abortion cause has. To take one dollar that could be spent helping the malnourished in this country (or anywhere in the world) and spend it instead to pay a doctor to abort a fetus that would never have existed if the parents had used some forethought is an immoral act.