Make Health Care Reform Abortion Neutral

The nation struggles to reform health care, and concerns range from how to fund health care to the role of the federal government in health care to whether to insure American children born to undocumented persons.

Stunningly, the country’s abortion lobby wants to mire the debate by using it to promote abortion. They want to make it a required health benefit – I’m not sure to benefit whom. It doesn’t benefit unborn children, and you can make a good case that it doesn’t benefit their mothers either, given all the regrets afterwards.

When the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 voted to permit abortion as a matter of privacy, people predicted that arguments over abortion would split the nation in two.

Were they ever right! There’s never been an issue in modern times to have such an effect. The nationwide moral upheaval that has ensued since then speaks to the visceral nature of the issue. It just does not sit well with people.

To attach abortion rights to health care reform is to guarantee the failure of health care reform.

Health care reform needs to be abortion neutral. It’s about pregnant women having pre-natal care, children getting vaccinations, oldsters getting blood pressure medication and middle-agers having cancer screening. It’s about all Americans having decent health care so that they aren’t forced to choose between buying cereal for breakfast or antibiotics for strep throat.

Health care reform is not about terminating pregnancies. Americans do not want to pay for other people’s elective abortions. Current laws only allow federal dollars to go for abortion in cases of rape or incest or threat to the life of the mother. Moral objections to abortion run deep.
The well-funded abortion lobby that seeks to make abortion a sine qua non for health care reform puts all of us at risk as the abortion lobbyists cavalierly promote a political agenda guaranteed to worsen the situation of health care in the United States.

The nation’s health care crisis needs to be addressed. Making sure the legislation is abortion-neutral takes one huge obstacle out of the way.