No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion

I think the GOP has to reevaluate their platform. They want a limited government, but they want to tell women that they have to carry children. They also want to tell us who we can and can't love, but that's a post for later.

I'm talking about this "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion" nonsense.

Abortions are expensive. This bill is less about tax dollars and more about eradicating abortion entirely. It targets the poor. The women that are using government aid to have abortions are women that obviously could not afford it otherwise. I don't think it's up to anyone but these women to choose to have a child or not.

It also takes away money from Planned Parenthood because some of them provide abortion services. Planned Parenthood also offers help and education to a lot of people. It's just insane to take away this organization.

I've heard the argument from a spending perspective, something like "well, we have to start cutting somewhere." But if these women with limited financial capabilities were forced to undergo full-term pregnancy, who do you think will be paying the taxes to support their kids? They don't just disappear. They have to live somehow.

Some people have made the argument that they don't want their tax dollars funding something they don't believe in. With that logic, the entire system of government would collapse. Example? Imagine if people that send their children to private schools decided they didn't want to pay school tax to support public schools. I don't support the war in Iraq, but I have to pay tax to fund the military. I don't agree with a whole host of past wars and foreign policy nonsense that we're STILL paying for. But I still pay taxes. You don't get to opt out of taxes if you don't support the cause, sorry. They only thing you can do at that point is move somewhere else.

I don't care about the religious argument. It doesn't matter. If you outlaw abortion, what do you think will happen? That people will suddenly agree with you and admit to some warped sense wrongdoing? No. It'll be a coat hanger in a back alley. Abortions are going to happen whether you like it or not, and I don't think anyone but the patient has any right to judge.

• Depending on where you live, it's really not easy to get an abortion. There are more than 5 times the number of "family centers" than there are of places that offer abortion procedures. State laws also provide a lot of legality issues and other things like mandatory counseling, parental notification, and limiting public spending on abortion services.

• It's not like people just decide to get an abortion. It's a big decision. This whole notion of "Oh, if the government pays for it, everyone will do it" is just ridiculous.
  

• Abortion does not cause breast cancer, but it may put a woman at a higher risk. But, so may smoking, genetics, previous conditions, having no children, long-term hormone treatments, getting your period before you're 12, alcohol, being overweight and a whole host of other things. Scientists still don't know what causes cancer, and they still don't agree on whether abortion is a factor. (http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/BreastCancer/MoreInformation/is-abortion-linked-to-breast-cancer)
  

Check out the documentary 12th & Delaware if you're interested in the abortion debate. It's a really great documentary. It gives both sides a lot of face time.

Also, here's the proposed bill in it's entirety http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3/text.

Redefining Rape

The GOP was trying to pass a law that made forcible rape the only "real" kind of rape eligible for abortion. If a 12 year old girl is seduced and impregnated by an older man, or even her uncle, she has the have a child. Date rape? Have to have it. This is not only dangerous, but it gives more rights to rapists. It's already hard to prove a rape case because of the he said/she said ( or he/he or she/she) nature of it.

What if we decided that unarmed robbery was no longer stealing or theft but borrowing? How would that impact the law? Language is everything.


For more info, check out http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/republican-plan-redefine-rape-abortion. It's one-sided but it's a good article.